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Costa Rica

A celebrated world leader in sustainability, Costa Rica has been chosen as Champion of the Earth for policy leadership because of its pioneering role in the protection of nature and its commitment to ambitious policies to combat climate change.

Notably, the Central American nation has drafted a detailed plan to decarbonize its economy by 2050, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. It hopes to provide a template for other nations to do the same and curb the deadly emissions causing rapid, disastrous climate change.

“The decarbonization plan consists of maintaining an upward curve in terms of economic employment growth, and at the same time generating a downward curve in the use of fossil fuels in order to stop polluting. How are we going to achieve that? Through clean public transport, smart and resilient cities, sound waste management, sustainable agriculture and improved logistics,” said President Carlos Alvarado Quesada.

The plan includes bold mid- and long-term targets to reform transport, energy, waste and land use. The aim is to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, meaning the country will produce no more emissions than it can offset through actions such as maintaining and expanding its forests.

Costa Rica’s success in placing environmental concerns at the heart of its political and economic policies shows that sustainability is both achievable and economically viable. Officials say Costa Rica aims to change the paradigm of development, envisioning a consumption and production system that generates an environmental surplus rather than a deficit.

“In 2050, although it seems very distant, I hope I can tell my son, who is six years old now, and by then will be my age, that we did the right thing, we did what had to be done so that he could live in a better world, mainly because we tackled the effects of climate change,” President Alvarado Quesada said.

Costa Rica’s environmental credentials are impressive: more than 95 per cent of its energy is renewable, forest cover stands at more than 50 per cent after painstaking work to reverse decades of deforestation and around half of the country’s land is under some degree of protection.

In 2017, the country ran for a record 300 days solely on renewable power. The aim is to achieve 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2030. Seventy per cent of all buses and taxis are expected to be electric by 2030, with full electrification projected for 2050.

Costa Rica’s groundbreaking role in promoting clean technologies and sustainability is all the more remarkable for the fact that the country of around 5 million people produces only 0.4 per cent of global emissions.

The Champion of the Earth award recognizes Costa Rica’s sustainability credentials and also spotlights the urgent need to find solutions to climate change. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require unprecedented changes to reduce carbon emissions by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050.

Champions of the Earth is the United Nations’ flagship global environmental award. It was established by the UN Environment Programme in 2005 to celebrate outstanding figures whose actions have had a transformative positive impact on the environment. From world leaders to environmental defenders and technology inventors, the awards recognize trailblazers who are working to protect our planet for the next generation.

Previous laureates from the region include Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile, for her outstanding leadership in creating marine protected areas and for boosting renewable energy (2017), former Brazilian environment minister Izabella Teixeira for her visionary leadership and key role in reversing deforestation of the Amazon (2013) and Mexican ecologist José Sarukhán Kermez for a lifetime of leadership and innovation in the conservation of biodiversity in Mexico and around the world (2016).

In 2010, Costa Rica was awarded the Future Policy Award by the World Future Council in recognition of its 1998 biodiversity law, which was held up as a model for other nations to follow.

Fridays for Future Movement

Fridays for Future is a dynamic global student movement pushing for immediate action on climate change through active campaigning and advocacy. It was chosen as Champion of the Earth for inspiration and action because of its role in highlighting the devastating effects of climate change.

Fridays for Future has millions of passionate activists who insist that their voices be heard on what many see as the defining issue of their generation. The movement was inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who sat in protest in front of the Swedish parliament for three weeks last year to draw attention to the climate emergency.

Now every month, students around the world take to the streets to demand that politicians do more to acknowledge and act upon the reality and severity of climate change. These regular marches have attracted more than one million young people in more than 100 countries. As Thunberg says: “Everybody is welcome. Everybody is needed”.

The Fridays for Future movement has electrified the global conversation about climate change at a time when the window of opportunity to avoid the worst effects of rising temperatures is closing. Global emissions are reaching record levels and show no sign of peaking. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying and extreme weather events are becoming more common and more destructive around the world.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said he understands the anger of the youth and that their voices give him hope for the future.

