First all-women cohort of winners hails from Colombia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, the UK and the US.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This year\u2019s prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize has been awarded to six grassroots environmental activists from around the world for their efforts to fight climate change and save biodiversity.<\/p>\n For the first time since the prize was created in 1989 by philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman, all recipients of the award are women: Iroro Tanshi, from Nigeria; Borim Kim, from South Korea; Sarah Finch, from the United Kingdom; Theonila Roka Matbob, from Papua New Guinea; Alannah Acaq Hurley, from the United States; and Yuvelis Morales Blanco, from Colombia.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Sometimes described as the \u201cGreen Nobel\u201d, the Goldman Prize recipients are chosen from each of the world\u2019s six primary regions. They each receive $200,000 in prize money.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we continue to fight uphill to protect the environment and implement lifesaving climate policies \u2013 in the US and globally \u2013 it is clear that true leaders can be found all around us,\u201d said John Goldman, vice president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 2026 Prize winners are proof positive that courage, hard work, and hope go a long way toward creating meaningful progress.\u201d<\/p>\n Morales Blanco, the winner for the region of South and Central America, fought some of the world\u2019s biggest oil companies to successfully stop the introduction of commercial fracking into Colombia.<\/p>\n The 24-year-old grew up in a family of fishermen along the banks of the Magdalena River in the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches. \u201cWe had nothing but the river \u2013 she was like a mother who took care of me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She began organising protests after a major oil spill in 2018, which forced the relocation of dozens of local families and killed thousands of animals. Her activism, which made her a target for intimidation and forced her to temporarily relocate, helped halt projects and elevate fracking as an issue in Colombia\u2019s 2022 election.<\/p>\n Two of the other five recipients of this year\u2019s prize have also focused their efforts on fighting fossil fuels, which are causing both global climate change and more localised pollution around the world.<\/p>\n Borim, the winner for Asia who started the Youth 4 Climate Action organisation, won a ruling from South Korea\u2019s Constitutional Court that the government\u2019s climate policy violated the constitutional rights of future generations, the first successful youth-led climate litigation in the continent.<\/p>\n Finch, Europe\u2019s winner, told The Times newspaper she will use her prize money to keep fighting fossil fuels.<\/p>\n Together with the Weald Action Group, she fought oil drilling in southeastern England for more than a decade, securing the \u201cFinch ruling\u201d from the Supreme Court in June 2024, stating that authorities must consider fossil fuels\u2019 impacts on the global climate before granting permission to extract them.<\/p>\n Two other recipients have fought against the destructive environmental impact of mining projects.<\/p>\n Papua New Guinea\u2019s Roka Matbob, winner for Islands and Island Nations, led a successful campaign that saw the world\u2019s second-largest mining company, Rio Tinto, agree to address environmental and social devastation caused by its Panguna copper mine, 35 years after it was closed following an uprising.<\/p>\n And the award recipient for North America, Acaq Hurley, from the Yup\u2019ik nation in the US, successfully fought alongside 15 tribal nations to stop a mega- copper and gold mining project that threatened ecosystems in Alaska\u2019s Bristol Bay region, including the largest wild salmon runs in the world.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Nigeria\u2019s Tanshi, Africa\u2019s winner, rediscovered the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat and has been working to save its refuge, the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, from human-induced wildfires.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n First all-women cohort of winners hails from Colombia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, the UK and the US. This year\u2019s prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize has been awarded to six grassroots environmental activists from around the world for their efforts to fight climate change and save biodiversity. For the first time since the prize was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Media-RETRATOS_Credit-Christian-EscobarMora-for-the-Goldman-Environmental-Prize_01-1024x683-1776721494.jpg?resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"