Picture from Goldman Environmental Prize website

 

A Puerto Rican grandmother working to protect a precious marshland, an indigenous Mexican farmer utilizing pre-Columbian agriculture techniques to transform a barren area into rich farmland, a Belgian environmentalist who campaigned to secure the country’s first and only national park, a Russian woman working to protect Siberia’s Lake Baikal from oil and nuclear interests, a duo from Ecuador who are fighting to bring justice and environmental recovery to an area devastated by oil pollution, and a Mozambican activist-musician who brings education about sanitation and clean water systems through performance and community-based outreach have been awarded the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize.

“This year’s Prize recipients exemplify the astounding environmental work being done by ordinary people around the world,” said Goldman Prize founder Richard N. Goldman. “Their commitment to bettering both the lives of people living in their communities and the environment around them has received our attention and praise.”

The Goldman Environmental Prize, now in its 19th year, is awarded annually to grassroots environmental heroes from each of the world’s inhabited continental regions and is the largest award of its kind. Since 1990, it has been awarded to 126 people from 72 countries. In 2008, each individual Prize award will be increased from $125,000 to $150,000.

This year’s winners are:

Pablo Fajardo Mendoza, 35, and Luis Yanza, 46, Ecuador, who lead one of history’s largest environmental battles, against oil giant Chevron in the Ecuadorian Amazon, demanding justice for the massive petroleum pollution in the region. According to the plaintiffs, beginning in 1964 and through 1990, Texaco dumped nearly 17 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of drilling wastewater directly into the Ecuadorian Amazon. Yanza co-founded the Amazon Defense Front to organize 30,000 inhabitants of the northern Ecuadorian Amazon in a class-action lawsuit against Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001.

Feliciano dos Santos, 43, Mozambique, who uses traditional music, grassroots outreach and innovative technology to bring sanitation to the most remote corners of Mozambique, empowering villagers to participate in sustainable development and rise up from poverty. In Niassa province, where many villages lack even basic sanitation infrastructure, the population is highly susceptible to disease. Santos, who grew up in the region, heads an innovative program that is bringing new hope to Niassa and serving as a model for other sustainable development programs around the world. With his internationally-recognized band, Massukos, Santos uses music to promote the importance of water and sanitation in Mozambique;

Rosa Hilda Ramos, 63, Puerto Rico, who – in the shadow of polluting factories in Cataño, a city across the bay from San Juan - leads her community to permanently protect the Las Cucharillas Marsh, whose wetlands and mangroves provide important habitats for aquatic and migratory birds as well as flood protection and much needed open space for nearby residents. After leading a movement to hold nearby polluting industry accountable for Cataño’s high incidence of respiratory disease, Ramos successfully convinced the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to direct millions of dollars in pollution fines to establish long term protection of the Las Cucharillas Marsh;

Jesús León Santos, 42, Mexico, who leads a land renewal program in Oaxaca, one of the world’s most highly eroded areas, that employs ancient indigenous practices to transform depleted soil into arable land. Through his organization, the Center for Integral Small Farmer Development in the Mixteca (CEDICAM), a democratic, farmer-led local environmental organization, the area's small farmers have planted more than one million native-variety trees, built hundreds of miles of ditches to retain water and prevent soil from eroding, and adapted traditional Mixteca indigenous practices to restore the regional ecosystem;

Marina Rikhvanova, 46, Russia, who is working to protect Siberia’s Lake Baikal, one of the world’s most important sources of fresh water, from environmental devastation brought on by pollution from Russia’s expanding petroleum and nuclear interests. The world’s oldest and deepest lake, Baikal - known as the “Galapagos of Russia” - holds 20% of the world’s unfrozen freshwater reserve and one of the world’s richest and most unusual collections of freshwater flora and fauna, including 1,700 endemic plant and animal species. In 1996, Lake Baikal was declared an UNESCO World Heritage Site. After successfully campaigning to reroute a destructive petroleum pipeline from the lake’s watershed, Rikhvanova is now working to prevent the construction of a uranium enrichment facility in the region;

Ignace Schops, 43, Belgium, who raised more than $90 million by bringing together private industry, regional governments, and local stakeholders as he led the effort to establish Belgium’s first and only national park, protecting one of the largest open green spaces in the country.

The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1990 by San Francisco civic leader and philanthropist Richard N. Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda H. Goldman. Prize winners are selected by an international jury from confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals.

"While there are other prizes for environmental achievement, it is this focus on work done at the grassroots level that sets the Goldman Prize apart," says Richard Goldman. "Goldman Prize recipients are proof that ordinary people are capable of doing truly extraordinary things. Although the Prize winners represent a wide variety of nations and work on very different issues, they have much in common. All have shown conviction, commitment and courage. More than ever the voices represented by these individuals are being heard around the world. Several Prize recipients have been appointed or elected to political office. Many have become ministers of the environment in their respective countries, while others have been elected senators in their national parliaments. The 1991 Goldman Prize winner from Africa, Wangari Maathai, became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, for her dedication to the environment, human rights, and peace."

Previous winners have been at the center of some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, including seeking justice for victims of environmental disasters at Love Canal and Bhopal, India; leading the fight for dolphin-safe tuna; fighting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; and fighting against mountain-top removal mining in America’s coal country. Since receiving a Goldman Prize, eight winners have been appointed or elected to national office in their countries.

 

This story was adapted from the April 13, 2008 press release entitled “Seven eco-leaders win world-renowned Goldman Environmental Prize”. Information about the work of each prize recipient is provided through links on the Prize website.


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