Meet the winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize 2025, the most prestigious recognition for environmental activists.
In an increasingly tense geopolitical context, with rearmament elevated to the highest priority and the president of the world's largest economy trampling over every environmental and climate protection, it can be tempting to turn inward. To focus on the present rather than dispersing time and energy defending the planet, with uncertain and distant outcomes. The Goldman Environmental Prize, known as the Nobel Prize for the environment, reminds us that this is not the case. It is true: safeguarding our territory often means starting from the grassroots and challenging powerful economic interests. It is true: there are moments when it can feel like tilting at windmills. But the six stories honoured in the 2025 edition bear witness to the fact that dedication, expertise and collective mobilisation do bear fruit. Let us meet the winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize 2025.
In May 2024, the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant in the small town of Merrimack, in New Hampshire, closed its doors. It was part of the French multinational Saint-Gobain and for twenty years had manufactured protective devices, antenna coatings and other textile products. Items that were immersed in a liquid mixture of PFAS — the notorious per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — and then dried in an oven to acquire a resistant, waterproof coating.
If the factory is no longer operating, it is thanks to Laurene Allen, now sixty-two years old. She is not a scientist by training, but a social worker who in 2016 left outraged from a meeting in which the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services attempted to downplay the health risks associated with PFAS contamination in drinking water, which was well above safe thresholds. Her anger became action. Allen educated herself, reached out to experts in the field, brought together a group of volunteers (called Merrimack Citizens for Clean Water) and refused to give up even when she was dismissed as a Cassandra.
Some members of the committee ran for national and local elected office, successfully securing the installation of PFAS filters. All the while, Laurene Allen was testifying at public hearings, organising protests and commissioning clinical tests on the health impacts of PFAS. So much so that Saint-Gobain, despite having had its licences renewed, shut down the plant citing the official reason of a "restructuring of its production strategy". But now another battle is opening: the fight for remediation. Because the company has never accepted responsibility for PFAS contamination in Merrimack, and is therefore not legally required to address it.
In 2000, an oil spill contaminated the Marañón River, sacred to the indigenous Kukama people. It stretches over 1,700 kilometres and flows entirely through Peru, from the Andes to the Ucayali River, the main tributary of the Amazon. In a sense, it was a disaster foretold, given that thirty years earlier the Peruvian government had greenlit drilling in its basin, with devastating effects on the ecosystem and those who inhabit it. Indeed, spills over the years have numbered in the dozens. But following the 2000 incident, Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari realised how invisible women were in this struggle and founded the Asociación de Mujeres Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana.
At the helm of the association, she came to particular prominence when she demanded transparency from the authorities following the new, devastating oil spill that occurred in 2010 near the port of Saramuro. And when in 2014, using legal tools, she managed to halt a river dredging project. It was precisely through collaboration with various NGOs active on the legal front that a case was launched for the recognition of legal personhood for the Marañón River — a path that had never been attempted before in Peru.
The initiative, of which Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari was the face and voice, proved successful. All the more so because in the meantime incidents continued to multiply, as did testimonies and protest marches by the local population. In March 2024, the court ruled that the Marañón River has value, has the right to flow freely and to be protected from pollution. The Peruvian government and the national oil company, Petroperú, had violated these rights. They must therefore repair the damage done and draw up a protection plan for the river and its tributaries.
There is also a trace of Italy in these Goldman Environmental Prizes — but, unfortunately, in an entirely negative sense. Because from our country, in 2020, 282 containers departed carrying 7,900 tonnes of waste that the Tunisian company Soreplast was supposed to sort and recycle. During an inspection, however, Tunisian authorities discovered that the waste was not recyclable as declared. In short, it was part of an illegal trafficking operation, presumably facilitated by widespread corruption on both sides of the Mediterranean.
This is where Semia Gharbi comes in — a scientist, environmental communicator, and for twenty years a teacher and activist. Gharbi is the founder and president of the Association for Environmental Education of Future Generations, as well as the Middle East and North Africa coordinator for the IPEN network (International Pollutants Elimination Network) and co-founder of the NGO network Tunisie Verte (RTV).
When the scandal surrounding the illegal waste trafficking broke in the autumn of 2020, Gharbi and her colleagues at RTV launched a wide-reaching media campaign to push both governments involved — Italian and Tunisian — to take responsibility. The strong public pressure they generated also contributed to a parliamentary commission opening an investigation that led to dozens of dismissals and arrests.
After several months, the governments of Tunisia and Italy signed an agreement for the repatriation of 212 containers: the others had mysteriously caught fire. In November 2023, also to prevent similar incidents from recurring, European institutions tightened the rules on waste exports to non-OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries.
