As Right Livelihood Laureate, Tony Rinaudo, inspires the launch of a global campaign to EverGreen the Earth, the Right Livelihood Foundation prepares to announce its newest award recipients.
The Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The 2019 Laureates will be announced in Stockholm on 25 September at 09:00 (CEST) at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Fredsgatan 6. The press conference will be live-streamed via rightlivelihood.org.
Right Livelihood Award Laureates, 2018
Meanwhile, the Australian agronomist and 2018 Right Livelihood Award Laureate Tony Rinaudo, known as the “forest maker”, inspires the launch of a global campaign to EverGreen the Earth. This campaign aims to massively up-scale the work pioneered by Tony.
Having lived and worked in Africa for several decades, Tony discovered and put into practice a solution to address the impacts of deforestation, land degradation and extreme poverty in Niger and other countries across the Sahel region. With a simple set of management practices, farmers could regenerate and protect existing local vegetation, which helped to improve the livelihoods of millions.
Tony pioneered a technique that involves re-growing trees from existing root systems, which are often still intact and which he refers to as an “underground forest”. By choosing the right plants, and by pruning and protecting them in a certain way, they soon grow into trees. Tony realised that if it was people who had reduced the forest to a barren landscape, it would require people to restore it. Changing attitudes has been key to the success of his work.
Right Livelihood Award 2018 Stockholm Photo: Wolfgang Schmidt
Tony’s Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) method, has restored 50,000 km2 of land with over 200 million trees in Niger alone. Now, with the launch of the Global EverGreening Alliance’s EverGreening the Earth Campaign during Climate Week in New York this month, his work will be ramped up to benefit millions more of the world’s poorest people.