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Sarah Finch
Sarah Finch and the Weald Action Group led a tireless campaign against oil drilling in southeastern England for over a decade, persevering through five years of escalating court battles against one oil development in Surrey until the coalition secured a Supreme Court ruling, in June 2024, that finally forced its shutdown. The resulting “Finch ruling” states that authorities must consider the downstream impacts that fossil fuels will have on the global climate before granting permission to extract them. This legal precedent has already stopped subsequent fossil fuel extraction projects and other industrial development across the UK and could inform EU policy going forward.
Alannah Acaq Hurley
Acting on behalf of 15 tribal nations, Yup’ik leader Alannah Acaq Hurley led a campaign that stopped the proposed Pebble Mine megaproject in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region. As the executive director for the United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB), Alannah and a broad-based coalition yielded a historic EPA veto of the copper and gold mining project in January 2023. The victory safeguards Bristol Bay and its greater watershed—encompassing 25 million acres of wilderness, rivers, and wetlands and home to the largest wild salmon runs in the world—from the construction of what would have been North America’s largest open-pit mine. Alannah and UTBB continue to work to protect the bay from encroaching development.
Borim Kim
Activist Borim Kim and her organization, Youth 4 Climate Action, won the first successful youth-led climate litigation in Asia. In August 2024, the South Korean Constitutional Court found the government’s climate policy to be in violation of the constitutional rights of future generations, mandating the creation of legally binding emissions reduction targets from 2031-2049 to meet the country’s pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The historic decision is a watershed moment for the climate change movement in Asia. If implemented, it has the potential to avoid more than 1,500 million tons of carbon emissions—equivalent to the annual emissions of approximately 500 coal-fired power plants—over the next 25 years.
Yuvelis Morales Blanco
As a young adult, Yuvelis Morales Blanco helped mobilize her community in Puerto Wilches against two key drilling projects, successfully preventing the introduction of commercial fracking into Colombia. In 2022, with fracking raised as a national issue, the country’s largest petroleum company, Ecopetrol, suspended its contracts for the pilot fracking projects. In August 2024—with the projects still suspended—the Colombian Constitutional Court, in response to a lawsuit by a local organization, confirmed that the projects had violated the right of the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches to free, prior, and informed consent.
Theonila Roka Matbob
Theonila Roka Matbob led a successful campaign that compelled Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, to sign a landmark memorandum of understanding in November 2024 to address environmental and social devastation caused by its long-dormant Panguna mine. Despite having abandoned the site 35 years earlier after a social uprising against the mine, the company formally acknowledged the wide range of harms the mine has caused and has begun a collaborative remediation process that aims to address urgent risks and establish a long-term remedy mechanism.
Iroro Tanshi
After rediscovering the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat in Nigeria, Iroro Tanshi identified human-induced wildfires as the main threat to the species and launched a successful, community-led campaign to protect its refuge, the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary. Between early 2022 and May 2025, she and her community fire brigades prevented any serious wildfires from occurring in and around the sanctuary by patrolling thousands of farms and effectively responding to more than 70 fire outbreaks, safeguarding communities, forests, and the bat’s fragile habitat.
