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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/21/goldman-environmental-prize-recognises-activists-fighting-corporate-power-and-political-corruption>
"Grassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood
rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the
world’s most prestigious environmental prize.
The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore
the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix
of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is
fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the
climate emergency.
This year’s recipients include Semia Gharbi, a scientist and environmental
educator from Tunisia, who took on an organised waste trafficking network that
led to more than 40 arrests, including 26 Tunisian officials and 16 Italians
with ties to the illegal trade.
Gharbi, 57, headed a public campaign demanding accountability after an Italian
company was found to have shipped hundreds of containers of household garbage
to Tunisia to dump in its overfilled landfill sites, rather than the recyclable
plastic it had declared it was shipping.
Gharbi lobbied lawmakers, compiled dossiers for UN experts and helped organise
media coverage in both countries. Eventually, 6,000 tonnes of illegally
exported household waste was shipped back to Italy in February 2022, and the
scandal spurred the EU to close some loopholes governing international waste
shipping.
Not far away in the Canary Islands, Carlos Mallo Molina helped lead another
sophisticated effort to prevent the construction of a large recreational boat
and ferry terminal on the island of Tenerife that threatened to damage Spain’s
most important marine reserve.
The tourism gravy train can seem impossible to derail, but in 2018 Mallo
swapped his career as a civil engineer to stop the sprawling Fonsalía port,
which threatened the 170,000-acre biodiverse protected area that provides vital
habitat for endangered sea turtles, whales, giant squid and blue sharks.
As with Gharbi in Tunisia, education played a big role in the campaign’s
success and included developing a virtual scuba dive into the threatened marine
areas and a children’s book about a sea turtle searching for seagrass in the
Canary Islands. After three years of pressure backed by international
environmental groups, divers and residents, the government cancelled
construction of the port, safeguarding the only whale heritage site in European
territorial waters.
“It’s been a tough year for both people and the planet,” said Jennifer Goldman
Wallis, vice-president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation. “There’s so
much that worries us, stresses us, outrages us, and keeps us divided … these
environmental leaders and teachers – and the global environmental community
that supports them – are the antidote.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
