Goldman Environmental Prize Blog

The first Goldman Environmental Prize was awarded in April 1990, scheduled to coincide with Earth Day, which debuted in 1970. Kicked off by a full-page ad in the New York Times, Earth Day established itself as an important new rallying cry and national call to action. The 1970 ad shows the humble beginnings of this…

Dear Friends, During the global coronavirus pandemic, we are all learning to adjust, to care for our communities and ourselves, and to plan for an unknown future. In this context, we join much of the world in taking extraordinary measures to adapt, namely: We are postponing the announcement of the Goldman Environmental Prize until a later…

IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING THIS YEAR’S CEREMONY Dear Goldman Prize Community, As you know, the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has affected much of the world, and the United States is no exception. San Francisco and the Bay Area are on high alert, with many cases reported in the region. San Francisco Opera House and City Hall have been temporarily…

Australia’s raging fires. The Amazon up in smoke. A nearly year-round fire season in California. Current events have elevated global concern for our forests, one of the earth’s largest and most essential carbon sinks. Often called “green carbon,” forest ecosystems are critical to carbon sequestration across the world. In the United States, for example, forests…

By Jackie Krentzman Exposing Crisis at Love Canal In 1978, Lois Gibbs was a young mother with two young children living in Niagara Falls, New York, in a neighborhood called Love Canal. She began hearing reports of chemical waste being dumped nearby and discovered that her son’s elementary school was built on a toxic waste…

By Jackie Krentzman Recently, in September 2019, Facebook announced a ban on single-use plastic bottles on its campuses worldwide. The company received widespread praise for this step, and Von Hernandez, a 2003 recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, hopes that it leads other corporations to follow suit and make a commitment to banning not only…

This October, the Goldman Environmental Prize partnered with the organization AIDA to convene 23 Prize winners from South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico in Bogotá, Colombia, to learn and deepen their connection to other environmental defenders. At the conference, Prize winners received training on security issues, shared opportunities for collaboration, and exchanged knowledge…

This is a guest blog by Program Officer Lindsey Freedman, who shares series of photos from her visit to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to meet 2019 Prize winner Bayarjargal Agvaantseren. Agvaantseren helped create the 1.8 million-acre Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve in the South Gobi Desert—a critical habitat for the vulnerable snow leopard—then succeeded in persuading the Mongolian…

By Claire Arkin  Do you know where your waste goes? While we’d like to think that most of it gets recycled into a new product, in reality the U.S. recycles only 25.8% of waste and 12.8% gets burned in incinerators. Incinerators are one of the most toxic, expensive, dangerous, and polluting industries in the U.S.…

Since 2015, the Goldman Environmental Prize has provided continued support to Prize winners through our Grantmaking program. Each year, we award grants to past Prize winners for capacity building programs and grassroots environmental campaigns. In 2006, Ukrainian lawyer Olya Melen received the Goldman Environmental Prize for her critical role in halting the construction of a…