30 YEARS OF THE RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD—Bonn, Germany Still Going on This Weekend
Summary based on the website for the Awards. The focus is on Changing our Global Course of Development (or poor developments). The RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month. It is considered an alternative to the Nobel Prize.
HISTORY
http://www.kurswechseln.de/30yearsrla.html
History – Setting Up the “Alternative Nobel Prize”
In 1980, the journalist and professional philatelist Jakob von Uexkull felt that the Nobel Prize categories were too narrow in scope and too concentrated on the interests of the industrialized countries to be an adequate answer to the challenges humanity is facing now.
Instead, he wanted to “recognize the efforts of those who are tackling these issues more directly, coming up with practical answers to challenges like the pollution of our air, soil and water, the danger of nuclear war, the abuse of basic human rights, the destitution and misery of the poor and the over-consumption and spiritual poverty of the wealthy”.
The Nobel Prize is considered the highest honour that our society can bestow on an individual. Thus, Jakob von Uexkull approached the Nobel Foundation with the suggestion that it establishes two new awards, one for ecology and one relevant to the lives of the poor. He offered to contribute financially, but his proposal was turned down. He then decided to set up the Right Livelihood Awards and provided the initial funding of USD 1 million.
In 1980, the first Right Livelihood Awards were bestowed in a rented hall. Five years later, the invitation to present them in the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm followed. At this time, the public began to refer to the Award as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”.
The first Recipients in 1980 were Plenty International and Stephen Gaskin, USA, and Hassan Fathy, Egypt. They shared the total prize money of USD 50,000.
Over the years, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation has grown thanks to the support of other private donors. Today, the award is endowed with prize money of 150,000 €
PREVIOUS RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD WINNERS
http://www.kurswechseln.de/1822.html
2009
René Ngongo (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Alyn Ware (New Zealand – Aotearoa)
2008
Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan / LAFTI (India)
2007
Christopher Weeramantry (Sri Lanka)
“… for his lifetime of groundbreaking work to strengthen and expand the rule of international law”.
Percy and Louise Schmeiser (Canada)
2006
Chico Whitaker Ferreira (Brazil)
Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín (Colombia)
2005
First People of the Kalahari / Roy Sesana (Botswana)
2004
Joint Honorary Award with Asghar Ali Engineer
Joint Honorary Award with Swami Agnivesh
2003
David Lange (New Zealand – Aotearoa)
“…for his steadfast work over many years for a world free of nuclear weapons.”
Joint Award with Nicanor Perlas
Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice, CCEJ (South Korea)
Sekem / Ibrahim Abouleish (Egypt)
2002
Centre Jeunes Kamenge, CJK (Burundi)
2001
José Antonio Abreu (Venezuela)
Gush Shalom / Uri and Rachel Avnery (Israel)
2000
Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher (Ethiopia)
Wes Jackson / The Land Institute (USA)
1999
”…for his indefatigable work for the promotion of solar energy worldwide.”
“…for his long-standing efforts to end the impunity of dictators.”
Consolidation of the Amazon Region, COAMA (Colombia)
Grupo de Agricultura Orgánica, GAO (Cuba)
1998
International Baby Food Action Network, IBFAN (Switzerland)
”…for its committed and effective campaigning in support of breastfeeding.”
“…for his exemplary life of scholarship wedded to activism on behalf of humanity.”
Juan Pablo Orrego / Grupo de Acción por el Biobío (Chile)
Joint Award with Vesna Terselic
“…for their dedication to a long-term process of peace-building and reconciliation in the Balkans.”
Joint Award with Katarina Kruhonja
“…for their dedication to a long-term process of peace-building and reconciliation in the Balkans.”
1997
Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Burkina Faso)
Joint Award with Mycle Schneider
“…for serving to alert the world to the unparalleled dangers of plutonium to human life.”
Joint Award with Jinzaburo Takagi
“…for serving to alert the world to the unparalleled dangers of plutonium to human life.”
1996
The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, CSMR (Russia)
Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) (India)
1995
András Biró / Hungarian Foundation for Self-Reliance (Hungary)
The Serb Civic Council (Bosnia-Herzegovina)
”…for maintaining their support for a humane, multi-ethnic, democratic Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
1994
Servol (Service Volunteered for All) (Trinidad)
”…for fostering spiritual values, co-operation and family responsibility in building society.”
Hannumappa R Sudarshan / Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, VGKK (India)
Ken Saro-Wiwa † / Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Nigeria)
1993
”…for passionate commitment to the defence and education of the children of Palestine.”
Organisation of Rural Associations for Progress (ORAP) (Zimbabwe)
”…for placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse.”
Mary † and Carrie Dann of the Western Shoshone Nation (USA)
1992
Kylätoiminta / Finnish Village Action (Finland)
”…for showing a dynamic path to rural regeneration, decentralisation and popular empowerment.”
Gonoshasthaya Kendra / Zafrullah Chowdhury (Bangladesh)
”…for its outstanding record of promotion of health and human development.”
Joint Award with Alla Yaroshinskaya
“…for his pioneering work in exposing the health effects of low-level radiation.”
1991
Medha Patkar and Baba Amte † / Narmada Bachao Andolan (India)
Marie-Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson (Polynesia)
Joint Award with the Rongelap People / Senator Jeton Anjain
“…for exposing the tragic results of and advocating an end to French nuclear colonialism.”
The Rongelap People / Senator Jeton Anjain (Marshall Islands)
Joint Award with Marie-Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra, MST (Brazil)
“…for winning land for landless families and helping them to farm it sustainably.”
Commissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT (Brazil)
1990
Bernard Lédéa Ouédraogo (Burkina Faso)
”…for strengthening peasant self-help movements all over West Africa.”
”…for the exemplary courage of her advocacy for the basic rights of the Palestinian people.”
Asociación de Trabajadores Campesinos del Carare (ATCC) (Colombia)
1989
Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Cooperative (Japan)
Joint Award with Legesse Wolde-Yohannes
“…for discovering and campaigning relentlessly for an affordable preventative against bilharzia.”
Legesse Wolde-Yohannes (Ethiopia)
“…for discovering and campaigning relentlessly for an affordable preventative against bilharzia.”
”…for working with tribal peoples to secure their rights, livelihood and self-determination.”
1988
Inge Genefke / International Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (Denmark)
”…for his contribution to protecting the natural environment in Brazil and worldwide.”
John F. Charlewood Turner (UK)
Sahabat Alam Malaysia-Sarawak (SAM) (Malaysia)
”…for their exemplary struggle to save the tropical forests of Sarawak.”
1987
“… for his systematic and multidisciplinary study of the conditions which can lead to peace.”
Frances Moore Lappé / Institute for Food and Development Policy (USA)
”…for his courage and self-sacrifice in revealing the extent of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme.”
1986
Joint Award with Alice Stewart
Joint Award with Rosalie Bertell
“…for bringing to light in the face of official opposition the real dangers of low-level radiation.”
Ladakh Ecological Development Group (India)
Evaristo Nugkuag Ikanan (Peru)
“…for organising to protect the rights of the Indians of the Amazon basin.”
1985
”…for speaking out on human rights abuse without fear or favour in the international community.”
“…for working to save the world’s genetic plant heritage.”
“…for working to save the world’s genetic plant heritage.”
Duna Kör / Janos Vargha (Hungary)
1984
“…for inspiring and organising the Beirut peace movement.”
Self-Employed Women’s Association / Ela Bhatt (India)
”…for helping home-based producers to organise for their welfare and self-respect.”
Winefreda Geonzon / FREE LAVA – Free Legal Assistance Association (Philippines)
”…for giving assistance to prisoners and aiding their rehabilitation.”
“…for converting the Kenyan ecological debate into mass action for reforestation.”
1983
”…for his early inspiration of the movement for a human scale.”
High Chief Ibedul Gibbons and the people of Belau (Palau)
“…for upholding the democratic, constitutional right of their island to remain nuclear-free.”
“…for pioneering soft energy paths for global security.”
“…for revitalising small and medium-sized communities through ‘Barefoot Economics’.”
1982
Erik Dammann / The Future in Our Hands (Norway)
”…for fighting for the rights of consumers and helping them to do the same.”
Participatory Institute for Development Alternatives (PIDA) (Sri Lanka)
“…for educating the adult spirit to a new non-materialistic vision of human nature.”
1981
”…for designing and promoting the theory and practice of human-centred, socially useful production.”
”…for developing and promoting the theory and practice of permaculture.”
Patrick van Rensburg (South Africa)
”…for developing replicable educational models for the third world majority.”
1980
”…for developing an ’Architecture for the Poor’.”
Plenty International / Stephen Gaskin (USA)
“…for caring, sharing and acting with and on behalf of those in need at home and abroad.”
An open letter to all Laureates by Pat Mooney
Pat Mooney (Preisträger 1985)
Dear Fellow Laureates,
In the quarter-century since I received the Right Livelihood Award, I’ve never felt that I had an issue that would require me to write to all my fellow laureates at one time. Now, however, I am writing to you to ask for your support in opposing the newest and, possibly, most imminent threat to our peoples and planet – geoengineering. You might well wonder what is geoengineering or, if you’ve heard about it before, question whether it is anything more than a figment of sci-fi imaginations. Let me explain briefly and refer you to some of ETC Group’s research for more information.
I should also be clear about my request. If you agree, I’m asking you as an individual to sign on to the protest at www.handsoffmotherearth.org and, if possible, to send a digital photograph with your hand up blocking geoengineering. This photo, with your name and the notation that you received the RLA, will be posted on the rapidly growing gallery of photographs at this website. In the next few days and weeks you will read more about this campaign as it moves on from where I am now at the climate change summit now taking place in Cochabamba to the Biodiversity Convention’s scientific meetings in Nairobi en route to further intergovernmental negotiations leading to a global confrontation on climate change and geoengineering in Cancun, Mexico at the end of November this year. I hope we will have some time to discuss the issue and the campaign when we all gather together for the 30th anniversary of the RLA in Bonn this September.
Geoengineering is the intentional, massive manipulation of major planetary or ecosystems with the goal of redressing climate change. The best known geoengineering experiments involve more than a dozen efforts to spread iron particles or urea on large areas of the ocean surface in the hypothetical hope of creating phytoplankton blooms that could sequester carbon dioxide. These (often commercial) gambits were halted in 2008 when ETC Group and many partners persuaded the 191 member UN Convention on Biological Diversity to unanimously adopt a moratorium on the dangerous practice. A second form of geoengineering can come with massive changes in land use to develop, for example, artificial or genetically modified forests to (again, theoretically) suck up greenhouse gases. The form of geoengineering that is now being most actively discussed by government agencies and parliamentary/congressional committees in such countries as the UK and USA involves the manipulation of the stratosphere to block or reflect sunlight in order to temporarily lower temperatures – for example by ejecting clouds of sulphate particles into the upper atmospheric layers.
