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Article

17 Jun 2021

Author:
Liz Kimbrough, Mongabay

2021 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners: Green Nobel Prize awarded to activists fighting illegal loggers, hydropower plants, coal financers and plastic factories

'Meet the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners', 15 June 2021

The prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, also known as the “Green Nobel Prize” will be awarded today to six environmental activists, one from each of the world’s inhabited continents. This year’s winners include a special education teacher whose activism stopped the construction of a billion-dollar plastics manufacturing plant along the Mississippi River; a woman whose efforts led to the creation of a national park in Peru the size of Yellowstone; a community leader whose organizing and 500-day blockade of heavy equipment stopped the construction of two dams in the Balkans; an activist who helped cancel 13 coal power plants in Japan and is the first female prize winner from Japan; a man who has dedicated his life to rescuing endangered pangolins from the illegal wildlife trade and ending poaching; and a woman who fought for a national ban on thin plastics manufacturing in Malawi... In 2018, Wanhua, a Chinese company, proposed the construction of a $1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant between the Mississippi River and a mostly Black community in St. James... Sharon Lavigne's ... intense campaigning paid off in 2019, when Wanhua withdrew its land use application ... prevented millions of pounds of toxic waste from entering the environment... For decades, illegal mining and logging have threatened the health of the forest and the people who live around the newly created Yaguas National Park [in Peru], where some 29 Indigenous communities live just outside its borders. Liz Chicaje Churay ... decided that establishing a formal national park in the region would offer some protection... The Kruščica River, in the Western Balkans, is the main water source for nearly 150,000 people, but in 2016 the local municipality allowed permits for the construction of two small hydropower plants along the river without informing or consulting with local communities... Maida Bilal ... went on to launch a grassroots campaign... Kimiko Hirata ... is the director and founding member of the Kiko Network, a Japanese NGO dedicated to stopping climate change... Her advocacy put pressure on the largest coal financers: commercial banks. She launched a first-of-its-kind resolution in Japan against Mizuho Financial Group...