The first all-female group of winners hails from Colombia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, the UK and the US.
This year’s prestigious Goldman Environment Prize has been awarded to six grassroots environmental activists from around the world for their efforts to fight climate change and save biodiversity.
For the first time since the award was created by philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman in 1989, the award recipients are all women: Iroro Tanshi from Nigeria; Borim Kim from South Korea; Sarah Finch from the United Kingdom; Thionila Roka Matbob from Papua New Guinea; Alanna Akaak Hurley from the United States; and Uvelís Morales Blanco from Colombia.
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Sometimes described as the “Green Nobel”, Goldman Prize recipients are chosen from each of six priority regions of the world. They each receive $200,000 in prize money.
“While we are working hard to protect the environment and enact life-saving climate policies in the U.S. and globally, it is clear that true leaders can be found all around us,” said John Goldman, vice president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation.
“The 2026 award winners are proof positive that courage, hard work and hope go a long way toward meaningful progress.”
Morales Blanco, winner of the South and Central America region, fought some of the world’s largest oil companies to successfully stop the start of commercial fracking in Colombia.
The 24-year-old grew up in a family of fishermen along the Magdalena River in the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches. “We had nothing except River – she was like a mother who took care of me,” she said.
They began organizing protests in 2018 after a major oil spill caused dozens of local families to relocate and thousands of animals to die. His activism, which made him the target of intimidation and forced him to temporarily relocate, helped stop the projects and raise fracking as an issue in Colombia’s 2022 elections.
Two of the other five recipients of this year’s award have also focused their efforts on fighting fossil fuels, which are causing both global climate change and more local pollution around the world.
Asia’s winner Borim, who started the organization Youth 4 Climate Action, won a ruling from South Korea’s Constitutional Court that the government’s climate policy violated the constitutional rights of future generations, the first successful youth-led climate litigation in the continent.
European champion Finch told The Times newspaper that she would use her prize money to fight fossil fuels.
Together with the Weald Action Group, he fought oil drilling in southeastern England for more than a decade, and in June 2024 won the “Finch Ruling” from the Supreme Court, ruling that authorities must consider the impacts of fossil fuels on global climate before allowing them to be extracted.
Two other recipients have fought against the devastating environmental impact of mining projects.
Islands and Island Nations Champion Roka Matbobe of Papua New Guinea led a successful campaign that got Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, agreeing to address the environmental and social destruction caused by its Panguna copper mine, 35 years after it was closed following a rebellion.
And the award recipient for North America, Akak Hurley of the Yup’ik Nation in the US, successfully fought with 15 tribal nations to stop a mega-copper and gold mining project that threatened the ecosystem in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, including the world’s largest wild salmon run.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Tanshi, Africa’s conqueror, has rediscovered the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat and is working to save its refuge, Afi Mountains Wildlife Sanctuary, from human-induced wildfires.
