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Goldman Environmental Prize
Due to the oppression some former Goldman winners have received, they have formed a council to monitor threatening situations and aid colleagues. How can such a council ensure the protection of their peers?
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Notable Past Winners
A. Jacqui Katona and Yvonne Margarula, Australia, 1999
These Aboriginal women led a campaign against mining uranium in a national park.
B. Hirofumi Yamashita, Japan, 1998
The fisheries activist fought against draining Isahaya Bay to create farmland.
C. Alexander Nikitin, Russia, 1997
The former Soviet sea captain was jailed after publishing the Barents Sea locations of sunken submarines leaking radiation from their nuclear reactors.
D. Emma Must, United Kingdom, 1995
The English librarian chained herself to a bulldozer to oppose a road through environmentally fragile Twyford Down.
E. Matthew Coon Come, Canada, 1994
As Grand Chief of the Cree, he battled huge hydroelectric projects in Quebec.
F. Wangari Maathai, Kenya, 1991
The activist launched Kenya’s Green Belt Movement to combat deforestation and desertification.
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EarthPulse Portal page
EarthPulse News page
The Goldman Prize
www.goldmanprize.org
Find out more about current and past Goldman Prize winners.
The International Gorilla Conservation Program is a joint initiative of the African Wildlife Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, and Fauna and Flora International. Connect to the IGCP pages of each organization through the links below.
African Wildlife Foundation
www.awf.org/wildlives/149
The African Wildlife Foundation promotes conservation of wildlife and wild lands in Africa through several projects and programs. Learn more about gorillas and other African animals at this official website.
World Wildlife Fund
www.panda.org/species/gorilla_east/recent.cfm
The World Wildlife Fund is an independent Swiss foundation working on several fronts to protect the Eastern Gorilla and other at-risk wildlife and habitats.
Fauna and Flora International
www.fauna-flora.org/around_the_world/africa
Founded in 1903, FFI is the world’s longest established international conservation body. The Africa Programme is one of the many worldwide activities Fauna and Flora International is involved in promoting.
Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
www.ramsar.org
The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty focusing on wetland conservation and wise use. Multiple links allow you learn about wetland areas around the world. The site is in English, French, and Spanish.
Coral Reef Alliance
www.coralreefalliance.org
The Coral Reef Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to keeping coral reefs alive around the world. The website is a great place to start research on reefs.
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Article by John Eliot, photographs by Michael Nichols (left) and Peter Essick.
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Some worked in the Balkans and brought feuding governments together to mend important wetlands. Another preserved mountain gorillas after Rwanda’s horrifying genocide. An Indonesian mother took on a multinational mining company. A Bolivian environmentalist led the people of his city in a battle to reclaim control of the local water supply.
On April 22, the eve of Earth Day, eight grassroots activists from around the world were honored with the Goldman Environmental Prize, as others have been each year since 1990. Each winner received a $125,000 award, established by philanthropists Richard N. Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda. Nominations are submitted by a group of environmental experts and by 27 organizations, including the National Geographic Society.
But commitment comes with a cost. Several Goldman winners have been jailed by their governments; one was hanged. Last year in response, 45 past winners agreed to form a quick-action SWAT team to support environmental activists around the world who are under threat. “We have a unique opportunity to mobilize our own talents and place them at the disposal of the global community that needs us,” says Caribbean activist Atherton Martin, a 1998 winner.
This year’s honorees include Bruno Van Peteghem, an Air France flight attendant. He has long warned the international community of problems on the isolated shores of his New Caledonia archipelago, a French territory in the South Pacific. Under threat are its coral reefs and waters such as this lagoon where mullet swim (right). The problem: The islands contain about 40 percent of the world’s nickel. They have been mined for more than a century and currently produce 30 percent of the annual global output. Nickel accounts for 90 percent of New Caledonia’s exports.
