Climate activist Greta Thunberg on the Nobel Peace Prize list

The Nobel Foundation announces that the award ceremony will not be held this year due to the pandemic.

Will you be the second youngest winner after Malala Yousafzai

The Nobel committee used to keep its list of nominees secret, but some are relying on current issues to guess who the nominees will be, and this year they expect a young Swedish woman, Greta Thunberg, an activist in today's incendiary issue of climate change, to win.

Pioneers of coronavirus vaccines, media advocates, climate activists and leaders of the Belarusian opposition will be among the nominees for the Nobel Prizes to be announced from Monday, as the pandemic casts a shadow over the ceremony.

120 years ago, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel launched the prize in the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace, and recently the economics Nobel was added. This year it will be awarded in Stockholm and Oslo between 4-11 October.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced just three weeks before world leaders gather for a climate change summit that scientists team say could determine the future of the planet. This may be one reason why some have speculated that the prize gift will go to climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The name of the winner of the most prestigious political award is announced on October 8, and although the winner usually appears as a surprise, those who follow the award closely say that the best way to guess the owner is to know the global issues likely to be on the minds of the five members of the selection committee.

With the United Nations Climate Change Summit (COP26) approaching at the beginning of November in Scotland, the most important issue may be global warming.

Scientists expect this summit to be the last chance to set binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, which is critical if the world hopes to keep temperature change below 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid catastrophe.

"It is the most important issue at present," said Nobel historian Asli Sven.

Climate defense Greta Thunberg's obsession with life

Climate defense Greta Thunberg's obsession with life

All this may point to Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist who at 18 years old may be the second-youngest winner of the prize after Pakistani Malala Yousafzai.

“The committee usually wants to send a message,” said Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. This will be a powerful message to COP26, which will take place between the announcement of the winner and the award ceremony.”

Another important issue that the committee may want to focus on is democracy and freedom of expression. This could mean awarding the award to a free speech group such as the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Without Borders, or to a prominent political opponent such as Belarusian opposition leader Swiatlana Tsykhanuskaya or imprisoned Russian political activist Alexei Navalny.

Possibilities also include groups such as the World Health Organization or the Kovacs Mechanism to ensure the equitable distribution of pandemic vaccines, both of which are directly involved in the global fight against the pandemic, but prize watchers say this may be somewhat unlikely given that the commission has been aware since last year of pandemic control efforts. She chose the World Food Program to win the award.

The full deliberations of the Committee are forever kept secret, as no minutes of the debates are recorded. But other documents, including this year's list of 329 nominees, kept in a safe at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, will be available to the public 50 years later.

While the names of the prize winners remain a secret, the Nobel Foundation announced that the lavish distribution ceremony, which Stockholm usually hosts in December to honor the winners of the science and literature prizes, will not be organized this year due to the pandemic.

This year's winners receive 10 million Swedish kronor (just under 1 million euros, 1.13 million dollars), to be shared if more than one person wins in one area.