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"Great Collection of #KeepItInTheGround Leaders" Awarded This Year's Goldman Prize
The six recipients of the annual environmental award are from Chile, the Cook Islands, Liberia, Mongolia, North Macedonia, and the United States
Apr 29, 2019
From preserving marine biodiversity to protecting tropical forests from palm oil developers, the six recipients of a prestigious environmental award are "extraordinary individuals who have moved mountains to protect our planet."
"Each of them has selflessly stood up to stop injustice, become a leader when leadership was critical, and vanquished powerful adversaries who would desecrate our planet."
--Susie Gelman, Goldman Environmental Foundation
That's according to the Goldman Environmental Foundation, which for the past 30 years has honored grassroots activists from across the globe. This year's winners, described on Twitter by fellow activist Bill McKibben as "a great collection of #KeepItInTheGround leaders," were announced Monday.
Each of the six recipients hails from one of the world's inhabited continents.
Environmental lawyer Alfred Brownell is being recognized for his successful efforts to stop palm oil plantation developers from destroying forests vital to biodiversity in his home country of Liberia. For safety reasons--and after his government threatened to arrest Brownell for his activism--he now lives in exile in the United States.
Brownell told The Guardian about an encounter with private security guards in 2016.
"They threatened to cut off my head, to eat my heart, and drink out of my skull," Brownell said. "They began a war dance around the car. They were drinking and said they would cannibalize me."
Brownell added that receiving the honor has made him optimist about returning to Liberia in the future: "I hope this award will help change the minds of people in Liberia so we find more allies to speak to the government and the company. We need to find a way to engage with them so I can go home."
Bayarjargal Agvaantseren, of Mongolia, was selected for her work to establish the Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve in the South Gobi Desert--which is home to the snow leopard, a vulnerable species threatened by mining in the area. Due in part to pressure from Agvaantseren, the Mongolian government has canceled all mining licenses in the reserve.
Alberto Curamil--a Mapuche, Chile's largest indigenous group--organized the people of Araucania to block the construction of two hydroelectric projects that could have diverted more than 500 million gallons of water daily from the Cautin River, with dire consequences for the regional ecosystem. Curamil was arrested for his activism last year and remains in jail.
The first-ever recipient from North Macedonia, Ana Colovic Lesoska, campaigned against a pair of hydropower plants. The campaign she led convinced key international backers to pull their funding for the projects in the Mavrovo National Park, one of the last habitats for the endangered Balkan linx. She, too, has faced consequences for her activism.
"I've received death threats and warnings that I will be imprisoned," she told the The Guardian. "Newspaper articles have suggested we are aiding foreign governments just because the rivers we are protecting run to Albania."
Jacqueline Evans, of the Cook Islands, is also the first person from her country to receive the Goldman prize. Evans fought for legislation to restrict large-scale commercial fishing and seabed mining around her nation's 15 islands to safeguard south Pacific marine biodiversity--including whales, sea turtles, manta rays, seabirds, and sharks.
The North American recipient, Linda Garcia, was among the activists who blocked the construction of the continent's largest oil terminal, which was set to be built in Vancouver, Washington. Garcia organized residents of Fruit Valley, a racially diverse, low-income neighborhood whose air would have been impacted by the project.
"Each of them has selflessly stood up to stop injustice, become a leader when leadership was critical, and vanquished powerful adversaries who would desecrate our planet," Susie Gelman, president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, said in a statement. "These are six ordinary, yet extraordinary, human beings who remind us that we all have a role in protecting the Earth."
The foundation planned an award ceremony in San Francisco for Monday evening featuring a speech from former Vice President Al Gore, a vocal environmental activist. The event will be broadcast on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, with updates posted on social media using the hashtag #GoldmanPrize30. A second ceremony is scheduled for May 1 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
"Thirty years ago, when Richard and Rhoda Goldman started the Goldman Environmental Prize, the idea of celebrating grassroots environmentalists was a novel one," said Gore, a friend of the founders. "Today, thanks in large part to the Goldmans, the world recognizes just how important it is to honor and illuminate those who have shown courage in the face of environmental destruction."
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Bolstering Call for Urgent Global Action, New Study Shows Microplastic Pollution 'Absolutely Everywhere'
"We need to be monitoring our waters now and we need to think, as a country and a world, how we can be reducing our reliance on plastic."
Mar 06, 2019
Bolstering global demands to #BreakFreeFromPlastic and end the world's worsening pollution crisis, a new study from the United Kingdom shows that "microplastics are being found absolutely everywhere."
"Plastic is polluting our rivers, lakes, and wetlands in a similar way as pollutants such as so-called 'emerging contaminants' like pharmaceutical waste, personal care products, and pesticides."