The mining contributes to deforestation, erosion, and water pollution, and it produces waste called tailings. Tons of tailings, often toxic, have been dumped into the ocean, causing permanent damage to coral reefs. Van Peteghem has called attention to the historic abuse of the reefs as well as to a new mining process—proposed by a Canadian firm—that involves excavating the ancient reefs of two islands. The reefs’ calcium carbonate would neutralize sulfuric acid used in the new operation.
“The reef is fossilized, but it is the base of the island,” Van Peteghem says. “Originally the miners also intended to spread tailings over live coral.” The company has since rejected disposal of the tailings at sea, saying it will discard them on land.
Van Peteghem was awarded the Goldman for alerting the public about careless mining practices and lobbying the governments involved to have the reefs declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. “Now the French environmental ministry is like a partner,” he says.
Eugène Rutagarama, Rwanda
A biologist, he was forced to flee his country during ethnic strife four times between 1960 and 1991. As many as a million of his people—including most of his family—perished during the genocide of 1994. But Rutagarama persevered for the sake of other potential victims, 355 endangered mountain gorillas that inhabit the region’s Virunga Mountains. He led a cleanup of the apes’ Rwanda habitat, Volcanoes National Park, after its occupation by refugees and insurgents. He then kept gorilla-monitoring efforts going and rebuilt the nation’s shattered park system. Today he is the regional leader of the International Gorilla Conservation Program. “The current situation with the gorillas has been improved,” Rutagarama says. “We are far from where we were in the past few years.”
Yosepha Alomang, Indonesia
It’s a long story of mother versus mine. The mine remains, but Alomang—with five children—has been a pebble in the shoe of the owner, Freeport-McMoRan. In the province of Irian Jaya, the company owns the largest single gold reserve in the world, the Grasberg mine. Alomang has opposed local mining operations for 20 years, even before the concessionaire began bulldozing the top of a mountain sacred to her people, the Amungme. In 1994 soldiers working for the mine detained her for a week in a room knee-deep in water and human waste, and with no food or drinking water. She remained jailed for five more weeks. On behalf of her people, Alomang continues to seek compensation for the mine’s impact.
Jane Akre, Steve Wilson, United States
Five years ago, the husband-and-wife journalist team began asking questions about a genetically modified product called rBGH, recombinant bovine growth hormone, which increases cows’ milk production. Although banned by Canada and most of Europe, it was approved for use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration. Akre and Wilson, however, argued that rBGH was approved by the government without tests on people who drink milk from cows given the hormone, that it could harm cows, and that it might cause cancer in humans. Prior to the broadcast of their television report, their station cancelled the story, allegedly under pressure from the company that manufactures rBGH. Akre won a $425,000 lawsuit against the station after it fired the team in 1997. They have since formed an organization to investigate other environmental and health issues.
Oscar Olivera, Bolivia
In 1999 the federal government privatized the water supply of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city, with 600,000 people. A newly created consortium immediately raised water prices. Poor residents earning less than the minimum wage of $65 a month received water bills of $20 or more a month. Olivera headed a group that demanded local control of the waterworks. After a “war for water” in which the Bolivian Army injured hundreds of protestors and killed one, Olivera’s faction won, and the consortium’s contract was cancelled.
Giorgos Catsadorakis, Myrsini Malakou, Greece
Nature ignores political boundaries, but borders became important when a wetlands area in the Balkans needed restoration. The Prespa wetlands, located in northwestern Greece and across its borders in Albania and Macedonia, harbor 1,500 species of plants, 260 varieties of birds, and an assortment of mammal species, including otters, wolves, and bears. Traditional agricultural practices had permitted local people to live harmoniously with the wetlands, but over the past 50 years, a change to single-crop agriculture requiring irrigation, mechanization, and chemical fertilizers caused degradation of the Prespa ecosystem. Biologists Catsadorakis and Malakou began to work with the local community to reestablish traditional farming and land-use practices, introduced organic farming, and became advocates for ecotourism to boost the local economy. A culmination of their work came when the three governments signed an agreement that created Prespa Park, the first transboundary protected area in the Balkans. Catsadorakis and Malakou were nominated by National Geographic.
Read more in the pages of National Geographic magazine.
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