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JAKOB VON UEXKULL NAMED
"2005 EUROPEAN HERO" BY TIME MAGAZINE
6 October 2005
On September 29 he announced this year's winners of the Right Livelihood Award
(better known as "Alternative Nobel Prize") in Stockholm. Now he
himself has been honoured: In its current special issue, TIME Magazine names
Jakob von Uexkull one of 37 "2005 European Heroes".
Uexkull: "This honour really goes to the recipients of the Right
Livelihood Award. Their inspiring and exemplary work has given the award the
standing it has today. TIME Magazine shows that this award is now
increasingly seen as the new mainstream, honouring courageous and practical
projects of hope for our common future. Our goal in the next few years is to
disseminate the recipients' experience and knowledge more widely and support
their co-operation."
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Got his eyes on the prize
Through his right livelihood
awards, Jakob Von Uexkull honors alternative
thinkers
On Dec. 10, 2004, TIME Magazine -
Jakob von Uexkull was a special guest at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in
Oslo. He was invited by Kenyan environmentalist and human-rights activist
Wangari Maathai, who had been awarded the world’s most prestigious prize—precisely
two decades after Von Uexkull’s own Right Livelihood Awards had honored
Maathai for her efforts to save the African forests. “If the Nobel Committee
continues to follow in our footsteps, 20 years of delay is all right with me,”
he commented.
It was a satisfying, and
good-natured, rebuke. Twenty-five years ago, Von Uexkull approached the Nobel
Foundation in Stockholm to suggest adding Nobel Prizes for ecology and efforts
to fight poverty in the Third World to its roster of honors. He even offered
to help underwrite the costs. His proposal was turned down, since it is Nobel
Foundation policy not to adopt other prizes than those originally instituted
by Alfred Nobel.
So Von Uexkull founded the Right
Livelihood Awards—known as the alternative Nobel Prizes—in 1980 to honor
those who “didn’t fit into the ruling ideology,” as he puts it.
Initially the award was funded by $1 million he earned when he sold a stamp
collection— “which is, of course, much less profitable than inventing
dynamite like Alfred Nobel did,” says Von Uexkull, who was a member of the
European Parliament for the German Greens from 1987-89. Among the more than
100 luminaries he has recognized are Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef
(1983), for his Barefoot Economics, which promoted sustainable development;
Australian physicist Martin Green (2002), for his work on solar energy; and
Indonesian human-rights lawyer Munir Said Thalib (2000), who fought against
his country’s military regime and was murdered four years after he received
his prize. The winners for 2005, announced last week, include Roy Sesana, an
advocate for the rights of the Kalahari indigenous people of Botswana; and
Irene Fernandez of Malaysia, for her “outstanding and courageous work to
stop violence against women and abuses of migrant and poor workers.”
Adopting the Buddhist concept of
“right livelihood”—which teaches that each individual is responsible for
his or her actions and should take only a fair share of the earth’s
resources—the emphasis of the prizes is on practical solutions to the main
challenges of our time. “I’ve always thought it is outrageous that we
continue to live with problems we can solve,” says Von Uexkull, 61, who was
born in Uppsala, Sweden, and holds dual Swedish and German nationality. Von
Uexkull’s Right Livelihood Foundation currently donates $258,000 annually to
four winners for outstanding work in the fields of ecology, peace, human
rights, democracy or poverty alleviation. Since 1985, the awards have been
presented in the Swedish Parliament, usually on Dec. 9, the day before the
Nobel Prize ceremony. These days, Von Uexkull is busy establishing the World
Future Council, designed to provide direction for a sustainable future.
“What is clear to me is that our generation doesn’t have an institution
that speaks up for the future generations,” he says. In everything he does,
Von Uexkull remains focused on the future.
By Ulla Plon
The TIME magazine article about
Jakob von Uexkull can be found at:
http://www.time.com/time/europe/hero2005/uexkull.html
A free-to-use high res photo of Jakob von Uexkull can be found at:
http://www.rightlivelihood.org/images/jakob/jakob-von-uexkull.jpg
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