The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world’s largest and most prestigious annual award for grassroots environmentalists. Goldman Prize winners are models of courage, and their stories are powerful and inspiring. “The Prize recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk. Each winner receives an award of $150,000, the largest award in the world for grassroots environmentalists. The Goldman Prize views ‘grassroots’ leaders as those involved in local efforts, where positive change is created through community or citizen participation in the issues that affect them. Through recognizing these individual leaders, the Prize seeks to inspire other ordinary people to take extraordinary actions to protect the natural world.”
This year’s six prize recipients (one from each of the six inhabited continental regions) are:
- Kimberly Wasserman (Chicago, IL, USA) — Fought to get local, polluting, coal power plants shut down; leading community greening projects
- Jonathan Deal (South Africa) — Fighting against hydraulic fracturing (fracking) gas extraction
- Azzam Alwash (Iraq) — Restoring marshes and protecting water resources
- Nohra Padilla (Colombia) — Instituting recycling and waste management programs
- Rosanno Ercolini (Italy) — Fighting toxics from incinerators and spearheading a Zero Waste movement
- Aleta Baun (Indonesia) — Protecting sacred forestland from marble mining
Click on each recipient’s name to read—or watch a brief, well-made video—about their remarkable efforts and achievements.
Here’s the three-minute video about Kimberly Wasserman, who “led local residents in a successful campaign to shut down two of the country’s oldest and dirtiest coal plants — and is now transforming Chicago’s old industrial sites into parks and multi-use spaces:”
Last year’s recipient from the U.S. was Caroline Cannon, who has brought “the voice and perspective of her Inupiat community in Point Hope, Alaska to the battle to keep Arctic waters safe from offshore oil and gas drilling.”
Posts on Goldman Prize winners from previous years:
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