Celebrating problem solvers

Nalaka Gunawardene and Vindana Ariyawansa

The Right Livelihood Award is one of the most well established and respected global awards. It was started in 1980 by a Scandinavian country to honour and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”. It has become widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and there have been (up to mid 2011) 141 Laureates from 59 countries. The prize money in 2010 was Euros 200,000, which is usually divided among three or four laureates. The prize money is intended for ongoing successful work in the public interest, and never for the winners’ personal use.

Today’s Wiz Quiz takes off with a few questions on the Right Livelihood Award.

1. Which country presents the Right Livelihood Award, in whose Parliament the awards ceremony is held every year shortly before the Nobel Prize Ceremony on December 10?

2. Two Sri Lankans have won the Right Livelihood Award since it was set up in 1980. One is the Participatory Institute for Development Alternatives (PIDA), a non-governmental development organization which was established in 1980 for initiating and promoting grassroots participatory development processes (shared 1982 award). Name the then chairman of PIDA who accepted the award on behalf of his organization.

3. The only other Sri Lankan to have won the Right Livelihood Award is an eminent legal scholar and judge who was recognized in 2007 “for his lifetime of groundbreaking work to strengthen and expand the rule of international law”.

4. According to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, the smoke from cooking over fires leads to 1.9 million premature deaths each year – almost all of them women in the developing world. More efficient stoves not only cuts down these deaths but also reduces the many trips poor women must make in search of increasingly scarce firewood. And as an added benefit, improved stoves knock down greenhouse gases. In May 2011, an A-list Hollywood actress agreed to be the Goodwill Ambassador for cooking stoves, to “be instrumental in achieving the Alliance’s goal of 100 million homes’ adopting clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020.” Who is she?

5. The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is a method of increasing the yield of rice while decreasing the use of water in paddy fields. It has been adopted or adapted by farmers in many tropical countries, but its net enhancement of productivity is still under debate. Name the French Jesuit priest in Madagascar who developed the SRI method in 1983.

6. An island state in the South Pacific Ocean, home to more than 180,000 people, has announced plans to move itself to the west of the International Dateline from end December 2011, thus reducing the time difference it has with its biggest trading partners Australia and New Zealand. Right now, this state is 11 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time and sits on the east of the dateline which runs through the middle of the Pacific. What is this country?

7. On 5 April 2011, an Indian social activist popularly known as Anna Hazare started a ‘fast unto death’ to exert pressure on the Indian government to enact a strong anti-corruption act as envisaged in the Jan Lokpal Bill, a law to establish a Lokpal (or ombudsman) with the power to deal with corruption in public institutions. The fast inspired nationwide protests in support of Hazare and ended on 9 April 2011, when the government agreed to all of Hazare’s demands. What is the full name of this activist?

8. The globally popular comic strip series Asterix (known in French as Astérix or Asterix le Gaulois) follows the exploits of a village of ancient Gauls as they resist Roman occupation. It has been in print for over 50 years since first appeared in the French magazine Pilote on October 1959, and up to 2009, 34 comic books in the series have been released, many of which have been translated into over 100 languages worldwide. Name the two Frenchmen who created Asterix.

9. After the African elephant, which semi-aquatic large mammal, found in sub-Saharan Africa, is the second largest land mammal?

10. Taking up office at the age of 24 years and 205 days, he was the youngest ever prime minister of Britain till then (and since then). Some people, concerned about his age, summed it up as: “A sight to make all nations stand and stare; a kingdom trusted to a schoolboy’s care!”

Contrary to such cautions, he led the Britain through major events including the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, regained financial stability for Britain after the American War of Independence, and brought about Union with Ireland. Who was this politician, who was prime minister of England twice, from 1783 to 1801 and again from 1804 to 1806 till his death aged 46?

11. Recently, a global perceptions survey ranked the most dangerous countries for women. It assessed countries of the world by six factors; health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and human trafficking. In this assessment, three South Asian countries (SAARC members) came among the top five. Which South Asian country was found to be the worst country in the world for women?

12. In June 2011, scientists announced they have found certain types of worms living at depths in the Earth where it was previously thought animals could not survive. Some roundworms survive in the stifling 48C water that seeps between cracks 1.3km beneath the Earth’s crust. This has surprised scientists who, until now, believed that only single-celled bacteria thrived at these depths. Where was this discovery made?

13. The Lord’s cricket ground in London is seen as the ‘Home of Cricket’ and the game’s ‘spiritual headquarters’. But its importance is not merely historical. In practice it remains, to this day, perhaps the most important single place in world cricket. Its owner MCC remains the guardian of both the Laws and the Spirit of Cricket, and MCC sides perform a key role in promoting cricket in Britain and elsewhere. What do the letters MCC stand for in this instance?

14. The ferry service between India and Sri Lanka, suspended in 1983, was resumed on 14 June 2011 when a passenger ship named ‘Scotia Prince’ sailed from Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin port to Colombo. This was more than 100 years after the first Indian-owned passenger ship sailed this same route in June 1907, but it was later stopped abruptly by the British whose own company was threatened by the competition from the indigenous Indian shipping service. What was the first Indian-owned ship to have sailed this route in that year?

15. The man who founded the first indigenous Indian shipping service between Tuticorin and Colombo with the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, was an Indian freedom fighter born in 1872 in Ottapidaram, Tuticorin district of Tamil Nadu. He was a prominent lawyer and trade union leader. He was popularly known by his initials, VOC, and the Tuticorin port has been renamed as “VOC port” to honour him. What was his full name?

Answers will be published next week

Last week’s answers

1. Nauru
2. Chile
3. Denmark
4. Winds of Change
5. Eugene Cernan
6. Don Cheadle
7. Bronze Age, and Iron Age
8. Douglas Adams
9. Ven Kalukondayawe Pannasekera
Maha Nayaka Thera
10. Rodney Jonklaas (1925 – 1989)
11. 1948, when it hosted the XIV (14th) Olympics
12. Queen Victoria, who reigned for 63 years from 1837 to 1901
13. Titanic, directed by James Cameron
14. Bob Beamon
15. India