These ideas, I know, sound implausible but they are in active consideration. The Copenhagen debacle at the end of last year opened the door to private companies and some major governments arguing that a multilateral UN-negotiated climate change strategy was “off the table” and that a new “coalition of the willing” would have to implement Plan B – geoengineering. Even geoengineering’s most enthusiastic advocates acknowledge that tampering with the ocean or the stratosphere could prove extremely risky and might fail but nevertheless argue that governments have no option. After all, they point out, the “proof of principle” that geoengineering works is that we have already inadvertently “geoengineered” our earth into its current conundrum. Why not geoengineer ourselves out of the mess, they suggest?
We are all alarmed by the pace of climate change and the threat of multiple “tippings” in various sensitive Earth systems. Aren’t geoengineers simply being realistic?
The attached briefing, I trust, will be convincing that geoengineering is scientific hubris at its worst and corporate greed at its highest. ETC Group in partnership with The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation has also recently published a larger introductory report to geoengineering entitled “Retooling the Planet? Climate Chaos in the Geoengineering Age”. For more background I encourage you to download and read this report from the internet at http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/4966. Let me reiterate one point you will read in this documentation: could you imagine, in your wildest dreams, that the governments who have spent decades denying or avoiding climate change; who have failed to meet even the minimal requirements of the Kyoto Accord; who lack the courage to tell their societies to change their lifestyles; have either the integrity or the intellect to manipulate the oceans or the stratosphere in any way that could be either environmentally-effective or socially-equitable for the world? Should their hand be on the global thermostat?
The HOME campaign (“Hands Off Mother Earth!”) will be introduced this week during the Cochabamba, Bolivia, Peoples’ Summit on the Rights of Mother Earth. We are asking supporters of HOME to sign on at our website and to send us a digital photograph of your hand held up to block geoengineering. Many people are writing a message on their hand such as “Hands Off Mother Earth”; just the word “HOME”; or a similar message in your own language. Again, there will be more information at www.handsoffmotherearth.org which launches on Wednesday 22nd April. You can lend your support by joining up at this website, emailing join@handsoffmotherearth.org or replying to me.
I do apologize for imposing so heavily on our shared RLA website. In 25 years, I have never done this before. I wouldn’t do so now if I were not convinced that political and commercial momentum is emerging that will turn geoengineering into a commercial cause célèbre by the end of this year. I hope you’ll consider my invitation to join the campaign.
Wherever this goes, I will be going to Bonn this September and I will very much look forward to talking with you then!
Yours sincerely,
Pat Mooney,
RLA 1985
Eslkevin's Blog 
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/16/right_livelihood_laureates_from_croatia_thailand
Right Livelihood Laureates from Croatia, Thailand and Burundi Discuss Their Battles for Social Justice
Three Right Livelihood laureates discuss their struggles for social justice: Sulak Sivaraksa, a Bangkok-based activist and scholar; Vesna Terselic, founder of the Croatian Anti-War Campaign; and Guillaume Harushimana, an activist from Burundi.
AMY GOODMAN: We continue to broadcast from Bonn, Germany, where the thirtieth anniversary of the Right Livelihood Awards is being held. The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 and has become widely known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” Some eighty Right Livelihood Award laureates are gathered here in Bonn this week to discuss the world’s most urgent problems, from human rights abuses to climate change, environmental degradation to the fight for global justice. This is a sampling of some of the voices from the conference.
SULAK SIVARAKSA: Sulak Sivaraksa from Bangkok, Siam. I never refer to that country as Thailand, because the word is racism, because the country has many other ethnic people, so that it doesn’t only belong to the Thai. And I work on this issue, I want people to be aware, rise of minorities. And right now in my country, there’s a lot of trouble going on. You know the so-called Red Shirts are working against the Yellow Shirts. The Red Shirts claim that they are the people, and the Yellow Shirts claim that they are—belong to the establishment. In fact, on the 19th, there’s going to be a big issue. That day may be even bloody.
So my role is to try to do something nonviolently to pacify the issues. And I also work on other deep education. My background, of course, is using Buddhist philosophy, cultivating peace within and trying to bring peace to thew world. People should, number one, know oneself. Western education is stressing too much on the head. We want to develop the heart, synchronize the head and the heart, in order that, one, people are mindful, people learn to be respectable, people learn to be humble, people learn that we are all interrelated. Without the trees, we cannot exist. That’s how we have to honor the trees, honor the earth, and honor everyone. In my country, I suppose it’s like elsewhere, but in the poorer countries, much more so—the society doesn’t admit the truth. The society is very much controlled by what people call globalization. But in fact it’s neoliberalism. It’s all capitalism and consumerism. I try to alert people, conscientize people, that this is wrong, greed is wrong, anger is wrong, illusion is wrong, and try to make people understand the whole structural violence.
VESNA TERSELIC: My name is Vesna Terselic. I come from Croatia. It is one of post-Yugoslav countries. And I work on peace building, but in particular on documenting what happened to people who had been either killed or are still missing, have been disappeared, as a consequence of war crimes. And it’s that—what we really want is actually note down a name and family name of each individual. I think that really matters, because it is very important to remember and make a face of somebody who have died or is still missing visible and to remember and to know about circumstances of his or her death or disappearance. And that’s a first step. It’s first step of acknowledgment. So we actually document human losses.
I work for DOCUMENTA, which is a center for dealing with the past. We also record personal memories. And I believe that eventually each victim or family of victim has a right to truth and a right to fair legal procedure. We believe that, in addition, there is also need for regional truth commission, and we are just advocating for now for it, because in our region, in post-Yugoslav countries, more than 120,000 people have been killed and more than 15,000 are still missing. Their families are still searching to any information about what happened to them. And it’s that actually we would like to support this commission to be established by governments, so that it actually can establish facts which have not yet been established and also offer to look on causes and reasons and motivation for violence of the ’90s.
