Consultant Dan
08 October 2010
2010 Nobel Peace Prize - thoughts about climate and peace leadership
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize has just been awarded to Liu Xiaobo, for his human rights struggle in China. In the lead-up to the awarding of the prize, the Nobel Committee had predicted that this year’s decision would be controversial.
I do not know anything about Liu Xiaobo, but I have met 2 Peace Prize winners: Wangari Muta Maathai (2004) and Joseph Rotblat (1995). They both shared a passion for justice and the dignity required of true leaders.
This week I have been working in the Maldives to support the PR for the installation of solar panels on the roof of the Presidential residence, by President Nasheed himself.
Nasheed shares qualities I saw in Rotblat and Maathai. He has prodigious energy and connects quickly with people but underneath this is a stillness that comes from somewhere deep inside. I do not think I could have survived the torture and imprisonment that he has been through and imagine that some of his qualities matured during those times, from some seeds in him already. Rotblat, Maathai and Nasheed all reveal that leadership has something to do with the ability to stand firmly but gently in relation to the chaos of the world, in some political variety of grace.
Last week I bought Ingrid Betancourt’s memoir of the years she spent as a hostage of FARC in Colombia. She is the other person who I put in the category of the great peacemakers of our world. I knew Betancourt before she ran her risky campaign for the Presidency, which led to her capture. She already carried a profound, graceful power to her.
When Betancourt gave a press conference I watched the media closely. Never in my life have I felt a room full of journalists stay silent and respectful after a press conference, in awe of the sheer integrity of a speaker. One reporter asked if she regretted the risks she took, which resulted in her children being moved overseas so they could not be kidnapped or shot. Betancourt paused and said that she loved them and did not want to cause them harm but that they were growing spiritually through the adversities caused by their mother’s dangerous, green politics.
It is no coincidence that Maathai, Rotblat, Betancourt and Nasheed all rang the ecological alarm bell and had the honesty to call out for deep changes.
Two truisms of our time are worth stating. There will be no peace if we fail to stop runaway climate change. Transition to a clean energy economy will make peace more likely.
Whatever you do, if you want to contribute to a better world, you should help humanity make peace with the climate.
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