AFRICAN STUDIES COLLECTION --Contents-- IUB Libraries
AFRICAN STUDIES COLLECTION

GOLDMAN ENVIRONMENTAL PRIZE

The Goldman Environmental Prize is awarded annually for grassroots efforts to preserve and enhance the environment. "The mission of the prize is political: to enhance the efforts of environmentalists by giving them publicity, stature, and money. The Goldman Environmental Foundation selects an outstanding activist from each of six regions--Europe, North America, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia and Oceania. Candidates are nominated by an international group of activists. The six winners each year are officiall treated as heroes, often for the first time in their lives. They are brought together in San Francisco, given prizes of $60,000 each, and ritually honored in a prestigious ceremony attended by some of the city's strongest environmental leaders and most influential citizens. Then they are flown to New York, where they meet with the press and with the secretary general of the United Nations. Next, they travel to Washington, D.C., where they attend another series of meetings, including one with the president of the United States. The Goldman Environmental Foundation has selected well; since the foundation first awarded prizes in 1990, the reaction from the public, the press, and the environmental community has been enthusiastic. The political influence of the Goldman prize winners has grown--and with it, the prestige of the prize. The rest of the world has begun to see these activists as the heroes they are." -- David Ganche from the Introduction to Eco-Heroes.


2000 -

1999 -

Samuel Nguiffo
(Cameroon)

A lawyer is fighting in his country's courts to stop the liquidation of the world's second-largest contiguous rain forest and the slaughter of chimps.


1997 -

Nick Carter
(Zambia)

(1993). (Ed.). Voices from Africa: Local perspectives on conservation. Washington, D.C.: World Wildlife Fund.


1996 -

Nadyakira Amooti
(Uganda)
(1998). What a country without animals. Kampala, Uganda: Fountain Publishers.
What is a country without birds.
What is a country without grasslands.
What is a country without trees.
What Is a country without wetlands.


1994 -

Laila Iskandar Kamel
(Egypt)

She focuses on sustainable development and garbage collection in Cairo.


1993 -

Margaret Jacobsohn & Garth Owen Smith
(Namibia)

They have been striving to assist rural communities to link social and economic development to the conservation of the region's spectacular wildlife and other natural resources. The program started in 1983 as an attempt to control rampant illegal hunting which had decimated all wildlife species including black rhinos and desert-adapted elephant. It also focused on facilitating social and economic benefits to rural people from the wildlife with which they live side by side.

Pickford, P. & Jacobsohn, M. (1990). Himba: Nomads of Namibia. Foreshore, Cape Town, South Africa: Struik.

Cubitt, G. S. & Owen-Smith, G. (1981). Namibia: The untamed land. Cape Town, South Africa: Published by Don Nelson.


1992 -

Wadja Egnankou
(Ivory Coast)

A scientist and college professor Egnankou has often been a lone voice in the struggle to protect the remains of the West African country's once abundant coastal mangrove forests. The mangrove forests are an extraordinary, biologically diverse ecosystem that provide an essential environmental interface between the Atlantic Ocean and the region's few surviving tropical rainforests.


1991 -

Wangari Maathai
(Kenya)

[Planted seven trees in her backyard on World Environment Day in 1977 and went on to organize the Green Belt Movement in Kenya resulting in the planting of over 10 million trees]

(1988). The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the approach and the experience. Nairobi, Kenya: Environment Liaison

Centre International.


1990 -

Michael Werikhe
(Kenya)

His walking trips around the world has drawn attention to the plight of the black rhinocerous of Kenya.



* Bibliography *

Wallace, A. (1993). Eco-heroes: Twelve tales of environmental victory. San Francisco, CA: Mercury House.


Awards for Books about Africa Homepage


Last updated: 02/00
URL:http://www.indiana.edu/~libsalc/african/awards/goldman.html
Website originally prepared by Patricia S. Kuntz, Mellon Fellow
Comments: Marion Frank Wilson
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