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Maxima Acuña, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient for South and Central America (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Maxima Acuña, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for South and Central America (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Recipients of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Winners of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize 2016 Recipients (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Máxima Acuña, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for South and Central America, stood up for her right to peacefully live off her own land, a plot of land in the Peruvian highlands sought by Newmont and Buenaventura Mining to develop the Conga gold and copper mine. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
In 2010, the mining company proposed plans for the Conga Mine, which called for draining four nearby lakes. One of these, known as Laguna Azul, would be turned into a waste storage pit, threatening the headwaters of five watersheds and Cajamarca’s páramo ecosystem, a high-altitude biologically diverse wetland. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
In many communities throughout Peru, mining waste has polluted the local waterways, affecting local people’s drinking water and irrigation needs. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
In 1994, Máxima Acuña and her husband bought a plot of land in Tragadero Grande. They built a small house on the property and lived a peaceful life raising their children. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Acuña and her family lived off the potatoes and other crops they grew, and kept sheep and cows for milk and cheese. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Occasionally, Acuña made the long trek into town to sell vegetables, dairy, and woolen handicrafts. Acuña never learned to read or write, but she understood that the land was her lifeblood. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
One day in 2011, the mining company came to the Acuñas’ door, demanding that she leave her land. Armed forces destroyed her house and possessions, and beat her and one of her daughters unconscious. The company sued the family in a provincial court, which found them guilty of squatting on their own land and sentenced Acuña to a prison sentence. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
With help from GRUFIDES and her attorney, Acuña appealed the ruling and began gathering documents such as her land title that proved she held legitimate property rights to the land claimed by Newmont. In December 2014, the courts ruled in Acuña’s favor. Her prison sentence was overturned and the court halted her eviction. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
The mining company has built a fence around Acuña’s land, restricting her ability to move about freely. They have destroyed her potato crops, and maintain a close watch on her property to prevent her from planting more. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
The Conga mine has not moved forward. The community has rallied behind Acuña and her victory has brought new life to the struggle to defend Cajamarca’s páramos, water supplies, and people from large-scale gold mining. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
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Zuzana Caputova, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient for Europe (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Zuzana Caputova, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Europe (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Recipients of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Winners of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize 2016 Recipients (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Zuzana Caputova, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Europe, spearheaded a successful campaign that shut down a toxic waste dump that was poisoning the land, air and water in her community, setting a precedent for public participation in post-communist Slovakia. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Born and raised in Pezinok, Zuzana Caputova is an attorney a public interest law organization, VIA IURIS, a career path she chose as a way to help people in her community. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Caputova was a young mom with two daughters when she embarked on her career as an activist. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
In the 1960s, Pezinok became home to a waste dump, built without any permits or safeguards to keep the toxic chemicals from leaching into the soil—just 500 feet away from a residential area. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
The stench from the nearby landfill wafted into Caputova's home, where she kept the windows shut to keep her two young daughters safe. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Meanwhile, residents in Pezinok were left to pay the price from the toxic dumpsite. Cancer, respiratory diseases, and allergy rates in the area began to soar, with one particular type of leukemia being reported eight times more than the national average. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Despite a 2002 ordinance that banned landfills within city limits, plans for the another dumpsite went through without any public input from the surrounding community. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Armed with her legal expertise, Caputova engaged artists, local businesses, wine producers, students, church leaders, and other members of the community in a grassroots campaign to shut down the dumpsite. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
In 2013, the Slovakian Supreme Court ordered the decrepit dumpsite to shut down and withdrew permits for the new dumpsite. The verdict echoed a decision from the EU Court of Justice, which affirmed the public’s right to participate in decisions that impact the environment. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Caputova and VIA IURIS organized demonstrations that brought together thousands of local residents, which helped bring municipal leaders on board with the campaign despite their early skepticism. They heard the citizens’ message loud and clear: “Dumps Don’t Belong in Towns.” (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Caputova, as a member of the VIA IURIS team, is now fighting back new construction laws in Slovakia that would make it easier for developers to bring illegally built projects up to code while weakening public access to environmental information and decision-making. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
