By Cliff DuRand
The fire and hope that sustains the courageous women and men who win the annual Goldman Environmental Prize is inspiring. The Prize is the world’s first and largest award honoring grassroots environmental activists. It was founded by Richard and Rhoda Goldman in San Francisco in 1989. These annual awards go to six environmental defenders from Africa, Asia, Europe, Pacific and Island Nations, North America, South, and Central America. Often these women and men are from isolated villages or inner cities where they choose to take great personal risks to safeguard the environment. The Goldman Prize recipients focus on protecting endangered ecosystems and species, combating destructive development projects such as mining and dams. Each of them has a compelling story in which they fought against corporate giants. Their actions, courage, and compassion are inspiring to those who love our planet. They are ordinary women and men acting in extraordinary ways to protect the environment and their communities, too often at great personal cost. Typically, hundreds of them are assassinated each year.
We will see short videos about the work of each recipient as well as their award ceremonies, starting with 19-year-old Nalleli Cobo who led a coalition to permanently shut down a toxic oil-drilling site in her Los Angeles community. In a groundbreaking victory, Marjan Minnesma leveraged public input and a unique legal strategy to secure a successful ruling against the Dutch government, requiring it to enact specific preventive measures against climate change. In Ecuador, Lucitante and Alexandra Narvaez spearheaded an indigenous movement to protect their people’s ancestral territory from gold mining.
In Thailand, Niwat Roykaew and the Mekong community’s advocacy resulted in the termination of the China-led upper Mekong River rapids blasting project, which would have destroyed 248 miles of the Mekong. Julien Vincent led a successful grassroots campaign to defund coal in Australia, a major coal exporter, culminating in commitments from the nation’s four largest banks to end funding for coal projects. After disastrous oil spills in Nigeria, environmental lawyer Chima Williams worked with two communities to hold Royal Dutch Shell accountable for the resultant widespread environmental damage.
On Monday, join the Global Justice webinar to learn about this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize winners. We offer these webinars every Monday at 1:00pm. Tune in at www.globaljusticecenter.org. You can also view all past programs there.
Webinar
“Goldman Environmental Prize”
Mon., Jun 20, 1pm
Sponsor: Center for Global Justice
Free
