Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Seven Environmental Activists Honored With 'Green Nobels'
Seven environmental activists from around the world are being honored this week as winners of the 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize in recognition of their grassroots work to organize communities and countries to protect their ecosystems from environmental degradation.
Seven environmental activists from around the world are being honored this week as winners of the 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize in recognition of their grassroots work to organize communities and countries to protect their ecosystems from environmental degradation, particularly against commercial interests.
This year's winners include an Appalachian woman who is defending her community against the practice of mountaintop-removal coal mining, two Aboriginal elders from Australia who have successfully blocked construction of a nuclear-waste dump, and a Filipino man who started the world's first national campaign to ban the construction of waste incinerators.
Other winners include a Nigerian man who led the fight against the logging of his country's last intact rainforest; a community organizer in Peru working to reduce pollution from fishmeal factories; and a Spanish professor who has campaigned against a huge dam project designed to divert billions of gallons of water from the Ebro river, Spain's second-largest, to the Mediterranean coast.
The Goldman Prize, which has been called the "Nobel Prize for the Environment," will be presented at ceremonies in San Francisco Monday. Recipients will then be honored again in Washington, D.C., where they will meet with media, policy-makers, and other environmental activists Wednesday.
The prize is given each year to environmentalists from six geographic areas: Africa, Asia, Europe, Island nations, North America, and Central and South America.