--Christian Dunn, Bangor University
"It's no use looking back in 20 years time and saying: 'If only we'd realized just how bad it was,'" lead researcher Christian Dunn of Bangor University in Wales told the Guardian. "We need to be monitoring our waters now and we need to think, as a country and a world, how we can be reducing our reliance on plastic."
Dunn worked with a team of scientists and postgraduate students as well as the environmental group Friends of the Earth to test 10 rivers and lakes, including the Thames River in London and two sites in the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park, for microplastics.
Microplastics are tiny particles that have broken away from large plastics such as synthetic clothing or discarded food containers. Much of the concern over microplastic contamination has come from studying ocean pollution, but researchers also have found particles in sea turtles' bellies, many marine mammals, and even human stools.
"It was more than a little startling to discover microplastics were present in even the most remote sites we tested, and quite depressing they were there in some of our country's most iconic locations," Dunn said in a statement. "Plastic is polluting our rivers, lakes, and wetlands in a similar way as pollutants such as so-called 'emerging contaminants' like pharmaceutical waste, personal care products, and pesticides.
Dunn said the findings makes clear that "there needs to be a concerted effort to regularly monitor all our inland waters." He also acknowledged that more research is need on microplastics because "as with all emerging contaminants, we don't yet fully know the dangers they present to wildlife and ecosystems, or even human health, and to what levels they occur in all our water systems."
A report put out last month warned that "the lifecycle impacts of plastic paint an unequivocally toxic picture: plastic threatens human health on a global scale."
Writing for the Guardian on Wednesday, journalist Damian Carrington outlined another study released in February that found "microplastics can harbor harmful microbes."
Research by the National University of Singapore found more than 400 types of bacteria on 275 pieces of microplastic collected from local beaches. They included bugs that cause gastroenteritis and wound infections in humans, as well as those linked to the bleaching of coral reefs.
In light of the recent studies, Julian Kirby, a plastics campaigner at Friends of the Earth, called on his country's MPs to "get behind new legislation, currently before Parliament, that would commit the government to drastically reduce the flow of plastic pollution that's blighting our environment."
Kirby also emphasized that the crisis is a global issue: "Plastic pollution is everywhere--it's been found in our rivers, our highest mountains, and our deepest oceans."
"Countries must seize the opportunity of current global discussions, to develop a holistic response to the plastic health crisis that involves reducing the production, use, and disposal of plastic worldwide."
--David Azoulay, CIEL
Public health and environmental campaigners and experts have welcomed regional efforts, such as the European Union's new rules on single-use plastics, but continue to emphasize that tackling plastic pollution requires international cooperation.
"Both the supply chains and the impacts of plastic cross and re-cross borders, continents, and oceans," David Azoulay of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) said in February. "No country can effectively protect its citizens from those impacts on its own, and no global instrument exists today to fully address the toxic lifecycle of plastics."
"Countries must seize the opportunity of current global discussions," he concluded, "to develop a holistic response to the plastic health crisis that involves reducing the production, use, and disposal of plastic worldwide."
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Stand with Okinawa
The Henoko base construction is framed by the history of colonization and racism against Okinawans, as well as by our ongoing resistance as we attempt to end the long era of U.S. occupation
Dec 11, 2018
"Don't cry here," an 86-year-old Okinawan grandmother I had never met before told me. She stood next to me and took my hand. I had been visiting my family in Okinawa with my four children early in August and had traveled to Henoko, in the northeastern region of our main island, to join the protest against the U.S. military's relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station from Futenma, located in the center of an urban district, to Camp Schwab, in a more remote coastal region. My teenage daughter, Kaiya, and I had spent the day with a crowd of elders holding protest signs in front of the gates of Camp Schwab. Rows and rows of more than 400 trucks hauling large rocks passed by, ready to outline an ocean area for the new base, equivalent to the size of 383 football fields. Our beautiful, tropical ecosystem with all of its internationally proclaimed and protected biodiversity was to soon be crushed, destroying coral and marine life. This, despite the overwhelming opposition of Indigenous island people. I began to cry as I held up my protest sign.
"Grandma is going to cry when I get home tonight so I will be crying with you," she said squeezing my hand. "Here, we fight together." We watched as trucks flooded through the gate of the military base where Japanese police had pushed us away moments before. With tears in her eyes she said, "It wouldn't be strange if we all jumped in front of every one of those trucks, because this is our ocean. This is our island."
If built, there will be no reversing the damage to our ocean, our coral, and our sea life.
