‘Moved and Inspired’: Meet the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners

This year’s winners include an environmental and human rights lawyer who stopped the destruction of Liberia’s tropical forests, a conservationist who helped create a large protected area in Mongolia and a biologist from North Macedonia who fought against hydropower plants planned inside a critical habitat of the rare Balkan lynx. The winners also include an indigenous leader from Chile who led a movement against two hydroelectric projects on a sacred river, a marine conservationist who campaigned to protect the Cook Islands’ marine biodiversity, and an activist from the U.S. who rallied residents to stop the construction of a massive oil export terminal that could have threatened the health and safety of the local community.

“I am so moved and inspired by these six environmental trailblazers,” Susie Gelman, president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, said in a statement. “Each of them has selflessly stood up to stop injustice, become a leader when leadership was critical, and vanquished powerful adversaries who would desecrate our planet. These are six ordinary, yet extraordinary, human beings who remind us that we all have a role in protecting the Earth.”

The winners will be honored at the San Francisco Opera House in California, U.S., on April 29. Former U.S. vice president and environmental activist Al Gore will present the keynote address.

Here are the winners of the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize:

Alfred Brownell, Liberia

Alfred Brownell, an environmental lawyer, has been a champion of Liberia’s tropical forests, protecting them from being cleared for palm oil plantations.

In 2010, the Liberian government granted a 65-year lease of about 2,200 square kilometers (850 square miles) to Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL), a Southeast Asia-based agro-industrial company, to establish palm oil plantations in the country. But there were reports that the company was allegedly clearing community forests without consent or compensation, and damaging sacred sites and farms and polluting water sources.

Brownell worked with the local communities to file a complaint against GVL with the global certification body for palm oil, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The complaint worked: RSPO stopped GVL from expanding its plantations, halting the clearing of 94 percent of the forest leased to GVL.

The company went on to sign more agreements to develop plantations, but reportedly failed to deliver on the jobs and other benefits it had promised, resulting in violent clashes and arrests of community members. Brownell collated more legal evidence to demonstrate GVL’s malpractices, and in 2018 the RSPO dismissed GVL’s appeal against the initial stay on its palm oil expansion.

Currently a research associate professor in the School of Law at Northeastern University in Boston, Brownell was forced to flee to the U.S. with his family because of death threats. But he hopes to return to his country soon.

Bayarjargal Agvaantseren, Mongolia

Bayarjargal Agvaantseren, currently the Mongolia director for the conservation NGO Snow Leopard Trust, became interested in snow leopards while translating for a scientist visiting the area. She went on to work on various conservation projects involving Mongolia’s herder communities. In 2009, after learning about the widespread mining operations in the Tost Mountains in the South Gobi Desert, a key migration habitat for the snow leopard, she began working with the local Tost community to create the massive Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve.

Spread across 7,280 square kilometers (2,800 square miles), the nature reserve is the first formally protected area in Mongolia created specifically to protect the snow leopard. Agvaantseren’s campaigning also pressured the government to cancel 37 active mining licenses granted in the reserve.

Goldman Environmental Prize

Alberto Curamil, Chile

Alberto Curamil, an indigenous leader of the Mapuche people in Chile’s Araucanía region, has been leading the fight against hydropower projects that he says will destroy Araucanía’s forests and rivers. To mount resistance against the projects, Curamil rallied not only the Mapuche people but also non-Mapuche members, including environmental organizations and academics.

He organized protests, road blockades and even launched a legal campaign alleging that the Chilean government had permitted the hydropower projects without the free, prior and informed consent of the local communities. In 2016, Chile canceled two of the planned hydropower projects, citing public opposition for one and lack of consent and adequate assessment of environmental impacts for the other.

In 2018, Curamil was arrested for allegedly being involved in a robbery, a charge that his community says is a result of his activism against the hydropower projects. Curamil is still in jail.

Linda Garcia, United States