Former US vice president Al Gore and other campaigners against climate change lead experts’ choices for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, an award once reserved for statesmen, peacemakers and human rights activists. If a campaigner against global warming carries off the high world accolade later this month, it will accentuate a shift to reward work outside traditional peacekeeping and reinforce the peace and environment link.

The winner, who will take $1.5 million in prize money, will be announced in the Norwegian capital on October 12 from a field of 181 nominees.

Gore, who has raised awareness with his book and Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who has shed light on how global warming affects Arctic peoples, were nominated to share the prize by two Norwegian parliamentarians.

“I think they are likely winners this year,” said Stein Toennesson, director of Oslo’s International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) and a long-time Nobel Peace Prize watcher. “It will certainly be tempting to the (Nobel) committee to have two North Americans — one the activist that personifies the struggle against climate change, raising awareness, and the other who represents some of the victims of climate change.”

Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, agreed the award committee could establish the link between peace and the environment. “I think the whole issue of climate change and the environment will come at some point and reflect in the prize,” Egeland said last week.

“There are already climate wars unfolding ... And the worst area for that is the Sahel belt in Africa.”

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