Goldman Foundation Names 2014 Winners of Green ‘Nobel’

An upstate New York anti-fracking activist and a South African campaigner against toxic dumps are among this year’s six recipients of the Goldman Environmental Prize for grass-roots green advocacy, the San Francisco Chronicle and the BBC report.

The $150,000 awards, established in 1989 by the late philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman and likened to a Nobel Prize for environmental work, annually recognize activists in Africa, Asia, North America, Central and South America, Europe, and the world’s islands. They will be presented Monday at a ceremony in San Francisco.

Attorney Helen Slottje’s legal work set the stage for dozens of New York towns to enact bans on natural-gas drilling, and Desmond D’Sa’s efforts led to the closure of a chemicals dump in a residential area of Durban, South Africa. For more information on all the winners, see the Goldman Prize website.