The Cradle of Civilization Azzam Alwash was finishing a workout when he joined our video call. Full of energy and laughing, he pounded up the stairs to a rooftop deck and wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead as he held his phone in front of him. The setting sun illuminated the skyline behind…
Meeting Environmental Justice Leader, Makoma Lekalakala Dressed in vibrant colors and a traditional VhaVenda headscarf, Makoma Lekalakala is a striking figure, even on a pixelated computer screen. It was nighttime in South Africa; Makoma joined our call having recently flown into Durban. “I go where the people are,” she shared. Sometimes that means Johannesburg, sometimes…
News headlines every few years can leave the impression that oil spills are rare, one-off events, like BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 or the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. In reality, they happen constantly: Over 700 million gallons of waste oil reach the ocean every year, destroying entire ecosystems and communities. Beyond its role in…
It has now become widely understood in environmental circles that Indigenous groups around the world are often the best stewards of land conservation because of their longstanding cultural, spiritual, and physical connections to their territories. August 9, is UN International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, a day that recognizes the unique role of Indigenous…
Carving canyons, sustaining communities, feeding wildlife, and shaping history: rivers are integral to life on our planet. Despite their essential role, these rushing waterways make up just under half a percent of all surface freshwater on the planet. Rivers are rare, and they’re a prize worth fighting for. What Rivers Give Us Rivers are vastly…
You’ve heard the stats: The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that current plans to limit global warming to 1.5ºC (2.7ºF) are not enough. Though nearly every nation on Earth signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, most countries are falling woefully short of those commitments. Wildfires, flooding, warming seas—climate change is here,…
If you can read, hear or feel this, you have power. It was as if I were being let in on a secret. Obviously, I’d already heard of global warming and knew a bit about it. But there, in 2001, in a cold lecture theater on the outskirts of Melbourne, scientists who worked on the…
In the effort to curb Earth’s rising temperatures, a lot of focus is rightly placed on combating the extraction and use of coal as a source of energy. Made almost entirely of carbon, coal is the dirtiest form of energy by far, producing carbon dioxide emissions at nearly double the rate of natural gas. Despite…
The Goldman Environmental Prize is thrilled to announce the 2022 grant recipients. Since its launch in 2015, the Goldman Prize Grantmaking program has supported past Prize winner organizations working to further grassroots environmental projects around the world. 2022 Goldman Prize Grant Recipients Listed in alphabetical order: BLOOM Association: Founded by Claire Nouvian (France, 2018) to…
For many Americans, oil drilling doesn’t feel like a hometown issue—it’s the concern of far-off places, from 2010’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “Urban oil extraction” can even sound like a myth. In reality, it’s happening in our own backyards. Once the first US oil well…