In June, Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement were honoured with Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience award, which celebrates people who have shown unique leadership and courage in standing up for human rights.

The passion and energy displayed by the members of the Fridays for Future movement offer hope that global leaders can be persuaded to act to reduce carbon emissions within 12 years and hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C and even, as asked by the latest science, to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Previous winners of the Champions of the Earth award for inspiration and action include Afroz Shah, an Indian lawyer who organized the world’s biggest beach clean-up project in Mumbai (2016); the Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit from South Africa (2015); and Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo, a community-based conservation activist from Mexico (2013).

Patagonia

Since Patagonia was founded in 1973 by renowned environmentalist and entrepreneur Yvon Chouinard, the US outdoor apparel brand has won plaudits for its sustainable supply chains and advocacy for the environment. The company recently updated its mission statement to reflect the urgency of the environmental crisis: “We’re in business to save our home planet”.
Patagonia was chosen as Champion of the Earth for entrepreneurial vision because of a dynamic mix of policies that has put sustainability at the heart of its successful business model.

From a small company making tools for climbers, Patagonia has become a global leader in sustainability. Its drive to preserve the planet runs through the entire business from the products made and the materials used to the donation of money to environmental causes.

Patagonia describes itself as The Activist Company, and it is clear about its aims: “At Patagonia, we appreciate that all life on earth is under threat of extinction. We aim to use the resources we have—our business, our investments, our voice and our imaginations—to do something about it.”

Nearly 70 per cent of Patagonia’s products are made from recycled materials, including plastic bottles, and the goal is to use 100 per cent renewable or recycled materials by 2025. The company also uses hemp and organic cotton. It is committed to simplicity, utility and durability—a novel undertaking in a world where fast fashion is the norm for many companies and consumers.

Patagonia has a Worn Wear Program to encourage consumers to repair and recycle their products, striking a blow against the fast-fashion culture that sees customers locked in a vicious cycle of consumption and waste.

Patagonia also invests in the future. Since 1986, the company has contributed at least 1 per cent of annual sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment. In 2002, Chouinard and Craig Mathews, founder of Blue Ribbon Flies, created a non-profit organization—1% for the Planet—to encourage other companies to do the same.

Thanks to its 1 per cent pledge, Patagonia has provided more than US$100 million to grassroot organizations and helped train thousands of young activists over the past 35 years.

In 2018, Patagonia said it would give an additional US$10 million from the 2017 federal tax cut to grassroots groups defending the planet’s air, water and land, as well as those involved in the regenerative organic agriculture movement—a holistic approach to growing crops that prioritizes soil health and aims to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Patagonia is working with around 100 small farmers who grow cotton using regenerative practices in India, and it plans to expand this to 450. The farmers control pests with traps, and weed and gather the cotton by hand. Regenerative agriculture has long been a priority for Patagonia, both for its clothing and its line of food products, Patagonia Provisions, which aims to reshape the food chain.

As part of its advocacy on environmental issues, the company has also set up Patagonia Action Works, which connects committed individuals to organizations working on environmental issues in the same community.

Champions of the Earth is the United Nations’ flagship global environmental award. It was established by the UN Environment Programme in 2005 to celebrate outstanding figures whose actions have had a transformative positive impact on the environment. Laureates have included heads of state, environmental defenders and technology pioneers.

Previous laureates in the entrepreneurial vision category include India’s Cochin International Airport, the world’s first solar power airport (2018); Paul Polman, the former Chief Executive Officer of Unilever (2015); and the U.S. Green Building Council, a private not-for-profit organization that is transforming buildings across the world (2014).

In 2017, Patagonia was awarded the Accenture Strategy Award for Circular Economy Multinational at the World Economic Forum in Davos for driving innovation and growth while reducing dependence on scarce natural resources.

