Environmental award spotlights grassroots environmentalists.

• Position: Goldman Environmental Prize

Every April, six activists from around the globe are awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, the world's largest cash prize for grassroots environmentalists. "These six winners are among the most important people you have not heard of before," explains philanthropist and Prize founder Richard N. Goldman. "All of them have fought, often alone and at great personal risk, to protect the environment in their home countries."

Goldman's idea to launch an environmental prize emerged over breakfast one morning in 1988 as he was reading about the winners of several Nobel Prizes. He and his late wife Rhoda decided to offer a comparable award that recognized ordinary people for their grassroots contributions to the environment. They envisioned the Goldman Prize as a way to demonstrate the international nature of environmental problems, draw public attention to global issues of critical importance, and inspire others to emulate the examples set by Prize recipients.

Since 1990, 119 individuals from 70 countries have received the Goldman Prize, which includes a cash award of US$125,000 and a 10-day media and publicity tour of San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Winners from six regions are selected by an international jury based on confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals. In the past, several awardees, including 1991 recipient Wangari Maathai and 1996 winner Marina Silva, have gone on to assume important political positions in their countries.

Detailed information on all current and past winners is available at www.goldmanprize.org.

The 2007 Goldman Prize Recipients

AFRICA

Hammerskjoeld Simwinga, Zambia

Transforming Communities Through Sustainable Development

Simwinga, 45, is utilizing innovative sustainable development strategies to transform communities in Zambia's North Luangwa Valley, where rampant wildlife poaching in the 1980s decimated wild elephant populations and left villagers living in extreme poverty. As head of the North Luangwa Wildlife Conservation and Community Development Programme (NLWCCDP), he helps protect the biodiversity of the 6,200-square-kilometer North Luangwa National Park and improve village life through microlending, education, rural health programs, and women's empowerment.

In 1994, at a time when the local economies relied heavily on poaching income, Simwinga began working with the U.S.-funded North Luangwa Conservation Project (NLCP). He helped villagers form "wildlife clubs" that used small business loans to provide basic goods, services, and legal jobs as alternatives to working for poachers. With this assistance, villagers opened small general stores and grinding mills; the program also provided seed loans, transportation, and technical assistance to help farmers grow higher-yielding, protein-rich crops instead of eating wild animal meat. Simwinga tied the entire project to wildlife protection, thus supplanting an illicit economy based on poaching with a legal one.

As NLCP's successes became apparent in the mid-1990s, powerful government officials and others capitalizing on poaching saw their profits dwindle with the slowdown in the illicit ivory and meat trade. Government officials seized the NLCP offices in 1996 and the group was turned over to new management, dropping support for all village development programs. Undeterred, Simwinga worked tirelessly to keep his community project going, funding it partially through loan payments from villagers. For almost a year he worked alone with the communities, regularly walking 30 kilometers between villages. Slowly, he pulled together a substantial Zambian nongovernment organization, NLWCCDP, and attracted small funding to keep the work alive.

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