GUILLAUME HARUSHIMANA: My name is Guillaume Harushimana. I’m traveling from Burundi. And in my country, I’m working with Centre Jeunes Kamenge, which is a youth center working with young people from sixteen to thirteen years. We began with that project in the northern area of Bujumbura in Burundi. It was just to bring young people to learn how to live together, to learn to them how they can respect—a respect, mutual respect. And it was also to bring people from the different ethnic groups to live together so that to—in order to see how to improve their life. In Burundi, there was a civil war crisis since 1993, and that crisis bring people to be separated because of this ethnical difference. But some of the guys, some of the young people, have make choice, and then they begin to learn how to live together, even they were different—I mean, political differences, ethnic differences, religious differences, things like that.
AMY GOODMAN: Winners of the Right Livelihood Award gathered here in Bonn, over eighty of them, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Right Livelihood awards. When we come back, I’ll sit down with another of the laureates, the father of peace studies, Johan Galtung. Stay with us.
Johan Galtung on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mideast Peace Talks, and Why Obama Is Losing His Base
We speak with Johan Galtung, known as a founder of the field of peace and conflict studies. He’s spent the past half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution in international relations. Galtung discusses the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Mideast talks, why President Obama is losing his base, and much more.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/16/johan_galtung_on_the_wars_in
AMY GOODMAN: As we continue here in Bonn, I sat down with another of the Right Livelihood laureates, Johan Galtung. He won the award in 1987. We talked about the Mideast talks, the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rise of China as a superpower. Yes, Johan Galtung, we’ve had him on the broadcast a number of times, and he started by talking about the Middle East.
JOHAN GALTUNG: I think the only viable solution is a Middle East community consisting of Israel and the five bordering Arab states, meaning Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine—fully recognized according to international law—and Egypt. That was also the solution for Europe, with Germany in the center, this time with Israel in the center. I think that could work, and I think what they’re negotiating is a nonstarter from the beginning. With the formula I just indicated, I think Israel could get peace, with open borders, free flow, and perhaps the possibility of Jews settling in the neighboring countries, too, but not trying to mess them up with too much investment and too many tricks of various types. There has to be some rules. And what they’re doing now would, in Europe, have been a treaty between Germany and Luxembourg. That was not the way Europe solved its problem.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think—how would you describe what is happening now in Sharm el-Sheikh? Who are the negotiating parties?
JOHAN GALTUNG: Well, formally speaking, it is Abbas from the Palestinian Authority and Bibi Netanyahu from the Israeli government. But the settlers have threatened to withdraw from Netanyahu’s coalition if he gives too much to the Palestinians. And by giving too much, I don’t think there’s much margin from the Russian settler point of view. And I think there are similar threats from Gaza and from Hamas. I don’t think this will work. It is not a solution on the horizon. I think it is, to some extent, a maneuver and that both of them will try to blame the other or some third party.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the role of the United States?
JOHAN GALTUNG: Role of the United States—the United States was never a mediator. A mediator cannot be an ally of one of the parties and having a joint concern, since United States and Israel came into being the same way, by some kind of divine mandate, that we are chosen peoples and this is our promised land. The people onboard the Mayflower took over the Jewish metaphors before they landed on the Plymouth Rock. So I think they are obsessed with the idea that if one falls, so does the other. Now, that’s an asymmetry which is unacceptable for a mediator.
A much better mediator would have been the European Commission. The European Commission should enter here not only as a mediator, but as a model, just simply revealing what happened, laying the cards on the table. How did they manage to integrate Germany, that had committed so many atrocities? That is quite some story, and that story would be inspiring for them. And out of it came something that works. Right now they have a little currency crisis, but they’re overcoming that much better than somebody else.
AMY GOODMAN: How did they manage to integrate Germany? What year was it?
JOHAN GALTUNG: It was started with the coal and steel authority in 1950. And from 1st of January, 1958, came the Treaty of Rome. And the basis was mutual and equal benefit. Germany entered as a full member from the beginning. I think it was told that “You better shut the first twenty years. Don’t talk too much. And if there’s some bills to pay, you pay them.” Now, I don’t think that would work with Israelis. First of all, they cannot shut up. And secondly, I don’t think they are willing to pay any bill. But I’m just mentioning it, not quite as a joke, because that was the way it worked. Germany was more obedient, to put it that way. That’s become a glittering success, in terms of accommodating Germany. That they have other problems is obvious.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Galtung, what about Iraq, where we stand today with Iraq, where Iraq stands?
JOHAN GALTUNG: I think the basic point about Iraq is that it is an artificial construction by two civil servants of the British Foreign Service in 1916. And I think they had the assignment of constructing a country out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, consisting—but it could, within the borders of one country, accommodate the oil in Kirkuk, Mosul, in the north, and Basra, in the south. And so they did. Now, that’s not a rationale for a country. Mesopotamia, between the rivers, would have made sense. Iraq, I think, is doomed to disintegration. This is one reason why they still don’t have a government, in spite of elections in March. They cannot agree on the formula for it. So I would say that it will disintegrate as either a very loose federation or a confederation.
