The Right Livelihood Award, also known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize,’ is an award that began in 1980 to recognize and support the world’s most courageous and successful human rights and environmental activists. Through the years of its establishment, over 200 such inspiring change makers have been awarded. In celebration and honor of the Right Livelihood Award and the undertaking of the new role as the Global Secretariat of the Right Livelihood College (RLC) that began as a partnership in 2010 between the RL foundation and universities worldwide. The University of California, Santa Cruz, hosted the 2024 annual Right Livelihood International Conference from April 23-27. The RLC acts as a bridge connecting activism and academia by spreading awareness of the work done by the Right Livelihood Laureates. The conference was one such confluence of global delegates of student activists from the RLC network and the Right Livelihood Laureates. The conference showcased how communities can leverage the interconnected nature of today’s world to create solidarity among student activists seeking to fight injustice and boost solutions for enacting change in their home communities. 

UCSC was honored to host four Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award at this conference: Phyllis Omido, Juan Pablo Orrego, Lottie Cunningham Wren, and Chandaravuth Ly. Adding to this, a large team of student delegates from the RLC network coming from various backgrounds, such as permaculture, democratization, sustainable energy, human rights, ecological economics, regenerative agriculture, and more, attended the conference. These delegates represented UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia, Lund University in Sweden, KU Leuven in Belgium, the University of Bonn in Germany, the Tata Institute of Social Science in India, Universidad Nacional de San Martin in Argentina, Mahidol University in Thailand, and OSCE Academy in Kyrgyzstan. These student delegates were highlighted speakers at one of the all-day teach-ins conducted at the Merrill Cultural Center, UCSC. Hundreds of UCSC students had the opportunity to learn from and connect with these international delegates.

The main highlights of the conference were the talks given by the Laureates. Phyllis Omido and Juan Pablo Orrego led two public talks on the emerging “Green Economy” and extractivism, which were hosted by Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Ahmad Thomas and also joined by Sanjiv Malhotra, the founder, and CEO of Sparkz. The two laureates shared their personal experiences of being part of communities whose resources were actively exploited, the talks were interactive and had the audience gripped, engaged, and inspired. The full talks can be found online: Just Transition to a Green Economy and Resource Extraction and the Future of the Green Economy. These powerful talks highlighted the lack of accountability of the Global North as they continue to make “sacrifice zones” of the Global South, causing the Global South to bear the environmental, health, and social consequences of a new form of “green colonialism.” 

The 5-day conference was filled with plenty of activities and events that included touring the UCSC campus, meeting with student-led cultural organizations of UCSC, having a research colloquium with academics and researchers, holding student-led dialogues and discussions using the  ‘Open Space Technology’ method, which allowed delegates to participate in topics that interested them the most. Some of the topics discussed were, for example, democracies, strategic nonviolent action, greenwashing, agroecology, and mobilization. Delegates brought problems that specifically correlated to their home communities, as well as relevant issues going on across the world. Special and exclusive teach-ins were conducted for UCSC students by the global student delegates and laureate Chandaravuth Ly on their topics of interest and work. The last two days of the conference concluded with continued student discussions along with the highlight talks by laureates Phyllis Omido and Juan Pablo Orrego. 

The conference successfully ended by celebrating the inauguration of UCSC as the Global Secretariat of the Right Livelihood College and achieving the goals of launching the international student activist network and setting up connections between UCSC researchers, international graduate students, and Right Livelihood Laureates. The success is a testament to the power UCSC now holds as Global Secretariat. Hosting this conference and in adherence to the RLC goals and values, it is critical to build intergenerational and international solidarities to tackle both local and global issues that affect our futures and societies.