The six winners of the 2023 Goldman Environmental Prize

When the researcher and conservationist Zafer Kizilkaya in 2007 he decided to return to his native Turkey after years of studying abroad, he was shocked by the aridity and low biodiversity of the “turquoise coast”, a wonderful area of ​​the Mediterranean sea compromised by several problems. Trawling nets, overfishing, anthropic impact and the climate crisis had made the seabed “desert”. Fishermen complained about the scarcity of fish in Gökova Bay and the whole ecosystem was now close to collapse.

Kizilkaya thus tried many ways: to involve fishermen in environmental protection, to put pressure on the Turkish government to create marine protected areas and, with a little vision and creativity, he even invited expert cooks to cook dangerous alien species – such as scorpion fish – while to effectively stem the invasion.

In the end, thanks to his work, the number of fish per square meter has increased tenfold since the introduction of no-fishing zones in 2012 and the incomes of local fishermen have increased by 400%. Today the Turkish researcher insists on protecting even more of the sea: he wants to expand the network of marine protected areas (MPAs), block dangerous trawls and in some areas completely prevent fishing to give Turkish biodiversity a real chance to recover.

Commitments like his are worth the Goldman Envoirenmental Prize 2023. He and five other “fighters for the environment” from all over the world have in fact been awarded the six awards which, as Richard Goldman, philanthropist and founder of the Prize, claims, reward ” people of ordinary origins doing extraordinary things to save our Earth”. Often, what is recognized is the indomitable commitment, the courage necessary to protect nature at all costs.

Chilekwa Mumbafor example, he had been carrying on a battle in for years Zambia against the highly polluting Konkola Copper Mines operation, miners operating in the Copperbelt province. Here the damages of mining were becoming evident both for the soils and for people’s health. For many it was clear that the command of the parent company, the British Vedanta Resources, was behind the activities of the local firm, but no one dared to denounce it except Mumba. The activist filed a lawsuit to hold Vedanta Resources accountable and won in the UK Supreme Court.

In doing so, it set an important legal precedent: it was the first time a British company had been held liable for environmental damage caused by operations run by a subsidiary in another country. Thanks to the battle of Mumba this “precedent” has also become the key to being able to bring charges against Shell Global for pollution in Nigeria.
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Also Diana Wilson, 74, fought against a large company by winning one of the most important civil cases in environmental terms. A fisherman, Wilson has dedicated part of her life to collecting information against the multinational Formosa Plastics, one of the world’s leading petrochemical companies, accused of dumping large quantities of toxic plastic waste on the coast of the Gulf of Texas.

“This company has destroyed our fishing communities and ecosystem. I feel a deep connection to the water and after 34 years of fighting and persistence we won, and it was incredible,” Wilson said after winning his legal battle and landed a $50 million settlement, the largest award in a citizen-led lawsuit against an industrial polluter in the history of the US Clean Water Act. Through Wilson’s commitment, Formosa Plastics has also agreed to achieve “zero discharge” of waste and pay penalties until discharges cease, as well as fund the remediation of wetlands and nearby waterways in Texas.

Further south, in the rainforests ofAmazoniaalso the activist Alessandra Korap Munduruku it had to collide against a multinational and the damage it was causing in one of the most important treasure chests of biodiversity on the planet.

In Brazil Munduruku has in fact led the communities of different Amazon territories in the battle to stop the mining development of the British company Anglo American which operates in the rainforest. Thanks to Munduruku’s efforts, the company decided two years ago to withdraw 27 exploration and research applications that had been approved to mine within indigenous territories. Among these, thanks to her tenacity, the winner of the Goldman Envoirenmental Prize managed to include the territory of Sawré Muybu, one of the largest in the area and rich in mineral resources.

In another context, but with similar purposes, it has also moved Delima Silalahi, committed environmentalist in Indonesia. Here she fought to ensure that the legal management of 17,824 acres of rainforest was entrusted to six indigenous communities in North Sumatra. Only they could best preserve and “treat” the land after the damage inflicted by a company operating in the paper sector and which, by converting various areas into industrial eucalyptus plantations, thus creating a non-native monoculture, had brought the biodiversity of a large part of the territory.

After the battle of Delima, the six indigenous communities obtained the management of the territory and started reclamation and works to restore the forests and preserve the precious carbon sinks typical of these Indonesian tropical areas.

Finally to win the Goldman, in the Finland rich in forests and peat bogs, he was also the activist Tero Mustonen which after years of struggle has obtained since 2018 the possibility of leading the restoration of 62 former mining and forestry sites previously of an industrial nature, where soils and biodiversity were in great difficulty. Today, thanks to Mustonen’s efforts, these forgotten places are increasingly turning into wetlands and habitats capable of hosting Finnish flora and fauna. Furthermore, thanks to the organic matter present in the peat bogs, Mustonen’s challenge has also turned into a precious “hand” for all of Europe since those logos are among the most effective and useful carbon sinks in the fight against global warming.