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OSLO: Already topping the international agenda, the fight against
global warming and activists such as Al Gore could take home this
year’s Nobel Peace Prize when it is announced on Friday, observers
say.
Gore, a former US vice-president, and another
climate change campaigner, Canadian Inuit Sheila Watt-Cloutier, are
believed to be among the favorites as the Nobel committee hunkers
down to select a winner among the 181 candidates nominated for this
year’s award.
Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, the world
has entered “a new era”, said Jan Egeland, the head of the
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, noting there is now
“50 percent more peace”, or fewer wars, in the world.
“The one really big cloud on the horizon is
the climate change cloud. Because that will reverse all of this
unless there are much bigger efforts to curb emissions and adapt,”
the former UN emergency relief coordinator said.
Gore, 59, who served as vice-president under
Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, helped propel global warming to the
top of the international agenda with his 2006 film An Inconvenient
Truth, which received an Oscar for Best Documentary.
Less known to the public is Watt-Cloutier, 53,
also a die-hard defender of the planet.
The former head of the Inuit Circumpolar
Conference, she has championed the rights of the Arctic people,
whose way of life is dependent on the ice and cold and which is now
threatened by temperatures that are rising faster than anywhere else
on Earth.
But is the climate really a threat to peace?
The argument can be made, as evidenced by the
fact that the United Nations’ Security Council in April held its
first ever debate on “Energy, Security and Climate Issues”—the
first time the impact of climate change on security has been
addressed by the council.
In Norway, an Arctic nation that is already
experiencing the dramatic effects of global warming, there appears
to be no doubt about the link between the climate and peace.
“It would be good if the Nobel were to honor
the fight against climate change but I’m a little doubtful,”
Asle Sveen, a historian who specializes in the Nobel Peace Prize,
told AFP.
After having broadened the concept of peace,
“the committee could choose to return to the fundamentals,” he
said, suggesting it could go with a more conventional choice such as
former Finnish president turned peace mediator Martti Ahtisaari.
Over the years, the Nobel committee has
broadened the prize’s scope from the traditional fields of
conflict prevention and resolution and disarmament to include
humanitarian aid work and human rights.
And recently, the prestigious award has honored
the defense of the environment—Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai
won in 2002—and the fight against poverty.
The head of the International Peace Research
Institute of Oslo, Stein Toennesson, said meanwhile that
“awarding the Nobel to Al Gore and Sheila Watt-Cloutier would be
timely to provide them with a tremendous arena to urge the
international community to reach an agreement on reducing greenhouse
gas emissions.”
The Nobel Prize ceremony is held, as tradition
dictates, on December 10. That falls smack in the middle of the
December 3 to 14 UN conference in Bali aimed at finding a roadmap
for the post-Kyoto Protocol period, he pointed out.
Other possible Nobel winners in the same field
are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), gathering
the world’s top climate scientists, and its chairman Rajendra
Pachauri of India.
The Nobel committee keeps the list of candidates
a well-guarded secret, but those entitled to nominate are allowed to
disclose their nominees.
The prize comes with a 10-million-kronor
($1.55-million, 1.08-million-euro) check.
--AFP
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