Right Livelihood Award

The Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize", is a prestigious international award to honour those "working on practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today". The prize was established in 1980 by German-Swedish philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, and is presented annually in early December. An international jury, invited by the five regular Right Livelihood Award board members, decides the awards in such fields as environmental protection, human rights, sustainable development, health, education, and peace. The prize money is shared among the winners, usually numbering four, and is EUR 200,000. Very often one of the four Laureates receives an Honorary Award, which means that the other three share the Prize money.

Somewhat similar to the economics prize, it is not a Nobel prize (i.e., a prize created by Alfred Nobel). However, unlike the economics prize it does not have any organizational ties to the awarding institutions of the Nobel Prize or the Nobel Foundation.

It is often popularly associated with the Nobel prizes, being awarded in the Riksdag of Sweden the day before the Nobel prizes and the economics prize are also awarded in Stockholm, and being understood as a critique of the traditional Nobel prizes. The establishment of the award followed a failed attempt to have the Nobel Foundation create new prizes in the areas of environmental protection, sustainable development and human rights. The prize has been awarded to a diverse group of people and organisations, including Wangari Maathai, Astrid Lindgren, Bianca Jagger, Mordechai Vanunu, Leopold Kohr, Petra Kelly, Amy Goodman and Memorial.