The victory in Pezinok—the largest mobilization of citizens since the 1989 Velvet Revolution—sets an important precedent for civic engagement in Slovakia, and is inspiring citizens in the country to stand up for their rights to a clean and safe environment. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Edward Loure, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Africa (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Edward Loure, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Africa (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Recipients of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Winners of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize 2016 Recipients (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Edward Loure, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Africa, led a grassroots organization that pioneered an approach that gives land titles to indigenous communities in northern Tanzania, ensuring the environmental stewardship of more than 200,000 acres of land for future generations. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Maasai communities move their herds according to the seasons, taking care not to overgraze the land and share resources with the wildebeest, gazelles, impalas, and other animals that keep the ecosystem in balance. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Edward Loure grew up in the Simanjiro plains, where his family and others in the Maasai community led a peaceful seminomadic life raising their livestock in harmony with the surrounding wildlife. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Loure and the UCRT team found an opportunity in one particular aspect of Maasai governance: its strong communal culture. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCROs) allow entire communities of Maasai to secure indivisible rights over their customary lands and manage those territories through bylaws and management plans. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Loure's personal experiences, cultural background, and education put him in a unique position to lead the Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT), an NGO that has championed community land rights and sustainable development in northern Tanzania for the past 20 years. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
With their land rights secured, a band of Hadzabe people are ensuring the survival of their hunter-gatherer lifestyle while generating modest revenue from carbon credits and carefully managed cultural tourism. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
In 2014, the Tanzanian government issued the first-ever CCRO to a Maasai community in Monduli district. With their rights to the land guaranteed by law, the community members are thriving. Cattle stocks are healthy, which creates additional income for people to pay for medical care and send their children to school. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Under Loure's leadership, UCRT has protected more than 200,000 acres of rangeland through CCROs. They are now looking to replicate the CCRO model throughout Tanzania, with communal grazing lands of nearly 700,000 acres slated for titling in the next year or two. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Loure and UCRT's goal is to scale up efforts so that community-based land titling becomes a key component of land use planning and management that balances the needs of Tanzania’s people, its environment, and economy. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
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Leng Ouch, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Leng Ouch, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Recipients of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Winners of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize 2016 Recipients (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Leng Ouch, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Asia, went undercover to document illegal logging in Cambodia and exposed the corruption robbing rural communities of their land, causing the government to cancel large land concessions. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Leng Ouch with a villager in Prey Lang. Cambodia’s forests are a vital resource for the vast majority of the country’s population, 80 percent of whom live in rural areas and depend on small-scale agriculture for their survival. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Cambodian forests have been disappearing at breakneck speed, with studies reporting that the country has the fifth-fastest rate of deforestation in the world. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Economic Land Concessions (ELCs), a long-term leasing system designed to promote large-scale agricultural development such as this cassava plantation, became a way to cover up illegal logging operations targeting specific species such as rosewood. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Recalling the forests that sustained his family and countless others during the Pol Pot years, Leng Ouch founded the Cambodia Human Rights Task Force (CHRTF), and turned his attention to illegal logging and land rights. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Leng Ouch and his team at the Cambodian Human Rights Task Force investigating loggers suspected of transporting illegally harvested timber. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Leng Ouch posting a warning sign that prohibits logging in Prey Lang, Cambodia. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
In the hopes that global attention would force the Cambodian government to change its ways, Ouch sought to expose its role in illegal logging to the international community. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Ouch went undercover to gather evidence of illegal logging activities, and publicly released the information he gathered to the media. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Ouch’s outspoken criticism of the government put him at enormous risk, in a country where environmental activism is dangerous. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
As a result of increasing scrutiny from the international community, the Cambodian government canceled 23 land concessions covering 220,000 acres of forest, including two ELCs that had been granted inside the federally protected Virachey National Park. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
With hundreds of thousands still bereft of their land and livelihoods, Ouch’s work goes on. He’s working to stop the government from issuing any more forest clearing licenses and develop international policies to prevent illegal logging. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient for Islands and Island Nations (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient for Islands and Island Nations (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Recipients of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Winners of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize 2016 Recipients (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Islands and Island Nations, helped lead a successful campaign to establish a nature reserve in Puerto Rico’s Northeast Ecological Corridor and protect the island’s natural heritage from harmful development. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Rivera Herrera studied environmental science and built a career in environmental planning and management. In 1999, he came across a newspaper ad about two megaresorts—3,500 hotel rooms and residential units, multiple golf courses, a shopping mall, and other urban construction—proposed for construction in the Northeast Ecological Corridor. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Thanks to his professional training and personal experience growing up in the region, Rivera Herrera knew the corridor's recreational and environmental value—and was determined to not let the government pave over it. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
