Climate champions tipped to win Nobel Peace Prize

Former US vice president Al Gore and Canadian Inuit Sheila Watt-Cloutier, both champions of the fight against climate change, are tipped as favourites for the Nobel Peace Prize to be announced on Friday.

A total of 181 individuals or organisations are known to have been nominated, and the Nobel committee may choose to put this year’s spotlight on global warming, seen as a major threat to all of humanity.

This year’s Nobel science prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry all went to discoveries that have practical applications in our everyday lives, and while each prize is selected by an independent award committee the trend could be repeated with a peace prize to those trying to save the planet. But the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee was tight-lipped.

“We’ve made our decision and it will be announced on Friday,” the secretary of the committee, Geir Lundestad, told AFP, refusing to say more. Observers have thus resorted to the guessing game.

Oslo, Thursday, AFP