Robert Bullard

The revolution began with magic markers for Robert Bullard, winner of this year’s Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement award. It was 1978 and the American sociologist and environmental activist was three years out of grad school when his wife, a lawyer, told him one day she was suing the state of Texas.

“There was a waste disposal company that was trying to place a landfill in the middle of a Black middle-class community in Houston," he recalled recently. "And she needed evidence to support a restraining order. I was all she had.”

So, with six graduate students and an armful of red, green, orange, yellow and black magic markers, Bullard set out to conduct what was one of America’s first ethnographic ‘windshield studies’, using the markers to identify neighborhoods, residents and polluting industries. What he found was sobering, though unsurprising.

In the city of Houston, where just one in four residents was Black, all city-owned landfills and six of eight city-owned incinerators were in Black neighborhoods. Three of the four privately owned landfills were located in Black neighborhoods. More than 80 percent of all the garbage in Houston – one of America’s biggest cities – was being disposed of in Black communities.

Bullard's wife, Linda McKeever Bullard, and the community group she represented would ultimately lose the class action lawsuit that followed, Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corp. But it set an important precedent: it was America's first-ever suit against polluters charging environmental racism under civil rights law. And it set Bullard off on a course of inquiry that has grown into a movement for environmental justice.

“It was an awakening for me. I decided I am not going to do dead white men sociology. I am going to do kick-ass sociology,” said Bullard. “So, we expanded the Houston study and began to look across the southern United States – the part of the country they call Dixie. We found that environmental oppression was rooted in systemic racism. It was stamped into its DNA.”

A systemic problem
His investigations culminated in Dumping in Dixie, the first of 18 books that Bullard has authored or co-authored. It traced freed Black communities as they purchased property in the formerly slave-owning South – and the polluting companies that swiftly followed them. The book showed that in addition to being deprived of infrastructure and education, sanitation and clean water, these descendants of slaves and their families were also being exposed to higher-than-average levels of pollutants, compromising their health and well-being for generations. For far too long, said Bullard, his path was a lonely one. Environmental advocates, who were largely white, told him that racial justice was not in their wheelhouse. Civil rights groups insisted that pollution was not their problem.

“It took us almost 25 years until the two movements merged, until folks on both sides woke up to the realization that what we were experiencing in low-income and communities of colour was a form of systemic racism with detrimental health impacts,” said Bullard. “Not only that, but that these environmental disparities were having detrimental effects on life expectancy, home ownership and transformative wealth creation.”

Bullard is now a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University and Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. He has a career spanning 40 years and says his primary goal now is teaching young people how to advocate for change. He cautions them that “the quest for justice is no sprint. It’s a marathon relay (where we must) pass the baton to the next generation of freedom fighters.”

Bullard, who counts the legendary civil rights leader and social science pioneer W.E.B Du Bois as his hero, said it’s critical that young advocates learn how to use research and science to support their crusade for justice. When underserved and marginalized communities are armed with evidence and facts, the weight of their protest is enhanced, he adds. “We have always been taking research we produced and translating it into action that communities can own and take to whatever venue – the city council, the state legislature, congress, the presidency – to change things.”

An international issue

The United States isn’t the only country suffering from inequality, said Bullard, who sees the United Nations as a standard-bearer in the effort to address social ills, like poverty.

“The United Nations is in the position to talk about and implement the moral imperative to start dealing with some of these huge disparities in health and wealth – to redress and correct inequities and structural disparities,” he said. “Globalization has made the world a much smaller place. We are starting to see how we are all connected and how we have to together deal with the stressors coming down the road.”

In according Bullard the Lifetime Achievement award, United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen paid tribute to someone she called an ally of the environmental movement, hailing his vision, his commitment and his role in mentoring the environmental justice advocates of tomorrow.

“Robert Bullard has shown us how one person can mobilize others to build a movement for the planet and for social justice,” she said. “His commitment to the idea that all people, regardless of background, have a right to clean air and clean water reflects a human-rights based approach to the environment, which is critical for global discourse. UNEP is honoured to recognize this pioneer with our highest possible award.”

