The Goldman Environmental Prize honors environmental activists around the world who have dedicated themselves to protecting their land and people. These are the heroes of the global environmental movement, and they have gone up against some formidable opponents. Founded in 1990 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman, the Goldman Environmental Prize annually awards US$125,000 to environmental activists from each of the world’s six inhabited continental regions. This prize is popularly known as the ‘Nobel Prize’ for the environment. To learn more about the prize and its current and past winners, click here.
This year, we are pleased to announce that the winner from South America, Peruvian Julio Cusurichi Palacios of the Federation of Natives of the Madre de Dios River and its Tributaries (FENAMAD) is a former Greengrants grantee. FENAMAD is an indigenous-run organization that unites community members to protect their lands from outside interests such as oil and gas development and logging. The Peruvian government has repeatedly violated the rights of its indigenous populations by selling logging and mining concessions on protected reserves, blatantly ignoring their right to free, prior, and informed consent and endangering their health, livelihoods and environment.
In 2002 FENAMAD, through the hard work of its leaders including Julio, was successful in establishing an indigenous reserve for a large community of indigenous populations in voluntary isolation. However, the establishment of the reserve was only the first step—it must also be well-managed and actively protected from increasingly powerful outside interests.
That same year, FENAMAD received support from Greengrants to fund development of an ecotourism program run by the indigenous Amarakaeri Communal Reserve and designed to support the community’s efforts to manage the reserve.
More recently, FENAMAD has worked with Greengrants grantee Trabajo de Racimos de Ungurahui to put a stop to illegal logging of broadleaf mahogany in indigenous reserves – whose main market is the U.S. A joint campaign headed by these groups is filing suit in the U.S. to prevent the continued importation of illegal timber. Another lawsuit was recently filed by this same coalition, including Environmental Rights Action, against Occidental Petroleum for environmental damages on indigenous lands. Click here for more on this lawsuit.
Sophia Rabliauskas, winner of the Goldman Prize in North America, was recognized for her work on an issue that Greengrants has also helped to support – protecting indigenous lands and creating sustainable management plans in Canada. Sophia is part of the Poplar River First Nation in Manitoba, where, after many years of hard work, the tribe has constructed a sustainable management plan and is currently looking for support from the Canadian government.
The Poplar River First Nation management plan is a model for other indigenous groups in the region – last year a Greengrants grant enabled the neighboring Grassy Narrows First Nation to send a delegation of leaders to Poplar River to learn about their management plan, with the goal of assessing its applicability for their own reserve. Greengrants has supported Grassy Narrows with five grants since 2001 to improve land management and regain control of their lands in the face of unsustainable logging initiatives; they have begun to draft a management plan with the support of Poplar River First Nation. When complete, this management plan will cover an area even larger than that of the Poplar River reserve. For a brief profile of this grantee, click here.