Author: elomonico

Living under the constant threat of assassination, Francisco Pineda was awarded the Goldman Prize in 2011 for courageously leading a citizens’ movement that stopped a gold mine owned by OceanaGold (formerly Pacific Rim) from destroying El Salvador’s dwindling water resources and the livelihoods of rural communities throughout the country. Gold mining is notoriously damaging to…

On the 30th anniversary of the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak that killed 20,000 and injured more than 150,000 in Bhopal, India, we are spotlighting 2004 Goldman Prize winners Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, who led a class action suit demanding cleanup and compensation for affected individuals. Devi Shukla lost her husband and three…

The 2014 Green Asia Forum took place October 31 – November 4, aboard the Peace & Green Boat in South Korea. As in previous years, several Goldman Prize winners were in attendance, including MC Mehta, Von Hernandez and Pisit Charnsnoh. Yul Choi, 1995 Goldman Prize winner and president of the Korea Green Foundation, the forum’s…

2002 Goldman Prize recipient Fatima Jibrell recently hosted a funder’s briefing at the Goldman Prize office in San Francisco to educate potential donors about the recent work of her organization Adeso (formerly Horn of Africa Relief and Development Organization). Jibrell founded Adesso in the early 1990’s after civil war and famine broke out in Somalia…

The work of 2014 Goldman Prize winner Rudi Putra is featured in a report released by Rainforest Action Network (RAN) earlier this week. The report, titled “The Last Place on Earth, Exposing Threats to the Leuser Ecosystem: A Global Biodiversity Hotspot Deserving Protection,” details the dire threats facing Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem. The report describes the…

In the last few months, we have been lucky to catch up with several past Prize recipients as they’ve traveled through the Bay Area for various events. First we caught up with 2009 Goldman Prize winners Yuyun Ismawati from Indonesia and Olga Speranskaya from Russia. Yuyun and Olga were in town for a funder’s briefing…

Don’t miss “The New Environmentalists: From Ithaca to the Amazon” as it makes its national debut on a PBS station near you! This Emmy winning series is narrated by Robert Redford and features the inspiring stories of the 2014 Goldman Prize winners: Desmond D’Sa (Africa), Ramesh Agrawal (Asia), Suren Gazaryan (Europe), Rudi Putra (Islands), Helen…

Last month, Goldman Prize Program Officer Ryan Mack traveled to Yale University to attend the UN Conference on Human Rights and the Environment. The two day conference brought together more than 100 scholars and policy experts from over 40 different countries. Conference sessions were also attended by John Knox, the UN Independent Expert on Human…

Twenty-five years ago, Brazilian rubber tapper Chico Mendes was murdered for his efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest. Just a month ago, Edwin Chota, an Ashaninka activist from Peru, was murdered for his efforts to stop illegal logging. Protecting land and natural resources can often be a risky business.  According to some observers, it is…

A recent ruling from India’s Supreme Court declared all mining licenses issued after 1993 to be illegal. We reached out to the 2014 Goldman Prize winner from India, Ramesh Agrawal, a right to information activist who successfully shut down one of the largest coal mines in his region, to get his feedback on the ruling.…