2003 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners Announced

Seven environmental activists were honored today in San Francisco with the 14th annual Goldman Environmental Prize.

The Goldman Environmental Prize is given annually to grassroots environmental heroes from six geographic areas: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. (Two winners share the Island Nations award this year.) The Prize includes a no-strings-attached award of $125,000.

As the largest award of its kind, the Goldman Environmental Prize has been called the "Nobel Prize for the Environment."

Two years ago, AWF's Nominee, Eugene Rutagarama, was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work to protect the endangered mountain gorilla population from the ravages of civil war and human encroachment.

The 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize winners are:

AFRICA: Odigha Odigha, Nigeria

Forest protection activist Odigha Odigha of Cross River State, Nigeria, won unprecedented protections for Nigeria's last remaining rainforests. Odigha was instrumental in creating a statewide logging moratorium and has educated hundreds of forest communities on sustainable forestry practices. Through his proposal for the country's first Forestry Commission's mandate and structure, Odigha's biggest achievement has been getting civil society and forest community representation in all forest management policies.

ASIA: Von Hernandez, the Philippines

Von Hernandez organized campaigns against waste incinerators in the Philippines, which release cancer-causing dioxins into the air. Hernandez's campaigns led the Philippines to institute the world's first nationwide ban on waste incinerators. He continues to lead the battle to keep the incinerator ban in place despite intense industry pressure and government corruption.

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA: Maria Elena Foronda, Peru

Peruvian community organizer Maria Elena Foronda Farro led a campaign to clean up Peru's fishmeal industry, which dumps untreated industrial waste into streams and out of smokestacks, causing cholera outbreaks, fungal skin diseases and the worst pollution problems in Peru's coastal cities. Foronda has successfully forged partnerships between community groups, fishmeal producers and the government to institute sustainable, environmentally sound and profitable business practices for fishmeal production.

EUROPE: Pedro Arrojo-Aguda, Spain

Physicist and economics professor Pedro Arrojo-Agudo orchestrated the campaign to stop Spain's National Hydrological Plan from damming and re-routing the country's last remaining free-flowing rivers. Arrojo is leading a new wave of activism to end the failed water management policies of damming and diverting rivers, and forging a sustainable water future based on conservation, recycling and smarter agricultural choices.

ISLAND AND ISLAND NATIONS: Eileen Kampakuta Brown and Eileen Wani Wingfield, Australia

Aboriginal elders Eileen Kampakuta Brown and Eileen Wani Wingfield have won the Goldman Environmental Prize for their leadership in the campaign to block construction of a nuclear waste dump in their South Australian desert homeland. Since the British nuclear bomb tests of the 1950s, South Australia's traditional Aboriginal homelands have been the testing and dumping grounds for the world's nuclear industry, causing asthma attacks, birth defects and cancer as well as poisoning the environment and wildlife. Now, Brown and Wingfield are leading their communities in an international campaign to say "Irati Wanti," the poison, leave it.

NORTH AMERICA: Julia Bonds, United States

A coal miner's daughter and native West Virginian, Julia Bonds led campaigns to stop mountaintop removal mining. This highly destructive "strip mining on steroids" is ravaging communities throughout Appalachia, turning river valleys into mining waste dumps, driving up asthma rates and forcing whole communities to abandon their homes.

For more information on the award recipients and the Goldman Environmental Prize, visit the Goldman Prize website at www.goldmanprize.org.