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Goldman Environment Prize
"As a young person in my community, I feel like we often concentrate on human rights and political issues, but not enough on issues about our Earth."
By Genysys Sanchez
Every year, six environmental heroes from six continents each win $125,000 through the Goldman Environmental Prize. The winners of this year’s Goldman Awards were from Haiti, Romania, Honduras, Mexico, Kazakhstan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
FATHER JOSE ANDRES TAMAYO (on tape)
Al liderasco latinoamericano internacional, les insisto a no seder al hipnotismo del mercado global bestial que cada dia pisotea los valores y derechos de los mas pobres.
GENYSYS
That’s Father Jose Andres Tamayo, talking about the need for Latin American leaders to fight for environmental justice, especially on behalf of the poor. He directs a coalition of farmers, community organizers, and religious leaders called MAO, the Environmental Movement of Ochoa. They are all struggling to defend their lands and the rights of the people who live there.
Attending the Goldman Environmental Awards was a great learning experience for me. As a young person in my community, I feel like we often concentrate on human rights and political issues, but not enough on issues about our Earth. That’s why it was so interesting to meet Lucia Flores at the Goldman Environmental Awards. She’s a 17 year old Bay Area high school student—the only teenager honored at the awards ceremony. She’s not QUITE at the $125,000 prize level yet, but she did give a speech to all the youth groups attending the event, to talk about her work with an organization in Oakland called, Communities for a Better Environment. I wanted to know how Lucia first got interested in environmental issues.
LUCIA (on tape)
I was in middle school in sixth grade and my best friend, she introduced me to “KAEP” which was Kids Against Environmental Pollution, which is now Youth Edge and I thought it was interesting work, you know learning about refineries and air pollution and environmental justice.
GENYSYS
What do your family members think about your environmental politics?
LUCIA (on tape)
My family actually found out by watching me on the news one night when I was in a protest. They spotted me on camera and then I went to go visit my aunt and she said she was proud of me because I was sticking by something that I believed in. You know it’s really hard for some people to believe in something and actually go through with it and do the work and do the struggle and stuff and stand by it.
GENYSYS
You’ve done a lot of work on oil refineries, as you said, what have you accomplished so far?
LUCIA (on tape)
We have accomplished a fence line monitoring system in Rodeo and Bayo Vista, which basically monitors the pollution that goes between the refinery fence line and the community fence line. And there’s a computer in one of the resident’s houses, which monitors the different types of chemicals that are coming up and out. And if it goes over, we go to the district and we tell them what’s going on.
GENYSYS
What are some of the challenges in this kind of work? Like do you have any specific examples of the challenges that you face when you do all this?
LUCIA (on tape)
The challenges are that when you go to the district meetings, sometimes the district doesn’t listen to you...pretending you’re not even there, pretending like what you’re talking about and what you’re trying to put out there is not even important, when it is. It’s important to everybody who’s there and that’s the reason we’re there, because it’s an important issue that we need to talk about... Another hard thing is having to learn all the different perspectives of the refinery and how it works in order for us to teach it to others.
GENYSYS
The environment is kind of abstract. How do you get other young people interested in this topic? What do you actually say to them?
LUCIA (on tape)
Well you have to be direct and you have to, you know, cut around like some people just have a long story, you know, I try to make it short and be like you know this is the environment, this is what’s going on and this is what’s happening to you, it’s happening to your family, you live here, the refinery is here, and it’s affecting you.
GENYSYS
How do you go about getting information about environmental issues? Where do you find your facts?
LUCIA (on tape)
My facts I get from different resources, like I go throughout, we have meetings with the board of supervisors and the district and I’ve actually gotten to meet a lot of the district’s supervisors and the board of supervisors and the county supervisors and actually sit down with them and talk about these issues and they give information and we have different lawyers and different scientists and different people from the refinery actually, you know people that work in the refinery actually tell us things.
My main message is that wisdom is power and power comes from information and information you can get from research. Do your research and get the power and be encouraged and do the work.
GENYSYS
Meeting Lucia Flores was inspiring to me. She is able to balance being a high school student and an environmental organizer all at once. If more young people would take that initiative to fight environmental injustice, then the world would be a different place.
- That story was produced by Youth Radio’s Environmental Desk in association with National Geographic.
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