The Right Livelihood Awards, often referred to as "Alternative Nobel Prizes," have been presented in the Swedish Parliament since 1979 "to honor and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today."
The 1999 prize - and a cash award of $225,000 - was shared by recipients in Spain, Colombia and Cuba.
Juan Garces, a Spanish lawyer, was honored for his case-building work leading to the October 1998 arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. This has created hope that in the future there will be no hiding place for anyone who commits crimes against humanity.
Colombia's Program for the Consolidation of the Amazon Region (COAMA) shared the prize for demonstrating how indigenous people can improve their livelihoods, sustain their cultures and conserve their rainforests - a welcomed contrast to the social and environmental destruction that has accompanied most conventional development strategies.
Cuba's Grupo de Agricultura Organica (GAO) won the award for its work in developing organic agriculture to help overcome one of the most serious food crises in the country's history. The Right Livelihood jury called GAO "an exemplary combination of grassroots commitment and agricultural expertise that has brought organic agriculture to the heart of the Cuban food system."
During the 1990s, Cuba overcame a severe food shortage caused by the collapse of its trade relations with the former Soviet bloc and by the US trade embargo. Self-reliant organic farming played a significant role in this success.
GAO has brought together farmers, farm managers, field experts, researchers, and government officials to convince Cuban policy-makers that the country's previous high-input farming model was too import- dependent and environmentally damaging to be sustainable. GAO went on to prove that the organic alternative has the potential to achieve equally good yields.
Over the past five years, GAO has built an impressive program of demonstration farms and has hosted three international conferences. [Grupo de Agricultura Orgánica (GAO), Tulipán 1011 e/Loma y 47 Apdo, Postal 6236C, Código Postal 10600, Nuevo Vedado, Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba, +53 7 845-387, actaf@minag.gov.cu]
"The whole world should learn from Cuba," says Peter Rosset, executive director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, "In Cuba, organic is for everyone, not just for those who can afford it."
The 1999 Right Livelihood Honorary Award was presented to Dr. Hermann Scheer, founder of EUROSOLAR and member of the German Parliament. Scheer was honored for promoting solar energy worldwide and for exposing the political and institutional obstacles (often put in place by nuclear and fossil-fuel interests) that impede the widespread development and adoption of nonpolluting solar technology.
For more information contact: Right Livelihood Award, PO Box 15072, S-104 65 Stockholm, Sweden, +46 (0) 8 702-0340, http://www.rightlivelihood.se
The Right Livelihood Awards