There is some Iraq that has come into existence. I am quite willing to say that. But it is weak. And I don’t think the capital can be in Baghdad, which is in one of the four Sunni provinces out of the eighteen provinces. And, you see, the Sunnis have been ruling this system not having oil. And the others are not quite willing to bail out the Sunnis. So I think it’s a nonstarter. It was a nonstarter from the beginning, and Obama is now following in the footsteps of George Bush. I don’t think there’s anything new, actually, in Obama’s proposal, and it doesn’t look promising.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have about 50,000 troops. You have the largest US embassy in the world there, something like eighty football fields in size.
JOHAN GALTUNG: Unbelievable, inside the Green Zone. Unbelievable. Are they going to dismantle that? Well, those bases, I guess, were inspired by the idea that there will be a war with China. That’s always been the Anglo-American idea, that the biggest power, be that on the continent or be that in Eurasia, is our born enemy. It’s always been the Anglo-American idea, some kind of paranoia. And totally unnecessary. So I guess the bases are essentially for that purpose, like the purpose of the Bagram base in Afghanistan, the same.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a similar way of the US so-called withdrawing in Afghanistan—do you think they’re going to follow the model with the US in Iraq?
JOHAN GALTUNG: They are going to withdraw from both of them, because it is a mission impossible, a mission unachievable. They’re going to withdraw, and I think the most likely future for the US in both countries is to become neither a winner nor a loser, but irrelevant, and that that whole area will be managed by some cooperation between Turkey and China and the countries in between, the countries in between being Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan. And that means the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—I’m just back from a meeting with them in China, and some other people from the Central Committee—and the defunct Regional Development Cooperation between Turkey, Iran and Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now, this is a massive belt of countries, so I would watch out for this—for Ankara-Beijing cooperation.
AMY GOODMAN: For what?
JOHAN GALTUNG: Cooperation. Watch out. It’s not there yet, but Beijing is now building a railway from Xinjiang, the western province—where the Uyghurs, that Beijing, by and large, have treated not only badly, but stupidly—into Kazakhstan. Now, if that railroad ends up in Istanbul, they are in business. And it could easily do.
AMY GOODMAN: You have spoken to a number of US Congress members about what you think needs to be the solution in Afghanistan. What have you proposed, and what is their response?
JOHAN GALTUNG: I proposed withdrawal of all foreign troops; coalition government with the Taliban; Afghanistan as a federation, relatively loose, because of all the centripetal tendencies, probably with a capital not in Kabul; a confederation with the surrounding Islamic countries, meaning a Central Asian community, with the five former Soviet central republics, plus Iran, plus Pakistan, plus maybe the Muslim part of Kashmir; and a policy of equality between genders and nations. I have spoken with Taliban about that, and they say, “We know we are behind on the gender issue, but we’re not going to be told that by foreigners. We’re going to learn from countries, Muslim countries, that are ahead—Tunisia, [inaudible] Tunisia, since 1956 already, Turkey, Indonesia, southern Philippines. We know we are behind, and we are going to develop on our own premises.” OK?
Number five is security. It’s a very violent culture, probably organized by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in cooperation with the UN security conference—not NATO, not USA, not ISAF, nothing of that type. Get it out, and get the work started. Personally, I think that the future Afghanistan will be handled by that belt from Turkey to China. It’s a very powerful one.
AMY GOODMAN: What do US congressmen respond?
JOHAN GALTUNG: They shrug their shoulders, and they say, “Dear Professor Galtung, it’s impossible to convey to American voters, because that means that we have to concede that the other side has a couple of good points and that we have a couple of wrong points. It’s very difficult to do that.” And one of them, a very famous one, who shall remain unmentioned, put it this way: “Our instinctive reaction whenever there’s a problem is to send the Marines and not to try to solve the problem. We have done that too many times.”
And, you see, here comes a little point about China. China, within what classical China regards as their pocket in world geography, between the Himalayas, the Gobi Desert, the tundra, meaning Siberia, and the sea, is theirs. That doesn’t mean it’s all part of China, but China has the upper hand, and they have treated parts of it very badly—wars with Vietnam, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia. Hong Kong-Macau has found a rather good formula. Taiwan is heading in that direction. Korea is doing not badly. With Vietnam, they have had warfares. But outside that pocket, China has not had a single invasion, occupation. What they did in October ’62 about India, they withdrew immediately. And I, myself, am not on the Indian side on that issue. But leaving that aside, this means China has a free hand all over the world, because there is nobody who can say, “You were here 300 years ago, and we remember what you did.” And that, I can say about all Western countries, and particularly about the US, with its tendency to send the Marines. China has much more freedom to act than the US has.
AMY GOODMAN: What about China? You just recently met with the Central Committee. What was that like?
JOHAN GALTUNG: Central Committee members. Well, I was sitting with the Deputy Foreign Minister, and we had a map, a world map, on the floor. And, you see, peace studies, as opposed to the somewhat paranoid security studies, is about solutions. It’s about equity, mutual and equal benefit. And this is exactly what the Chinese say they believe in—no, not inside that pocket, as I mentioned, but outside it. It was very easy to talk with them. We just went through the whole map and were discussing Chinese options.
I can mention one example. And I’m not—I’m just saying these were things that I mentioned, and—to build a four-lane highway from Dar es Salaam to Kinshasa’s harbor on the Atlantic, expanding the Silk Route that was the world trade from 500 to 1500, globalized, incidentally, much before current globalization, run by Buddhists from China and surrounding countries and Muslims, ending in Somalia, and to expand that through the highway I just mentioned, maybe a railroad, too, to the Atlantic and then on to South America. And then trade the other way, exchange for students, sub-South, developing country, developing country, not dominated by China, but China as an anchor. That would be something, quite something. And not excluding North-South trade, but that was the imperial trade, you know. That was the United States to Latin America, and that was Europe and all the eleven colonial countries in Europe to Africa and other places. We cannot exclude it. We don’t want to exclude it. But we want the East-West trade.
