FOLLOW US

SAN FRANCISCO — For the first time in the 37-year history of what environmentalists affectionately call the "Green Nobel," every single recipient is a woman. The Goldman Environmental Prize on Tuesday named six grassroots activists — from the plains of Alaska to the oil fields of Colombia, from the lowlands of Papua New Guinea to the forests of Nigeria — as winners of its 2026 awards, marking an unprecedented all-female cohort in the prize's storied history.

The six women will each receive $200,000, the largest award in the world for grassroots environmental activism, at a ceremony at the San Francisco Opera House Tuesday night. Past winners have included Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wangari Maathai and Berta Cáceres — a lineage that elevates the 2026 class into the top tier of climate and conservation heroes on the planet.

The Six Winners And Their Fights

Representing Asia, Borim Kim of South Korea used a youth-led constitutional challenge to force Seoul to strengthen its greenhouse-gas emissions targets. Her organization, Youth 4 Climate Action, argued that the government's weak climate policies violated young Koreans' constitutional rights to life and a healthy environment. The Korean Constitutional Court agreed in 2024, handing down a landmark ruling that has since been cited in climate lawsuits on three continents.

Representing Europe, Sarah Finch of the United Kingdom spent more than a decade fighting oil drilling in southeastern England. Her patient legal campaign culminated in the 2024 Supreme Court decision known as the "Finch ruling," which held that British authorities must factor downstream fossil-fuel emissions into environmental impact assessments — a precedent that has already killed at least six planned drilling projects and is being used as a template by environmental lawyers worldwide.

Representing South and Central America, Yuvelis Morales Blanco of Colombia led a nationwide youth movement that successfully stopped commercial fracking in Colombia before it could begin. Her organization mobilized indigenous communities, small farmers and university students across the Magdalena Medio region to block a series of pilot projects backed by Colombia's largest oil companies and then pushed President Gustavo Petro's government to ban commercial fracking outright.

Representing Islands and Island Nations, Theonila Roka Matbob of Papua New Guinea won what may be the most improbable victory of the six. Thirty-five years after Rio Tinto's catastrophic Panguna copper mine was shut down amid civil unrest, leaving behind a polluted watershed and traumatized communities on the island of Bougainville, Roka Matbob led a campaign that forced the world's second-largest mining company to finally commit to remediation — environmental and social — of the site. She was 31 years old when the agreement was signed.