Representing Europe, the Goldman Environmental Prize 2025 goes to Besjana Guri and Olsi Nika. They are Albanian and decided to fight for the Vjosa River, one of the very few European rivers that remains free-flowing: meaning there are no dams or other man-made structures interfering with its course. Nature has remained intact and manifests itself through extraordinarily rich biodiversity, with 1,175 animal and plant species recorded, including 119 protected under Albanian law and 39 considered threatened.
Economic interests, however, make themselves felt. And hydropower is virtually the only energy source available in Albanian territory. So much so that the government, in the 2010s, decided to build 45 dams on the Vjosa river and its tributaries. Besjana Guri and Olsi Nika, active in the NGO EcoAlbania, decided to step in before it was too late. In 2014 they launched a campaign to save "the blue heart of Europe", in collaboration with the NGOs EuroNatur and RiverWatch. The following year they founded the initiative Friends of Vjosa, through which, armed with determination and creativity, they brought together NGOs, activists, artists, scientists and citizens.
In March 2023 the Albanian government established the Wild River National Park – the first of its kind on the entire continent. It spans 125 square kilometres, covering the course of the Vjosa river and its tributaries, prohibiting commercial activities in 75 per cent of the area and allowing traditional grazing in the remaining 25 per cent. No dam may be built in the Albanian section. Dialogue has already been opened with the government of Greece, the country where the river originates, to extend these protections across the border. But now another battle is beginning: to prevent the course of the Shushica river from being diverted.
Mongolia has a nickname, Minegolia. Because starting from the 1990s, as Soviet Union support dwindled, it leveraged its rich deposits of gold, copper, zinc, uranium and coal to drive its own economy forward. The problem is that Mongolia is also a semi-desert territory, even more so in recent years as the impact of climate change makes itself felt, and the mines are draining – and polluting – its extremely scarce water resources. This is a problem that is acutely felt in Dornogov' province, almost entirely occupied by the Gobi desert, a habitat for – among others – wild camels, Argali sheep, endangered wild donkeys, and around three hundred native plant species. Nearly 10 per cent of its territory has been allocated to mining, often through fragmented concessions that interrupt habitats and complicate the lives of herders.
In Dornogov' province also lives Batmunkh Luvsandash, winner of the Goldman environmental prize at the age of 81. The son of nomadic herders, he brings with him a deep knowledge of the territory and the technical expertise gained through his work as an engineer. When in 2015 the Mongolian government issued licences for mining exploration around the sacred mountain of Hutag, he understood that establishing a protected area was the only way to avert the worst.
He studied, he travelled, and he walked into the local government office with a hand-drawn map of the areas to be protected. There he discovered it was nearly identical to the one that The Nature Conservancy had developed, using a geographic information system, on behalf of the Mongolian government. He then joined forces with the NGO's staff and with state agencies to find the right balance between environmental protection and the needs of livestock farmers and herders.
Batmunkh Luvsandash formally submitted his proposal in the spring of 2020 and two years later received the green light. The new protected area bans all extractive activity across 267 square kilometres and adds to the three other zones that had already been protected in previous years, for a total of around 832 sq km. It has been warmly welcomed by the local community, which, in addition to continuing the way of life that has defined it for centuries, gains an additional employment opportunity through park surveillance.
Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, is a renowned tourist destination attracting around six million visitors a year. But the demands of mass tourism sit uneasily with those of the area's extraordinary marine biodiversity. Despite the establishment of the Teno-Rasca marine protected area, recent decades have seen the disappearance of more than half of the vital posidonia meadows, a collapse in fish populations, and a rise in pollution and fishing. Following the construction in 2010 of the port of Granadilla to the east, the Spanish government decided to build another one on the western side of the island, at Fonsalía, right in the middle of the marine protected area. With a projected capacity of 470 recreational vessels and five large ferries.
Carlos Mallo Molina embraced this cause so wholeheartedly that he chose to change his life. He was a civil engineer with expertise in precisely this kind of port construction but, after studying the potential damage that the Fonsalía terminal would cause, he left his job to found a non-profit organisation, Innoceana. He assembled a team of experts with whom he mapped local marine species, their habitats and the state of health of the ecosystem. He drew on his engineering skills to produce reports on the problems linked to the future port of Fonsalía and, crucially, to propose alternatives that were equally viable but far less impactful. He worked on the awareness-raising front, including with children, with the help of virtual reality. He gathered more than 420,000 signatures. His battle succeeded: there will be no port at Fonsalía. In its place, again through Innoceana's initiative, the first marine observation and education centre in the Canary Islands will be built.