Bullard says the biggest reward is the people around him, for whom the struggle – and the small victories – are real.

“There is a long arc of justice, and we have to understand that this is not instant oatmeal. If we get you all to understand that these struggles are long term, we will reach that North Star: justice, fairness and equity for all.”

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth and the Young Champions of the Earth honour individuals, groups and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment.

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Professor Robert Bullard is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

By showcasing news of the significant work being done on the environmental frontlines, the Champions of the Earth awards aim to inspire and motivate more people to act for nature. The awards are part of UNEP’s #ForNature campaign to rally momentum for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming in May 2021, and catalyze climate action all the way to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021.

Frank Bainimarama

For his persistence and commitment to action against climate change for Pacific Island Nations, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) today announced Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama of Fiji as a 2020 Champion of the Earth for Policy Leadership.

Under the Prime Minister’s leadership, Fiji has taken bold and decisive actions to draw global attention to the consequences of climate change and rising sea levels. The country was the first to ratify the Paris Agreement – which marks its fifth anniversary tomorrow – and is pursuing a national strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 across its entire economy.

“Prime Minister Bainimarama has demonstrated the leadership and ambition demanded by the escalating global climate emergency,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “Evacuated Pacific Island communities show us the consequence of moving too slowly. Whether it is protecting coral reefs or strengthening energy policy, the transformative policies Fiji is taking under Bainimarama’s leadership illuminates the path we must take together in the battle to heal our planet.”

As an advocate not only for Fiji but for other island nations, Prime Minister Bainimarama has used his global platform to draw the links between climate change and the health of the world’s waterways. In presiding over the COP23 Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, in 2017 – the same year Fiji co-hosted the first UN Oceans Conference – he urged Member States to consider the importance of a healthy and functioning ocean, what he called, “the single most important factor influencing climate.”

“The science is very clear about the consequences of a global temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius, and we cannot let that happen,” noted Prime Minister Bainimarama. “If nothing is done soon, human survival will be threatened. We cannot afford to take that gamble.”

Protection of waterways, reefs and related ecosystems is only part of Fiji’s climate conscious national strategy. The country has doubled down on an ambitious renewable energy policy, and is also turning to the forests that cover about 55 per cent of its landmass to increase carbon sinks and lower the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The country’s national development and growth strategies incorporate both climate and finance considerations, while a rural electrification scheme has helped to reduce diesel emissions across the country for its nearly one million people.

Fiji raised some US$50 million in 2017 through the first-ever sovereign ‘green bond’ issued by an emerging market, supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Fiji’s commitment to the region does not end with its advocacy against climate change; in addition to developing relocation plans for its own people who are displaced by climatological events, the country has offered permanent refuge to the displaced people of its Pacific neighbours Kiribati and Tuvalu.

“Beyond being a leader, my wife and I have a far more important role as grandparents,” Prime Minister Bainimarama said on receiving the Champions of the Earth award. “As grandparents, we have to create a better future for our grandchildren. Today their future looks bleak. We, as Leaders, have the opportunity to make this right. This worry is the only thing that keeps me awake at night. This is my commitment, and I will continue to request all Leaders’ absolute support in winning this fight for our grandchildren.”

UNEP’s Champions of the Earth awards are the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama is one of six laureates announced 11 December 2020.

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Frank Bainimarama is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030

Yacouba Sawadogo

The West African nation of Burkina Faso is landlocked, arid and is home to an agricultural innovation that has revolutionized farming in African countries battling the effects of drought and climate change. That’s thanks to the patience and determination of Yacouba Sawadogo, winner of the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2020 Champions of the Earth award for Inspiration and Action.

Sawadogo, known locally as “the man who stopped the desert”, modified a traditional cultivation practice called Zaï, which allows crops to grow in pits that trap rainfall, even in regions beset by water shortages. His technique, now nearly four decades old, is used by farmers across a 6,000-kilometre stretch of Africa.