AMY GOODMAN: What is China’s view of the United States?
JOHAN GALTUNG: They used to have a strong distinction between the US people, who are all good, and the US government, that’s all bad. I think both of those have changed a little bit. There are good elements in the US government, and there are not-so-good elements in the US people. I think they start getting to know the US a little better, so yin-yang, black-white perspectives, nuances, are coming up. They want cooperation.
They have three avoidance principles: avoid being encircled; avoid counter-revolution—and here, they are thinking, in particular, of North Korea and Myanmar’s—now, all of that leaves open quite a lot of discussion—and avoid confrontation with the US. They don’t want confrontation. They want friendship. And right now they’re, of course, very much concerned with the maneuvers in the Yellow Sea and also in the China Sea and—
AMY GOODMAN: Who’s maneuvering there?
JOHAN GALTUNG: US, an aircraft carrier, together with South Korea in the Yellow Sea. Now, that’s very, very close. So, you could imagine the Chinese navy having maneuvers outside San Francisco or Los Angeles. It would not be very well received by Washington. So they are protesting, but are—the need, the need to avoid confrontation. If the US could do it the same way as the China does, try to stay away from such things, it would be very, very useful.
AMY GOODMAN: Why doesn’t the US avoid that? Why are they doing the maneuvers in the Yellow Sea?
JOHAN GALTUNG: Old habits, considering the world their playground. We did it before; that’s the way we always did it. US has to reset, to quote somebody who talks about it, but hasn’t quite done it.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you think the US should end the conflict in Afghanistan?
JOHAN GALTUNG: I can start with what I hope. If the US could support a real peace plan. So I’ve indicated points that I believe in, and the many who believe along these lines. Something along these lines. That would be the best option for the US. The question is, as my Congress representative friends say, whether that can be sold to the voters and to other parts of Congress.
Now, let us say that you have about sixty-five progressive members of the House of Representatives, “progressive” meaning going along with solving conflict and not with military responses. Well, many people, good people, but we are talking about 435, aren’t we? So, we know where we are. We also know that, of the hundred persons in the Senate, it would be very difficult to mobilize sixty-five people. Very difficult. So, given that, the US has, in a sense, been digging a grave for itself, meaning that becoming irrelevant is the option, like they did in Vietnam. They did in Vietnam, and Vietnam came together, after 30 April, ’75, somebody climbing up a ladder to a helicopter hovering above the US embassy. And there might be similar things happening here.
Now, if the US wants to become irrelevant, if they prefer that, do so. I would much rather see the US supporting a conference for peace and security—or let us call it security and cooperation—in Central Asia, maybe not even as a participant, but as an observer, because the US is not quite known as a Central Asian country. Incidentally, it’s not an East Asian country, either. As far as I can see from the map, it belongs to the American hemisphere, and maybe it’s in cooperation with Mexico and Canada, a kind of MexUSCan, where the future US will be very well located, more modest, like an Israel contracting to June ’67 but getting peace as a reward. Not a bad reward.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your assessment of President Obama?
JOHAN GALTUNG: I have never believed in him. Never. I have lots of editorials and things written in the election year. I think that I sense something slightly megalomaniac in him, which is disturbing. The idea of being able to unite all of the US, just as he unites skin colors and faiths and origins in his body, and for that reason, leaning over backwards to negotiate with the Republicans and taking on Republican points, whereupon the Republicans vote no. Now, maybe the Republicans will now change from being a “no” party to some couple of “maybe” or “yeses,” maybe. But in the meantime, he has lost the support of the people who are voting for him. If I had been working like mad in 2008 to get him elected, because of some beauties in his rhetoric, and had experienced what I have experienced now, I would not work for the midterm elections.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think he has gone back on, in terms of his promises?
JOHAN GALTUNG: Practically speaking, everything. Guantánamo is still there. Rendition is still there. There is the saying that no torture should take place; I haven’t seen the mechanism to ensure that that’s the case. The withdrawal from Iraq, with 50,000 remaining. Stepping up, escalating the war in Afghanistan. And as we know, whatever withdraws from Iraq essentially goes to Afghanistan instead.
I think it’s very contrary to the kind of thing that he was exuding, including the nuclear point. What kind of thing is this, to get rid of old-fashioned weapons with the Russians and then arguing for $180 billion to modernize the nukes—$100 billion for the weapons carriers, $80 billion for new warheads? What kind of nuclear-free world is this? He should have had the decency, when Norway made the mistake of giving him the Nobel Peace Prize, of saying, “I graciously, gratefully decline. I haven’t earned it yet. Let’s come back when possibly I have earned it.” He didn’t say that, and dispensed with the prize money in a disgraceful way.
AMY GOODMAN: How?
JOHAN GALTUNG: To all kinds of irrelevant organizations. He didn’t even give it to US peace organizations. Let me just mention one: the American Friends Service Committee, which is a fantastic organization doing marvelous work all over the world. Could have given the whole thing to them.
AMY GOODMAN: Is there anything else you’d like to add here in Bonn, in this year, 2010?
