Goldman Prize Winners Reflect Larger Trends Toward Environmental Resistance

Nalleli Cobo and allies. Photo: Tamara Leigh Photography for the Goldman Environmental Prize.

In the early years of the Goldman Prize, the winners were as likely to be focused on conservation as on blocking bad actors.

Among the five inaugural winners in 1990 were two activists who helped halt ecologically damaging dam projects, but also others who fought to preserve coral reefs and rainforests and a man who walked thousands of miles to raise awareness about the endangered black rhinoceros. Subsequent years were similar. 

This year, the Goldman Prizes, among the world’s most renowned environmental awards, go to a group of six activists focused almost entirely on resistance. All six 2022 winners have led campaigns to stop destructive government and corporate plans, or hold such institutions accountable for past damages. 

While the prizes have always been on the edgier side, they do seem to be tracking with overall trends in the environmental movement — and to some extent, the field’s funding — toward more activism and justice-focused opposition to the powers responsible for pollution and climate change. This is in keeping with a long-term shift in the field away from what is sometimes called “fortress conservation,” or trying to cordon off areas of wilderness, to a more people-centered approach.

Conservation remains a worthy and complementary cause, but there is greater recognition of the importance of pushing back directly against the forces causing harm. In that sense, the prizes were forebears of current trends in environmental philanthropy, while also doubling down as they have advanced.

That’s demonstrated by the stories of three of the latest winners.

• Nalleli Cobo: Growing up across the street from an oil well in South Los Angeles, Cobo suffered headaches, nosebleeds and heart palpitations throughout her childhood. At age 19, she went door-to-door with her mother to launch a coalition that led to Los Angeles banning new exploration and launching a review of existing sites.

• Chima Williams: A longtime environmental activist and lawyer, Williams partnered with two Niger Delta communities after a pair of devastating oil spills. Through a legal challenge in the Netherlands, he won a ruling from the Hague that held Royal Dutch Shell responsible for the disasters.

• Niwat Roykaew: After a career teaching on the Thai-Laotian border, Roykaew organized a network of Thai villages that he later mobilized, along with a broad cross-section of civil society, against a plan to turn the Upper Mekong River into a channel for Chinese cargo ships. After years of work, the project was officially canceled in 2020.

These three and the other winners receive an undisclosed cash prize, as well as opportunities to connect with past prize winners, apply for grants, and get communications support. Perhaps the biggest benefit is the global recognition that can come from being named a winner. That process starts with a nomination by a group of two-dozen-plus environmental organizations, with the final selections by a six-person jury made up of environmental activists and the board of the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation.

Trends in the environmental movement may be starting to change funding, as well, if slowly. While it is too early to be definitive, there are encouraging signs. For instance, Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott have each given record sums over the past two years to climate justice intermediaries in the U.S. and abroad. 

“We hope funding efforts like those are just the beginning, rather than isolated instances,” said Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of the Kataly Foundation, of the Bezos and Scott funding. Kataly hosts Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective, a fund directed by a group of green movement leaders that funds U.S. activists doing similar work as Goldman Prize winners.

Those new billionaire donors are still the exception, compared to historic funding disparities. Just 1.3% of annual green funding from top grantmakers went to environmental justice organizations, according to a report from Building Equity and Alignment for Environmental Justice and the Tishman Environment and Design Center, which is one of the few studies of such funding. 

“Even if more grassroots groups are getting funded, it’s not enough, because these groups need greater resources in order to win the solutions they are advocating for,” said Agbo, who is also managing director of the Restorative Economies Fund, when asked about how the funding landscape has changed for front-line activists in recent years.

Some are mounting new efforts to move money in that direction. A report released earlier this month by EDGE Funders Alliance, “Beyond 2%: From Climate Philanthropy to Climate Justice Philanthropy,” encouraged philanthropy to shift focus from the amount of overall climate funding toward which climate strategies receive support. Historically, funders have placed a strong emphasis on market-driven and technology-oriented projects rather than supporting front-line communities that are already weathering the worst impacts of a fast-heating world. 

Sofia Arroyo, EDGE’s executive director, recently said there is a “unique opportunity” right now to expand funding for climate justice. But it remains to be seen whether such pushes will move funders who have historically taken different approaches, such as Mike Bloomberg, who recently pledged $242 million to support the transition to renewable energy across the Global South.

For Agbo, supporting activists like the ones the Goldman Prizes honor is about tapping the expertise that comes from first-hand experience with environmental racism and climate injustice. As is often said, those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.

The Goldman Prizes, the Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective, and other climate justice efforts like them are also notable in that they explicitly name extractive economic actors as the problem underlying many environmental woes. 

“Many government-led climate justice policies emanate from market-based strategies, which ultimately fail to address the root of the problem,” Agbo said. “Grassroots groups center the impact of environmental injustice on communities, and prioritize the well-being of people and the planet, rather than profits.”