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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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April 15, 2013
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The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world’s largest and most prestigious annual award for grassroots environmentalists.

“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.”

The Goldman Prize ceremony (which is held in San Francisco) is one of the best events I attend every year. The recipients are models of courage, and their stories are powerful and inspiring. This year’s six prize winners (one from each of the six inhabited continental regions) are:

  • Caroline Cannon (Point Hope, AK, USA) – Issue: Oil and gas drilling
  • Sofia Gatica (Argentina) – Issue: Toxic/lethal pesticides
  • Ma Jun (China) – Issue: Pollution from manufacturing plants
  • Edwin Gariguez (Philippines) – Issue: Nickel mining
  • Ikal Angelei (Kenya) – Issue: Large dam development and water security
  • Evgenia Chirikova (Russia) – Issue: Highway development in a protected forest

Click on each recipient’s name to read about—or watch a brief video about—their remarkable efforts and achievements.

Here’s the three-minute video about Caroline Cannon, who has been “bringing the voice and perspective of her Inupiat community in Point Hope to the battle to keep Arctic waters safe from offshore oil and gas drilling.” Shell and other oil companies currently have plans to drill in the Arctic.

Last year’s recipient from the U.S. was Hilton Kelley, who has been fighting for environmental justice for communities along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

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April 19, 2012
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The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world’s largest and most prestigious annual award for grassroots environmentalists.

Here’s a description of the Prize from the Goldman Environmental Prize website: “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.”

The Goldman Prize ceremony (which is held in San Francisco) is one of the best events I attend every year. The recipients are models of courage, and their stories are powerful and inspiring. This year’s six prize winners (one from each of the six inhabited continental regions) are:

Click on each recipient’s name to read about—and watch a brief video about—their remarkable and selfless efforts and achievements.

Here’s the three-minute video about Hilton Kelley, who is leading the battle for environmental justice on the Gulf Coast of Texas:

Last year’s recipient from the U.S. was Lynn Henning, a family farmer in Michigan, who “exposed the egregious polluting practices of livestock factory farms in rural Michigan, gaining the attention of the federal EPA and prompting state regulators to issue hundreds of citations for water quality violations.”

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April 11, 2011
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The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world’s largest award for grassroots environmentalists. This is the 21st year that the prize has been awarded. The winners are models of courage, and their stories are inspiring.

This year’s prize recipients are: Lynn Henning of Michigan (USA); Randall Arauz of Costa Rica; Humberto Rios Labrada of Cuba; Malgorzata Gorska of Poland; Thuli Brilliance Makama of Swaziland; and Tuy Sereivathana of Cambodia. Click on the links to read about—or watch a brief video about—each of this year’s recipients.

Last year’s recipient from the U.S. was Maria Gunnoe, who has fought to stop mountaintop-removal mining in West Virginia.

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April 19, 2010
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If you’ll be in the San Francisco Bay Area during the first week of October, consider attending one or both of these entertaining and edifying events, which will be taking place in San Francisco and in West Marin County respectively:

West Coast Green, San Francisco3022922986_774505c734_m
Expo + conference on green innovation for the built environment
Fort Mason Center
October 1-3, 2009 (Thursday – Saturday)
www.westcoastgreen.com

3rd Annual Point Reyes Green Homes Tour, Pt. Reyes Station
Organized by the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin (CLAM)
October 4, 2009 (Sunday)
www.clam-ptreyes.org

If you’d like to recommend other green events that will be happening in the Bay Area this fall, feel free to mention them in the Comments section.

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September 7, 2009
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The new California Academy of Sciences museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park recently opened its doors to the public. The building achieved the Platinum (top-tier) rating in the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building rating system. Designed by Renzo Piano, Stantec Architecture, and Arup, the 410,000-square-foot building is the largest public Platinum-rated project in the world (to date). Featuring a four-story rainforest exhibit, an aquarium, a planetarium, and an enormous (and hilly) “living roof” (AKA a vegetated or green roof) that visitors can access, the museum is proving to be wildly popular. If you go there soon, be prepared for crowds.

For details about the building’s sustainable design features, go to:
www.calacademy.org/academy/building/sustainable_design

If you’d like to know where other LEED Platinum buildings are throughout the country or the world, click here: LEED Platinum Certified Buildings Worldwide. I also developed an interactive Google map of green buildings in San Francisco, and I keep updated lists of green building projects in the San Francisco Bay Area and all LEED certified projects in Northern California.

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February 7, 2009
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