A Celebration of Global Environmentalism

By Matthew Wheeland, AlterNet. Posted April 17, 2003.

Monday's Goldman Prize press conference in San Francisco started on a telling note; one of the prize recipients, Maria Elena Foronda Farro of Peru, was denied a travel visa from the U.S. State Department. In her stead, Foronda's father attended and read a prepared statement, and Foronda herself gave thanks -- and her hope for a visa -- via telephone.

Foronda has been an outspoken organizer in the fight against the polluting fish meal industries in her hometown of Chimbote. This activism, which has persuaded eight companies doing business in Chimbote to switch to more environmentally friendly technology, resulted in her wrongful arrest and imprisonment in 1994. Foronda and her husband, Oscar Solomon Diaz Barboza, were falsely accused by the Peruvian government of being involved with the Shining Path terrorist group and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Thanks to dedicated community and international support, the couple was released after a hellish year and a half of incarceration, and quickly returned to their work in Chimbote.

Since 1996, the Goldman Prizes have been awarded to 94 people in 54 countries. What started out as a $60,000 prize has grown to $125,000 for the winners from each region: North America, Central and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Island Nations. Activists struggling against, in the words of North American prize winner Julia Bonds, "greedy and destructive industry and their political lapdogs," is a theme running throughout this year's Goldman Prizes. The activists' hard-won victories are immediately subject to attempts from the same industries and lapdogs to repeal and reverse their successes.

Von Hernandez, recipient of the Goldman Prize for Asia this year, has worked tirelessly to create a ban on waste incinerators. He earned a major victory in 1999 when his country's Clean Air Act invoked the first-ever ban on incinerator projects. From day one, industry fought the ban tooth and nail; and last year a federal court ruled in favor of a giant incinerator project for metropolitan Manila.

Hernandez talks about a huge dumping site outside Manila called, appropriately enough, "Smoky Mountain," that has been closed but is still an "icon of poverty in the Philippines." A local priest organized the community around Smoky Mountain, Hernandez recently told Grist Magazine, and is now making crafts and trying to improve the tragedy of the dumping site. "Amid this poverty and squalor, in this really dirty environment, there is a garden. I'd like to support programs like that."

Even more important than the cash prize, the Goldmans bring international attention to the work of these chronically under-recognized activists, giving them renewed energy and hope. Nigeria's Odigha Odigha says winning the prize "is wonderful. I feel ready to launch back and do more vigorous work. It means a lot to me that the global community has recognized me. It means I have a lot to do."

Preserving Our Global Heritage

Indeed, Odigha does have a sizeable task ahead of him. The Nigerian has made his life's work the preservation of his country's remaining rainforests and the remnants of a trans-continental ecosystem that is now all but exterminated. Odigha was forced to go underground after death threats from the brutal Gen. Sani Abacha, who ordered the execution of fellow activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. Far from being deterred, Odigha has fought ever more determinedly; Nigeria recently instituted a moratorium on logging in Odigha's Cross River State, although international logging company Western Metal Products Company (WEMPCO) regularly violates the moratorium and receives only minimal fines as a result.

Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the prize recipient from Europe, has spearheaded a campaign to prevent the damming of Spain's last free-flowing rivers. Calling it a pork barrel for "financial speculators, luxury tourist installations and industrial agriculture," Arrojo-Agudo has organized marches as large as 400,000 people in Barcelona (a city of only 650,000) in opposition to the plan. He believes there is a simple alternative to these destructive damming projects, which will submerge entire towns as well as a national park that is crucial to a wetlands ecosystem. Instead, it is entirely possible to reduce water loss by 50 percent on farms and 30 percent in the cities by promoting a "New Water Culture" that emphasizes sustainable water use and re-thinking agricultural production in the arid southern regions of Spain.

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