The 2015 Goldman prize winners at the San Francisco Opera House ceremonies April 20.
Every year since 1990, the Goldman Environmental Prize has been awarded to six grassroots activists from different geographic regions. The prize now comes with a no-strings-attached award of $175,000. The prizes for 2015 were presented in an awards ceremony on Monday before an audience of more than 3,000 at the San Francisco Opera House.
The prize, sometimes called the Green Nobel, was established by the late philanthropists Richard N. Goldman and his wife Rhoda H. Goldman, great-grand-niece of Levi Strauss, the 19th Century clothing magnate who turned his partner's invention of riveted denim pants into a worldwide phenomenon.
You can read full bios of this year's winners here and see additional photos and some videos, too. Here's a condensed version of their stories:
Phyllis Omido, Kenya
Phyllis Omido
Omido discovered that her infant son, King David Jeremiah, was being made sick by her breast milk because it was contaminated with lead and dangerous chemicals from a smelter in the Changamwe area of Mombasa County. About 10,000 people live in the affected area. Consequently, in 2009, she founded the Center for Justice, Governance and Environmental Action (CJGEA) to get the government shut down the smelter, which it finally did five years later.
“I did not play the victim role. With the community that has been adversely affected and diagnosed with ailments arising from massive lead elements in their bodies, we pushed businesses to protect the environment and human rights,” she said.
She plans to continue pushing to clean up the community and get treatment and detoxification for those affected. She will give the CJGEA $75,000 of her prize, with the rest going to herself and other projects.
Myint Zaw, Myanmar
Myint Zaw
Email and social media are tightly restricted in Myanmar and political meetings banned by the military junta. That plus government scrutiny of anyone who even hints that she or he might be an activist made Zaw's underground campaign to block the building of the huge hydroelectric Myitsone Dam on the Irrawaddy River a perilous enterprise.
But the 40-year-old journalist knew he was having an impact after he got into a taxi one night and the driver said, "You're the man from the 'Save the Irrawaddy,'" a reference to a video Zaw and other activists had made arguing that the proposed Chinese-funded dam project would hurt the river. That brave driver began making copies of the video and passing them out to his passengers.
"A country like us, we have a lot of ethnicities and a lot of issues dividing people, but when we talk about the Irrawaddy, it's a unifying thing," Myint Zaw said. "Maybe that made people listen more, and want to participate."
In 2011, Myanmar's new government suspended the Myitsone dam project to meet "the wishes of the people."
Read about the other four winners below the fold.
Berta Caceres
Berta Cáceres, Honduras
Cáceres, a Lenca Indian, co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, known as COPINH, in 2006 to fight the giant hydroelectric dams being built to power the growing extraction of minerals in Honduras. Nearly 30 percent of the nation's land is set aside for mining concessions and the government has approved hundreds of dams.
One of these was the Agua Zarca Dam, a joint project of the Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) and the Chinese state-owned Sinohydro, the world’s largest dam developer. Nobody consulted the Lenca even though Agua Zarca would have cut off the supply of water, food and medicine to hundreds of Lenca familes.
COPINH objected and brought the case to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, appealing against the funder of the dam, the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank. The group also engaged in civil disobedience to stop construction. In April two years ago, Cáceres led a road blockade to prevent DESA’s access to the dam site. More than a year later, the Lenca people were still at the blockade, braving attacks by private security contractors and the Honduran armed forces. The dam builders finally gave up and pulled out of the project.
Howard Wood, Scotland
Howard Wood
Wood led a community-based campaign to set up a Marine Protected Area, for the first time giving Scottish citizens a voice where previously the commercial fishing industry held sway. He was one of the founders of the Community of Arran Seabed Trust (Coast), which campaigned for Scotland's first "no take" zone. It bars fishing from part of Arran island's Lamlash Bay.
"The work of Coast goes back to before 1995, when we could see that the seabed around Arran was being basically dredged away. We wanted to have a trial area to find out what happens when you close a small area to all fishing. It took us years to get there, but we did get there in 2008."
Coast promotes creeling, hand diving for scallops and angling, all part of an effort to maintain sustainable fishing methods. It also has lobbied the Scottish government to tighten restrictions in the Marine Protected Area.
The no-take zone has helped the seabed to regenerate. The BBC reports that a study has shown an increase in the size of adult scallops and the number of juveniles in the no-take area.
Marilyn Baptiste, Canada
Marilyn Baptiste
Baptiste is the former chief and now councilor of the Xeni Gwet’in people, one of the divisions of Canada's Tsilhqot'in First Nations. She organized her community to defeat a proposal to develop New Prosperity Mine, a giant gold and copper operation in British Columbia. The mine would have been the end of Fish Lake—Teztan Biny—which is crucial to both the economic and spiritual life of the Xeni Gwet’in.
"So many times, people always said that, 'You'll never win against something like this, it's huge,'" Baptiste told Daybreak Kamloops.
"I did realize that. I said that to myself that this is pretty huge, you know, but you know what? This is our territory and we have never given up our land and our title. Never."
The federal government rejected the mine after an environmental review in 2010. But the mining company, Taseko Mines, revised its application the next year. That's when Baptiste began what broadcaster CBC called a one-woman blockade to keep construction crews away from the proposed mining site. The government rejected Taseko's revised plan in last year. Soon afterward, the Supreme Court of Canada granted the Tsilqot'in Nation title to more than 656 square miles of in the Nemiah Valley, where Baptiste lives.
Jean Weiner, Haiti
Jean Weiner
Weiner led community moves to establish Haiti's first Marine Protected Areas with special emphasis on sustainably fishing, managing the diverse marine life and protecting and replanting mangrove forests.
No small feat in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere where environmental concerns are a tough sell si ce 80 percent of Haitians are poverty-stricken. But the environment on the island nation is nearly as impoverished as the people. Just one percent of the original forest cover remains. Over-fishing, destruction of the mangroves and the development of salt pans have damaged the coastal and marine ecosystems.
Wiener has spent two decades addressing these issues through his non-governmental organization, the FoProBim. His approach is to educate Haitians about the environment, teach conflict resolution, and help them develop sustainable livelihoods. He relentlessly pushes government to monitor, manage and protect the environment.
The deforestation of coastal mangroves brings more cause for alarm: The trees are known to sequester carbon at a rate five times greater than tropical rainforests and protect coastlines from storm surges, making their destruction a further threat to the future of an island nation already vulnerable to climate change. [...]
Wiener is now working to involve local communities in the successful implementation and management of the two MPAs to ensure they don’t end up as “paper parks.” He also hopes to develop a broader system of Marine Protected Areas throughout the rest of the country by assisting other communities with MPA proposals. Key to his success will be securing funding for the MPAs’ implementation and enforcement of marine protection laws.