Goldman Environmental Prize to be awarded in S.F.
Katie Nelson
San Francisco Chronicle
04/11/2011
Six people from around the globe will be honored today at the San Francisco Opera House for their grassroots work to conserve endangered environments.
The Goldman Environmental Prize has been awarded every year since 1990 to "women and men from isolated villages or inner cities who chose to take great personal risks to safeguard the environment," according to the Goldman Environmental Prize website.
This year, the $150,000 prizes, created by the late San Francisco philanthropists Richard N. Goldman and his wife, Rhoda H. Goldman, are being awarded to five men and one woman from El Salvador, Germany, Indonesia, Russia, Zimbabwe and the United States, where Hilton Kelley is campaigning to improve environmental regulations of industrial pollution on the Texas Gulf Coast. The other winners are:
Francisco Pineda, El Salvador
What happens when the water runs out?
This was the question that farmer Francisco Pineda asked himself in 2004 when he noticed the creek that watered his crops had suddenly dried up.
Pineda soon discovered that the water had been corralled by a Canadian mining company, Pacific Rim Mining Corp., to power its new gold and silver mining project in Cabanas, a northern province.
Pineda and members of his community then set out to halt the project despite assurances from government officials that the mine would bring much-needed development and employment to the region.
"I am very proud of what we have accomplished," he said, referring to their group, the National Anti-Mining Board. "We cannot stop this fight. The community does not want to give up their homes and land."
But the activists have paid a high cost. Six group members have been killed by mine supporters, Pineda says. And since 2009, he has lived under 24-hour police protection.
Pineda's efforts spurred the Salvadoran government to deny Pacific Rim a crucial extraction permit needed to move the mining project forward, causing the company to file a $100 million lawsuit against the Salvadoran government for violating previously agreed-to terms.
Ursula Sladek, Germany
When the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown hit Ukraine 25 years ago, Ursula Sladek never expected that her small German town of Schonau would be subject to radioactive fallout on playgrounds and in backyards.
As a concerned parent of five, Sladek did not want her children to live in fear that they could get sick from playing outside. With a small group of parents, Sladek devised a plan to reduce her community's reliance on nuclear power.
"Living in a rural area, it was terrible to have to tell the children they couldn't go outside whenever they pleased," she said. "We had to consider the hazards of allowing them to eat or drink anything."
Sladek, her husband and other parents created Parents for a Nuclear Free Future, a campaign that encouraged energy efficiency in the Black Forest region.
Eventually, they raised enough money to purchase the local power grid in 1997 - Germany's first cooperatively owned renewable power company. Since then, they have advised other German towns on how to set up community-based energy companies.
"A nuclear tragedy from 25 years ago still affects us today. It never ends," Sladek said. "You have to educate the people and depend on them, not the government, ... to change things."
Prigi Arisandi, Indonesia
Biologist Prigi Arisandi said he remembers wiggling his toes as a child in the sands of the Surabaya River. But as he grew older, the eastern Java waterway became muddied by Indonesia's rapidly expanding economy fueled primarily by unchecked factories dumping industrial waste into local waters.
"I could watch the fish kiss my feet when I was little," he said. "But then industries came, the water became muddy, and fish began floating dead on the surface."
After studying biology and conservation, Arisandi became committed to preserving his community and the river that 3 million people rely on for drinking water and irrigation.
Since 2000, Arisandi and other activists created the first environmental education program in the region, reaching out to communities to teach them about biodiversity and water pollution.
"People love the river, but they did not have the information on how to save it," Arisandi said.
In 2008, a provincial court ordered the governor to implement water quality regulations targeting industries that operate along the river, an unprecedented move by the Indonesian legal system.
Dmitry Lisitsyn, Russia
Sakhalin, a remote, large island off the eastern coast of Russia, was once an untouched region of green landscapes and rolling hills with mountains jutting toward the sea.
But in the early 1990s, the island's ecosystem was threatened by Shell and Exxon drilling projects seeking oil.
