The Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the winner of the 2021 Peace Prize today (Oct 8), with 18-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg believed to be the frontrunner for bagging the coveted award.

Press watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists, advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and jailed Russian activist Alexei Navalny are also reportedly in contention for the prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded for “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

The prize -- consisting of a diploma, a gold medal and a cheque for 10 million kronor (980,000 euros, $1.1 million) -- is traditionally awarded on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of prize creator Alfred Nobel.

Thunberg has already been nominated three times, and at 18, If Thunberg is chosen as the winner, she would be the second youngest winner in history by a few months, after Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai.

With the COP26 climate summit set for the start of November in Scotland, that issue of global warming is back on spotlight.

"The climate change crisis is visibly worse, floods and fires all over, record temperatures in many places, the Arctic ice sheet is melting and this is also the year of COP26," said Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

"So I would hope and partly expect that the prize could go to a group of climate change activists that could include Greta Thunberg," Smith added.