The Northeast Ecological Corridor covers 3,000 acres of prime oceanfront property along the north coast of Puerto Rico. In addition to its scenic and recreational value, it has enormous biological significance as an important nesting ground for endangered leatherback sea turtle. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
The corridor's recreational value presents a tremendous opportunity for the local economy, through sustainable, low-impact tourism activities such as kayaking, biking, and hiking. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
These proposed megaresorts stood to destroy the corridor’s wildlife habitat, threaten the local water supply, and limit public beach access while ignoring the reality that other similar developments in Puerto Rico had failed to bring the economic opportunities that had been promised. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Rivera Herrera and a group of close friends began volunteering their time to organize public opposition to the megaresorts. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Rivera Herrera and the Coalition for the Northeast Ecological Corridor successfully worked with legislators to pass a new bill that designated the corridor a protected nature reserve. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Rivera Herrera and his coalition colleagues are now mounting a fundraising campaign to help the government purchase privately owned land in the corridor so that the entire nature reserve can be protected and made accessible to the public. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
They are also leading citizen participation in a plan to develop the corridor as an ecotourism destination, which will generate funding for wildlife management and restoration while revitalizing the local economy. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Rivera Herrera hopes his son will be able to grow up surfing the waters of the Northeast Ecological Corridors and share his love for the ocean, nature, and wildlife. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
At every step of the way in the 16-year battle to protect the corridor, Rivera Herrera was there to challenge government corruption and advocate for the public’s right to demand protection for the environment. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
A volunteer leading the campaign for the Northeast Ecological Corridor, Rivera Herrera brings a life-long commitment to protect the environment and hold the government accountable to citizen’s rights. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
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Destiny Watford, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for North America (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Destiny Watford, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for North America (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Recipients of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Winners of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize 2016 Recipients (L-R): Zuzana Caputova, Europe; Edward Loure, Africa; Destiny Watford, North America; Maxima Acuña, Central and South America; Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, Islands and Island Nations; Leng Ouch, Asia (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Destiny Watford, 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for North America, inspired residents of a Baltimore neighborhood to defeat plans to build the nation’s largest trash-burning incinerator less than a mile away from her high school. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Curtis Bay is a highly industrialized community in south Baltimore with a history of displacing people to make room for oil refineries, chemical plants, sewage treatment plants, and other facilities that emit pollution. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
A 2013 study on emissions-related mortality rates found Baltimore to be the deadliest city, with 130 out of every 100,000 residents likely to die each year from long-term exposure to air pollution. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Despite promises to bring “clean” energy to the state, a proposal to build a waste incinerator in Curtis Bay outlined plans to burn 4,000 tons of trash—brought in from outside the city—every day. Environmental studies project that burning this much trash would release more mercury than the dirtiest coal-powered plants. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
With guidance from advisors at school, Watford co-founded Free Your Voice, a student organization dedicated to community rights and social justice. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
With plans for the trash incinerator moving ahead, Watford and fellow student activists at Free Your Voice (FYV) decided to take on the campaign to protect their community from the plant's pollution. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Watford and fellow students hit the streets and canvassed neighborhoods, where they encountered a community that had become used to being considered a dumping ground for the rest of the state. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Watford and FYV activists took a deeper look at Curtis Bay's downtrodden past, and came out determined to bring positive alternatives—thriving communities and green jobs—within reach. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
In February 2015, in response to concerns from students and their families, the Baltimore school board voted to terminate its contract to buy energy from the trash incinerator. By the fall of that year, all 22 customers canceled their contracts, leaving the incinerator with no market for its product. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
The victory marked a moment of rebirth for Curtis Bay residents who finally felt that their voices were heard and that their health and lives mattered. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Watford, currently a college student at Towson, continues to organize with Free Your Voice students and other activists to bring truly clean energy alternatives to Curtis Bay, such as a community solar farm and a recycling center. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
