Goldman Environmental Prize Blog

A Goldman Prize staff member recently traveled to Rwanda, where she spent a few days observing mountain gorillas with Eugene Rutagarama. Rutagarama won the 2001 Goldman Prize for leading the effort to protect the critically endangered mountain gorillas in the aftermath of violent conflicts in the region. The GEP staff member stayed at the Sabyinyo Silverback…

Discovery Channel’s Shark Week kicked off on Sunday and millions of viewers are expected to tune in to watch sharks at their most ferocious. As powerful as they are, however, sharks are critically endangered, in large part because of shark finning – the practice of cutting off fins from live sharks and tossing them back…

Willie Corduff was briefly arrested at a protest near the site where, a 160-ton truck carrying equipment for the Corrib gas project has been stuck on the road since Monday. A farmer in Ireland’s rural town of Rossport, Corduff won the 2007 Goldman Prize for his courageous fight against a natural gas pipeline that threatens the…

The five day 2012 Biennial Gwich’in Gathering in Fort McPherson, Canada wraps up tomorrow. Sarah James, Board Chair of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, gave the following background on the event: Since 1988 the people of the Gwich’in Nation have gathered in solidarity as a people to protect the Sacred Place Where Life Begins, Iizhik Gwats’an…

Sofia Gatica, 2012 Goldman Prize winner and co-founder of the Mothers of Ituzaingo, recently participated in a massive march supporting a lawsuit against Monsanto, a massive agrochemical company whose indiscriminate spraying of toxic pesticides has poisoned thousands of Argentinians. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an internationally recognized and much loved human rights group,…

2009 Goldman Prize recipient Maria Gunnoe knows that the coal industry’s main priority is to make a profit, and that exporting coal to fast-growing economies like China is indeed profitable. House Democrats point out that coal exports are on the rise, much of which comes from mountaintop removal coal mining operations in Appalachia. A recently…

After working closely with Prigi Arisandi and the team at ECOTON, the governor of East Java, DR Soekarwo, has agreed to create a new sanctuary zone for native fish on the Surabaya River. Arisandi’s team just concluded a one year research project on the Surabaya, which revealed that the river’s water quality is the healthiest…

The Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo covers more than three million acres, and houses 13 primate species, forest elephants, and animals found nowhere else on Earth, including the okapi, a forest giraffe. On June 24th, 2012 a gang of armed poachers launched an attack on the reserve’s headquarters, leaving seven people…

Evgenia Chirikova recently testified before the European Parliament on Vinci’s role in the St. Petersburg-Moscow toll motorway project which threatens to destroy the Khimki forest. Vinci is a French company that Chirikova claims is wrought with corruption and special interests. Chirikova’s team supported their testimony with a graphic photo exhibition documenting the arrest and use…

After finally getting caught up on our inbox and backlog of to-dos, Goldman Prize staff took some time to reflect on our week in Rio. And while we share the many frustrations at the vacuum of government leadership, it’s become clear that the events at Rio Centro did little to undermine the tremendous participation from…