The Goldman Environmental Prize, the annual honour to environmental activists for exemplary work at the grassroots level, has been awarded to six people, including Prafulla Samantara of India. While five activists were awarded for successfully blocking projects that could potentially harm the eco-system, one person was awarded for his fight for environmental clean-up.
Founded in 1989 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman, the award, presented to one person from each liveable continent, is announced on Earth Day.
Here is a look at this year’s winners and their stories:
Uroš Macerl, Slovenia, Europe
Uroš Macerl, an organic farmer from Slovenia, successfully stopped Lafarge, a cement firm, from co-incinerating petcoke with hazardous industrial waste at Trbovlje in central Slovenia.
Lafarge gave life to a more-than-century-old cement plant in Trbovlje and began production by using petcoke. The plant affected the livelihoods of farmers by polluting air, water and soil. Marcel, alongwith Eko Krog, a local environmental group, pursued the case from local authorities to the European Commission.
Macerl was the only citizen allowed to challenge the plant’s permits in the Commission, and finally in 2015 Lafarge halted production after European Commission ruled in favour of the people of Trbovlje.
Macerl is now the president of Eko Krog and continues to his fight to protect the environment.
mark! Lopez, United States, North America
mark! Lopez persuaded the State of California to provide comprehensive lead testing and cleanup of East Los Angeles homes contaminated by a battery smelter that had polluted the community for over three decades.
Lopez and his team at East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice indulged in a door-to-door campaign to mobilise the masses against lead contamination caused by Exide battery smelter. California state agreed to test the areas within the radius of 1.7 miles around the smelter site. Though Exide closed the unit in 2015, the fund for clean-up was only allotted 13 months later, that too after Lopez’s campaign. Touted as California’s largest environmental clean-up, experts say the sanctioned amount of $176.6 million is inadequate.
Rodrigo Tot, Guatemala, South America
Rodrigo Tot, the indigenous leader in Guatemala’s Agua Caliente, led his community to a landmark court decision that ordered the government to issue land titles to the Q’eqchi people and kept environmentally destructive nickel mining from expanding into his community.
The nickel mining since 1960s had rendered Lake Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala, as the most polluted one in the country. In 2006, the government permitted Fénix mine to expand its operations to Q’eqchi village of Agua Caliente. Rodrigo Tot, with the legal support with the US-based Indian Law Resource Center (ILRC) and Defensoria Q’eqchi, a small human rights organisation in Guatemala, took the government to court to establish the community’s legal claims to the land.
After two years of legal battle, the Constitutional Court recognised the Q’eqchi’s collective property rights. Tot lost one of his sons in what appeared to be a staged robbery during the trial. Though the court ruling is in favour of the indigenous people, the government is yet to transfer the land titles.
Rodrigue Mugaruka Katembo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa
Rodrigue Katembo went undercover to document and release information about bribery and corruption in the quest to drill for oil in Virunga National Park putting his life in danger.
SOCO, a British oil company won licence to conduct explorations in Congo’s Block V, partly falling on Virunga national park.
Virunga national park is recognised as World Heritage Site for its biodiversity and as habitat for mountain gorillas. Virunga is also the hotbed for military conflicts as it shares it is located near troubled Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.
Katembo, a park ranger, during a routine patrol in 2011 came across some people setting up an oil exploration base. They claimed to have permission to drive through the park. Katembo, with the help of a film director, recorded footage of officials from SOCO bribing Congolese military and executive to conduct exploration in Virunga. The documentary, Virunga, became hugely popular sparking outrage against the illegal exploration. Katembo was jailed and tortured for 17 days, but he refused to give up. In November 2015, SOCO gave up the project.
Wendy Bowman, Australia
Wendy Bowman stopped a powerful multinational mining company from taking her family farm and protected her community in Hunter Valley from further pollution and environmental destruction.
New South Wales, a traditionally agriculture-dependent region, now has many open-pit coal mines. The 83-year-old Wendy Bowman is one of the few inhabitants of Hunter Valley, where Chinese-owned Yancoal proposed to extend the Ashton South East Open Cut mine. This means Bowman would lose her grazing land and Hunter River would lose one of its main tributaries.
Bowman refused to sell her property and became a key plaintiff in a public interest lawsuit to fight back the mine expansion. By December 2014, Bowman was the only person refusing to sell her land to Yancoal. Australia’s environment court ruled the project could continue only if Yancoal could get Bowman to sell them her land. While the project is stalled, Bowman is continuing to engage in farming in her land.
Prafulla Samantara, India, Asia
Prafulla Samantara led a historic 12-year legal battle that affirmed the indigenous Dongria Kondh’s land rights and protected the Niyamgiri Hills from a massive, open-pit aluminium ore mine.
The Niyamgiri Hills, located in Odisha is not only the home for tigers, migrant elephants and incredible flora, but also houses the Dongria Kondh tribe. In October 2004, UK-based Vedanta Resources entered an agreement with the Odisha to mine bauxite. An estimated 1,660 acres of forestland would be destroyed for the mining and would mean devastation for the tribal population. Samantara joined the struggle after hearing about a public hearing on bauxite mining in 2003. Since then he simultaneously rallied the Dongria Kondhs and filed a petition in Supreme Court against the mining.
After a decade, the Supreme Court passed a verdict asking the tribals to decide the future of the mine. Twelve tribal village councils unanimously voted against the mine and in 2015 Vedanta dropped the project.
