At a ceremony on April 24 in San Francisco, California, three Greengrants grantees were awarded the 2006 edition of the Goldman Prize, the world’s most respected award for environmental activists. The three, Silas Siakor of Liberia, Yu Xiaogang of China and Anne Kajir of Papua New Guinea, were recognized for “their sustained and important efforts to preserve the natural environment”. Each received $125,000 to help further his or her work.
Silas Siakor, director of the Sustainable Development Institute in Monrovia, was recognized for his role in exposing evidence that former Liberian President Charles Taylor used the profits of illegal logging to fund his militia and to pursue a 14-year civil war that left 150,000 people dead. Working with other groups such as Green Advocates, the Sustainable Development Institute was able to document the details of the logging and related human rights violations. Siakor himself collected extremely hard-to-get evidence of falsified logging records, illegal logging practices, and passed the evidence to the United Nations Security Council, which then banned the export of Liberian timber in July of 2003. This in turn played a significant role in the subsequent downfall of Taylor’s government.
A 2004 grant from Greengrants helped the Sustainable Development Institute to increase participation of forest communities and others in the process of forestry sector reform. This process continues today.
Silas Siakor’s Goldman Profile
Greengrants’ grant to the Sustainable Development Institute
Yu Xiaogang, the founder and director of the Chinese environmental organization Green Watershed, won the award for his work in protecting rivers and watersheds in his country. Yu was a pioneer in watershed protection, creating the Lashi Watershed Project to bring together residents, local government authorities, and private entrepreneurs to rebuild that area. He has also played a key role in the movement to protect the Nu River, one of only two un-dammed major rivers in China.
Greengrants has supported Green Watershed for several years. A total of five grants over the period from 2003-2005 have helped them to hold a conference on saving China’s rivers, arrange tours of endangered rivers for journalists, allow stakeholders to participate in a UN symposium, translate and publish relevant materials on alternatives to large dams, and arrange for visits of foreign river management specialists.
Yu Xiaogang’s Goldman profile
Press release on Yu Xiaogang’s award from International Rivers Network
Greengrants Profile on the Saving the Nu River
Greengrants grants to Green Watershed
Anne Kajir is a lawyer in Papua New Guinea. Head of the Environmental Law Centre in Port Moresby, she is also the lead attorney in a Supreme Court case aimed at stopping foreign timber companies’ large-scale, illegal deforestation practices. Anne has faced considerable personal risk in her work: she has been physically attacked more than once, and robbers forced their way into her home to steal her computer, which had files on all her legal cases.
Greengrants provided a grant to the Environmental Law Centre in early 2006 to support a precedent-setting legal case challenging a permit issued by the government to a logging company working in the East Awin Forest Management Agreement area. It was the first time the courts in Papua New Guinea recognized that environmental organizations have a right to bring cases that concern the public interest.