2013 recipients come from Colombia, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, South Africa and USA

The Goldman Environmental Foundation on 15 April 2013 announced the six recipients of the 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize, a group of, what the organisers have termed “fearless leaders working against all odds to protect the environment and their communities.”

The Goldman Environmental Prize, now in its 24th year, is awarded annually to environmental heroes from each of the world’s six inhabited continental regions. With an individual cash prize of $150,000, it is the largest award for grassroots environmental activism. The winners will be awarded the Prize at an invitation-only ceremony on Monday, April 15, 2013 at the San Francisco Opera House. A smaller ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. will followed yesterday, Wednesday, April 17.

Amongst this year’s winners are two who have been awarded for the great strides made in ensuring sustainable waste management practices. Rossano Ercolini, from Italy, is an elementary school teacher, who began a public education campaign about the dangers of incinerators in his small Tuscan town that grew into a national Zero Waste movement.

Nohra Padilla of Colombia, unfazed by powerful political opponents and a pervasive culture of violence, organized Colombia’s marginalized waste pickers to make recycling a legitimate part of waste management in the country.

Other winners include South African, Jonathan Deal, who recently led a campaign against fracking in South Africa to protect the Karoo, a semi-desert region treasured for its agriculture, beauty and wildlife, and Iraqi AzzamAlwash, whoreturned to war-torn Iraq to lead local communities in restoring the once-lush marshes that had turned to dustbowls.

AletaBaun of Indonesia organised hundreds of local villagers to peacefully occupy marble mining sites in “weaving protests,” thereby stopping the destruction of sacred forestland in Mutins Mountain on the island of Timor.

Finally Kimberly Wasserman of the USA was also a winner for leading local residents in a successful campaign to shut down two of the country’s oldest and dirtiest power plants -and is now transforming Chicago’s old industrial sites into parks and multi-use spaces.

The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1989 by late San Francisco civic leaders and philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman. Prize winners are selected by an international jury from confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals.