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:
- Hilton Kelley (Port Arthur, TX, USA)
- Francisco Pineda (El Salvador)
- Ursula Sladek (Germany)
- Dmitry Lisitsyn (Russia)
- Prigi Arisandi (Indonesia)
- Raoul du Toit (Zimbabwe)
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.”