JOHAN GALTUNG: This is a remarkable gathering of people who are working on very positive things. And there isn’t one single person here who doesn’t have a solution to something. I would say the world should pay attention to these people. These are very positive people. And these are not people who have just derived some expertise from one conflict. The Nobel Peace Prize winners usually know nothing except that one conflict, and too much is demanded of them, because they are not able to generalize from that. These are people who have done a lot of thinking and a lot of practice. I am just very grateful that this so-called Alternative Nobel Prize—Peace Prize exists, and the Right Livelihood Award—five prizes every year, thirty years, 150—eighty of them, a slim majority, are assembled here.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Galtung, thank you very much.
JOHAN GALTUNG: My pleasure. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Founder of peace studies, Johan Galtung, speaking here in Bonn.
From “Little Tibet” to Kenya, Right Livelihood Laureates Fight for Peace and Social Justice
We speak with two Right Livelihood laureates, Mohammad Hasnain of the Ladakh Ecological Development Group of India, which won the award for “preserving the traditional culture and values of Ladakh against the onslaught of tourism and development,” and Dekha Ibrahim Abdi of Kenya, who won for “showing in diverse ethnic and cultural situations how religious and other differences can be reconciled, even after violent conflict, and knitted together through a cooperative process that leads to peace and development.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/15/from_little_tibet_to_kenya_right
AMY GOODMAN: We are broadcasting from Bonn, Germany. I’m Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! This week is a gathering of more than eighty laureates of the Right Livelihood Awards. Last night was the opening dinner, and Democracy Now! talked to a few of those award winners.
MOHAMMAD HASNAIN: My name is Mohammad Hasnain. I’m from this place called Ladakh in India. It’s in the Trans-Himalayas on the border of Tibet. It’s often called the Little Tibet, because we have a lot of, yeah, Tibetan culture in there. So I’m with this organization called Ladakh Ecological Development Group that started in the early ’80s, and we got a Right Livelihood Award in 1986.
I mean, like, people who don’t think that climate change is for real, I mean, we are actually a cold desert. I mean, and it’s one of the driest places on earth. Annual precipitation is around ten centimeters, like that includes rain and snow. And yet, like exactly a month back, we had the worst natural disaster that ever—that was ever recorded in Ladakh. We had flash floods across the region, and like 600 people have died in that floods. I mean, in a small region, that’s a huge number. And like massive flash—cloudbursts, which we had never heard about before, flash floods, landslides. Villages have been, like, destroyed en masse. I mean, lots of agriculture land destroyed. Thousands of houses destroyed. And 600 people dead, and out of like a population of one, like, plus—I mean, a hundred thousand-plus. I mean, a place like Ladakh that hardly contributes in what leads to climate change is on the—is on the front of receiving the brunt of climate change. That’s kind of sad, that—I mean, you know, for things that other people do in other parts of the world, we bear the consequences.
DEKHA IBRAHIM ABDI: My name is Dekha Ibrahim Abdi. I am from the Northeast province of Kenya, from Wajir district. I now live and work in Mombasa, from Mombasa, in the coast—in the port city of Mombasa in Kenya. And I’m here as a laureate, and I got the Right Livelihood Award. I was a recipient in 2007. And my work entails, at the community level, as a trustee for Wajir Peace University Trust, and we are trying to establish now a peace university, but we are starting with a peace center. But many years ago, 1993, we started a peace movement, following the inter-community clashes that started in the northeast of Kenya but spread in the border areas. And much of our work was to start sort of a way in which state actors can collaborate and build peace together—people from differences, either clan differences, political differences, religious differences, but trying to find ways in which people can share public assets, can share the public space, can work together, but looking at diversity not as a problem, but as a strength.
In terms of the issues of dealing with groups that are not peaceful in the world, to engage with them in dialogue is the best way. To transform them is the best way. But if you sort of label them and call them terrorists and call them bad people, that is like an end. For me, to engage in dialogue with all groups around the world, especially with Muslim groups, who are now seen as the bad in the world, we are not. Every society has a bad element. And to engage in dialogue—I engage in dialogue with the armed groups in Somalia, along the Kenyan border, because we have a symbiotic relationship. And I have a transformative thinking that, yes, you can change an individual. So I would like to appeal to President Obama to rethink sometimes the policies of engaging with armed groups, yeah, in order for him to have a very—a change and transformative experience for them, and not to—the label can be like the end, but the label should be changed so that they can find another avenue of trying to redeem themselves, to change themselves, to transform themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: Just some of the Right Livelihood Award laureates who have gathered here in Bonn, Germany. More than eighty of the close to 140 of them have gathered for the thirtieth anniversary of the Right Livelihood Awards, and there will be sessions happening all this week, talking about the many issues that these laureates have taken on, from climate change to human rights issues to sustainability and the environment.
Solar Power in Bangladesh Used to Empower People in Poor, Rural Areas
In Bonn, Germany this week are representatives of the Bangladeshi organization Grameen Shakti, which makes loans and offers technical assistance to allow poor, rural people to install solar power in their homes, often granting access to electricity for the first time in their family’s history. They have helped install more than 110,000 systems, often with a woman hired to maintain the system, creating jobs, empowering women, and raising the standard of living.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/17/solar_power_in_bangladesh_used_to
AMY GOODMAN: When First Lady Michelle Obama started an organic garden at the White House, she sparked a national discussion on food and obesity, health and sustainability. But the green action on the White House lawn hasn’t made it to the White House roof, unfortunately.
Last week, the Obama White House rejected a proposal to reinstall the solar panels that President Jimmy Carter placed on the White House roof in the ’70s. The panels were taken down by President Reagan and have been used since then at Unity College in Maine.
