ORDINARY PEOPLE. EXTRAORDINARY IMPACT.
A public interest lawyer, Rudolf Amenga-Etego gained international recognition for suspending a major water privatization project that would have further impeded access to clean drinking water, a crisis linked to high rates of disease in low-income communities.
Fatima Jibrell saved northeastern Somalia from the massive logging of old-growth acacia trees by persuading the regional government to create and enforce a ban on exports of charcoal made from the trees.
A conservationist, Eugène Rutagarama risked his life to save 355 of the world’s last 650 mountain gorillas that were threatened by Rwanda’s war and massacres in the 1990s. He helped rebuild the national parks system and protect gorilla habitat.
Alexander Peal helped create Sapo National Park, Liberia’s first national park, and founded the country’s first environmental NGO. Having fled Liberia’s civil war, he sustained its conservation movement from abroad for nearly 10 years.
Using his expertise as an attorney, Samuel Nguiffo founded the Center for Environment and Development, which helps forest-dwelling peoples exercise their legal right to manage traditional lands.
Sven “Bobby” Peek skillfully united his racially divided community and succeeded in closing illegal toxic dumps in south Durban, a highly industrialized, contaminated community.
Ken Saro-Wiwa led a peaceful movement for the environmental and human rights of Nigeria’s Ogoni people whose oil-rich land has been exploited by multinational oil companies. The Nigerian government executed Saro-Wiwa in 1995.
Laila Iskandar’s work with the zabbaleen garbage collectors of Cairo demonstrated that large-scale recycling programs offer employment, generate income and improve living conditions.
Garth Owen-Smith and Margaret Jacobsohn pioneered a natural resource management program that links Namibian wildlife conservation to sustainable rural development, and has since become a model for wildlife conservation throughout Africa.
A scientist from the Ivory Coast, Wadja Egnankou was, for a long time, the lone voice in the struggle to protect the remains of this West African country’s once abundant coastal mangrove forests.
