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Goldman Environmental Prize

Posted: Tue May 31, 2022 11:20 am
by Tiredretiredlawyer
https://www.treehugger.com/winners-2022 ... ze-5323681
These Are the Impressive Winners of the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize
All grassroots activists, these individuals are clearly deserving of the honor.


The Goldman Environmental Prize has been called the "Green Nobel." The prestigious award is given out each year to grassroots environmental leaders from the world's six inhabited continents. Grassroots is defined as people involved in local efforts, "where positive change is created through community or citizen participation." These individuals are, of course, the ones who need financial support and public exposure more than established organizations, and the Goldman Prize offers precisely that.

It was established in 1989 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman and the first-ever award ceremony took place in April 1990.1 The couple hoped that the Prize would "demonstrate the international nature of environmental problems" and draw global support for pressing issues. It would hopefully encourage others to follow in the winners' admirable footsteps and pursue their own projects.

Tireless campaigner Marjan Minnesma pioneered a unique legal strategy to secure a successful ruling against the Dutch government that forced it to take climate action seriously. It took her years of work and hundreds of speeches to mobilize the public, but Minnesma persisted with her message that the government was "putting Dutch citizens in harm's way due to its inaction on climate change, and that it has a legal obligation—'duty of care'—to protect them."

The ruling, which was finally upheld in 2019 and forced the government to cut emissions by a quarter below 1990 levels by the end of 2020, was described by Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, as "the strongest decision ever issued by any court in the world on climate change, and the only one that has actually ordered reductions in greenhouse gas emissions based on constitutional grounds." The precedent that Minnesma set is now inspiring activists around the world.