But here in Bonn, Germany, the answer couldn’t be clearer: use stimulus money and policy to jumpstart a green jobs sector to help create, for example, solar panel manufacturing, installation and servicing. As reported in the Financial Times, German photovoltaic cell installations last year amounted to more than one half of those in the world.
Here in Bonn, Germany, this week are representatives of the Bangladeshi organization Grameen Shakti, which makes loans and offers technical assistance to allow poor, rural people to install solar power in their homes in Bangladesh, often granting access to electricity for the first time in their family’s history. They have helped install more than 110,000 systems, often with a woman hired to maintain the system, creating jobs, empowering women, and raising the standard of living.
We turn now to Dipal Barua, who we spoke to here at the Right Livelihood Award gathering. He’s the founder of the Bright Green Energy Foundation.
DIPAL BARUA: My name is Dipal Barua from Bangladesh. I am the founder and chairman of Bright Green Energy Foundation. Before that, I’m organizing Grameen Shakti, build Grameen Shakti, and deputy managing director and co-founder of the Grameen Bank. Basically, we are bringing solar energy in Bangladesh. You know, Bangladesh, around 150 million people living in Bangladesh. Sixty percent people have no electricity. And only 40 percent people are enjoying electricity from the grid line. In that calculation, around 85 million people have no electricity. So we decided to introduce a solar energy in Bangladesh in 1996. Under my leadership, we built a solar home system program, financing, installation and maintenance. So far, in Bangladesh altogether, we installed 500,000 systems, and almost five million people are getting benefit out of this. But I have a target for 7.5 million system, ten people in one system, so 75 million people will be benefiting from the solar energy within a couple of years.
AMY GOODMAN: How do they use the solar panels, the photovoltaic cells?
DIPAL BARUA: Yeah. Solar is very suitable for us. They’re used for many lighting, education, lighting for house or work, and extension of working hours, business hours. And most of them are running a television, black and white, and a mobile phone. The three main: one for lighting, mobile phone charging, and the television. These are very attractive, so many people are basically for television and mobile phone charging, apart from the light.
AMY GOODMAN: And how does this fit in with your past working at the Grameen Bank? How do you see it as related? Remember, your audience who’s listening to or watching or reading this right now, they may not have even heard of the Grameen Bank.
DIPAL BARUA: Yeah, actually, the Grameen Shakti I built from 1996, but Grameen Bank started from own village in ’76. I was born and brought up in the village. So, actually, Grameen Shakti is not related to Grameen Bank. We created a solar home system product, ten varieties—ten-watt, twenty-watt, thirty-watt, forty-watt, fifty-watt, sixty-five, seventy-five, eighty-five, a hundred, 110, like this, twenty. But we arranged also financing. We give the system on credit. Only they pay a ten to 15 percent down payment; remaining, they pay monthly installment, saving money from kerosene.
AMY GOODMAN: Dipal Barua, your Bright Green Energy Foundation, why is that so important for Bangladesh? Can you talk about the issue of global warming?
DIPAL BARUA: I think that Bangladesh is very important, you know? Globally, all scientists agreed that, in Poznan, in Copenhagen, any and all places, all international conferences on the climate change, global warming, Bangladesh is the number one victim of global warming, though we are not creating cause for global warming. But we are victims of global warming. If one meter or two meter water rise, two-third of the country, one-third of the country or 50 percent of the country, there’s a forecast, will be underwater.
AMY GOODMAN: From a flood.
DIPAL BARUA: From the water, from the sea level rise. Yeah, flood, cyclone, mini tsunami. So Bangladesh is one of the victims of global warming. But if we can create a solar nation, we’re replacing a million tons of kerosene, so and we’re replacing million tons of carbon emission reduction. So, we are a victim of global warming, but we can create an example, a carbon-neutral economy, and we’ve created green jobs in the rural area. That would be a poverty alleviation, and also it can create a green jobs. At the same time, we are producing green energy from the solar, from the biogas plant. From the [inaudible], we save energy also. Firewood we’re saving. And we save the mothers’ life. I believe for renewable energy, solar energy.
And we have plenty of sunshine. Three sixty-five days, 340 days we have sunshine, average 4.5, five hours, six hours, seven hours, sunshine is available. So this is plenty of sunshine. We have plenty of human beings. We train them. They’re becoming human resources. And we are creating green jobs. At the same time, we have solar energy for lighting, for television, mobile phone charging, any business, extension of business hours.
AMY GOODMAN: I was wondering if you have a message for President Obama. In the United States, Jimmy Carter, more than thirty years ago, put solar panels on the White House. When President Ronald Reagan came into office, he took those solar panels down. Now those same solar panels were brought back to the White House by an environmentalist named Bill McKibben and students at Unity College in Maine, and they asked President Obama to reput them on the White House. The White House has said no. What is your response to that?
DIPAL BARUA: If—I’m working with solar energy for the last fourteen years. I believe if President Obama put solar paneling on the White House, this is a moral boost, a psychological boost and a green energy boost. In Bangladesh, our prime minister put solar energy in her office, and also Bangladesh Central Bank, they put solar energy in their central bank office in Bangladesh. I think it would be not only for lighting, not only for energy, but it is a demonstration that you prefer renewable energy, you prefer green energy, this in a symbolic attitude, symbolic attempt. I think he should put solar panel in the White House. This is a message for the environmentalists. This is a message for the green job. This is a message for the green energy in the whole world.
AMY GOODMAN: Dipal Barua is the founder of the Bright Green Energy Foundation and a Right Livelihood laureate here in Bonn, as we gather, the eighty or so winners of the Right Livelihood Award. A news conference was just held today with the mayor of Bonn.