Four months have passed since I joined the Okinawan elders back home and so many have continued to hold sit-ins every week -- for some, every day -- despite being forcefully removed by Japanese riot police. Meanwhile, the concrete blocks and metal bars have been dropped into the ocean on top of the coral to outline where the base will be constructed. Governor Takeshi Onaga, who had succeeded in halting the base construction, died from cancer in August and the Okinawan people elected a new governor, Denny Tamaki, by an overwhelming majority -- based on his promise that he would stop the Henoko destruction. More than 75,000 Okinawans showed up in an island-wide protest during typhoon weather to show the world how strongly we oppose this base construction. Yet, the Japanese central government announced that on December 13th (UST) -- this Thursday -- they will resume the landfill with sand and concrete. Authorities argued that building a new Henoko base is necessary in order to maintain the U.S.-Japan security alliance; and U.S. government leaders touted the base's location for regional security.
But if built, there will be no reversing the damage to our ocean, our coral, and our sea life.
The Henoko base construction is framed by the history of colonization and racism against Okinawans, as well as by our ongoing resistance as we attempt to end the long era of U.S. occupation. Okinawa was once an independent kingdom; it was colonized by Japan in the 17th century and during World War II became the victim of the bloodiest battle in the history of the Pacific, where more than a third of our people were killed within three months, including members of my family. Ninety-two percent of Okinawans were left homeless.
Frequent violent crimes against women and children by U.S. military personnel regularly bring out hundreds of thousands of protesters to demand justice and humanity and the complete removal of U.S. bases.
The United States then took the land from the Okinawan people, created military bases, and imposed a new constitution on Japan that took away Japan's right to have an offensive military. Henceforth, the U.S. military would "protect" Japan with bases throughout Japanese territory. However, three-quarters of all U.S. bases on Japanese territory are on Okinawa, even though Okinawa makes up only 0.6 percent of the total landmass that Japan controls. Okinawa's main island alone is only 62 miles long, and an average of one mile wide. It is here that 73 years of U.S. base occupation has created environmental destruction, air pollution and noise pollution, and exposed survivors and families to the sights and sounds of war. Frequent violent crimes against women and children by U.S. military personnel regularly bring out hundreds of thousands of protesters to demand justice and humanity and the complete removal of U.S. bases.
And the occupation continues. Now, the Japanese central government enforces the construction of yet another base -- this one in the ocean itself, in the Henoko region of Okinawa. This new chapter in the ongoing invasion of Okinawa disregards the sovereignty, self-determination and human rights guaranteed by United Nations resolutions. The Okinawan people have voted overwhelming to oppose the base construction -- for more than 20 years, since the base was first proposed.
The Okinawan people have voted overwhelming to oppose the base construction -- for more than 20 years, since the base was first proposed.
The marine habitat of Henoko is second only to the Great Barrier Reef in biodiversity. More than 5,300 species live in Oura Bay, including 262 endangered species like the dolphin-like dugong and sea turtles. Already this week, the Ryukyu Shimpo reported that two of the closely monitored dugong are missing, with predictions that the noise level of the construction has already hindered their ability to graze on seaweed beds.
For me, the Henoko struggle is about honoring my people's existence and our right to protect our native land. I draw inspiration from the Australian students' protest to stop the Adani coal company from building coal mines in Queensland, and from the Kanaka Maoli people's movement to block the destruction of Mauna Kea in Hawai'i for an 18-story telescope. Okinawa is my home, my ancestral home. To have it destroyed is unfathomable.
The United States has more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries across the globe. And each of these places are, or were, people's homes -- just like my people's in Okinawa.
Of course, what's happening in Okinawa is not an isolated outrage. The United States has more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries across the globe. And each of these places are, or were, people's homes -- just like my people's in Okinawa. The devastation of Henoko is part of a larger, world-wide U.S. imperialist footprint. What happens in Okinawa matters for Indigenous peoples everywhere. What happens in Okinawa matters for sovereignty fights everywhere. What happens in Okinawa matters for fragile ecosystems everywhere.
As I write, I'm receiving reports from Okinawa announcing the arrival of more ships carrying sand and concrete ready to pour the outline of the 205 hectare area. With only four days left before this destruction of irreplaceable biodiversity, a fellow Okinawan American activist and I created a hashtag campaign to demand the stopping of the base construction in Henoko: #standwithokinawa.
Please post your solidarity message, demanding your representatives take part in protecting Henoko, and connect with organizations and allies to help us fight for our rights as Okinawan people. In addition, organize international solidarity efforts to amplify the urgency of stopping the base construction. Sign the petition to President Trump demanding that the United States stop the landfill of Henoko at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-landfill-henoko-oura-bay-until-referendum-can-be-held-okinawa.
In the words of one auntie at the sit-in this past summer, "It hasn't been the governments or politicians that have stopped this heliport construction over the last five years. It has been ordinary people; volunteers, the elderly and people who just care about Okinawa. And that's going to be who changes this now. Ordinary people, many, many of us together." We need the world with us. Stand with Okinawa.
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