“Back in the 1980s, we had good land, and not so great land,” recalls Sawadogo, who lives in a semi-rural region of the country north of the capital, Ouagadougou, where much of the local economy depends on rain-fed agriculture. “But over time we have really seen a decline in the quality of our soil and the productivity of our fields.”

In the early 1980s that slow decline culminated in a crippling famine both in Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries.

“People were leaving, and the animals and trees were dying,” said Sawadogo. “So, we had to look at a new way to farm because, all of the good soil was disappearing, and if we stayed here doing nothing, our life was at risk.”

Traditionally, farmers in Burkina Faso would not touch their fields until the start of Burkina Faso’s rainy season. But Sawadogo innovated, modifying the traditional irrigation technique Zaï - which means “to start early” in the Mossi language – preparing his land well before the rain.

The results were striking, the soil improved along with his crop yield. He was also able to grow trees in the arid ground. Four decades on he has created a 40-hectare forest on his land with more than 60 species of bushes and trees.

Digging Deeper
Farmers who practice Zaï dig small pits into degraded soils or hardpans, and then place organic material, like compost or natural fertilizer, into the pit. Sawadoga’s modifications use wider and deeper pits with stones to aid water retention, and termites to help break up the hard ground. As soon as rainfall starts, seeds are planted in the pits, which collect and concentrate water at the plant, reducing water stress in a region of low and erratic rainfall. It is a labour-intensive process, Sawadogo admits, but says, “if you want to have a good yield, you have to start early.”

Studies of Zaï suggest that by providing what is essentially a funnel that directs rain to the roots of a plant, farmers may increase their yields by anything from 100 to 500 per cent. That is a boon for those who rely on subsistence farming not only to feed their families but to pay for school fees, hospital bills and other essentials.

“Yacouba Sawadogo is a pioneer who would not let people’s skepticism deter him from finding a solution to the challenges in his community,” said Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. “Zaï farming has helped improve crop yields and livelihoods for small-holder farmers, and by matching it with a message about preservation of forests and indigenous plants, Yacouba Sawadogo has demonstrated the critical role communities can play in protecting our environment.”

Seeding a movement
Zaï farming techniques got a boost across Burkina Faso during the late 1980s when the government of President Thomas Sankara embraced the process. Now, says Sawadogo, around 95 per cent of farmers in his region are proponents of Zaï. The techniques have also radiated outward, reaching countries in the Sahel, and further across the continent, through Ghana, Chad and even in Kenya, where semi-arid lands are threatened by the same cycles of drought and rain.

Zaï is also one of the many indigenous land use techniques at the heart of the Great Green Wall programme, Africa’s flagship initiative to combat land degradation, desertification and drought.

Yet even with Zaï, Sawadogo says ruefully, the impact of climate change is visible, dangerous and only accelerating for the farmers of his region and beyond.

“The biggest challenge for our farmers is drought. A warming earth means lower yields,” he says. “Even those among us with no formal training know that trees and grasses and other plants can stave off the effects of climate change. But they can’t fix our harvests.”

Inspiring others
Sawadogo harbours no illusions about the challenges that confront the communities he is trying to help make more self-sufficient, most of whom are eking out modest livings in some of the most unforgiveable terrain. He spends a lot of time talking to people, teaching them about Zaï, but also about climate change, the need for reforestation and the value of preserving indigenous plants and trees. In his region, there is just a single hospital serving tens of thousands of people. Most depend on the forest for medicinal plants, and Sawadogo is now working to protect Burkina Faso’s fragile tree cover.

Sawadogo says the success of those efforts will ultimately lie with younger generations, who are increasingly pushing for environmental change.

“It’s not possible to avoid hardship or to be challenged by other people for your goals,” he says. “You have to be ready to challenge them back and defend your position. The world is counting on it.”

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Yacouba Sawadogo is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

Dr. Fabian Leendertz

Fabian Leendertz, a veterinarian who has helped trace the origin of some of the world’s deadliest disease outbreaks, has been named the 2020 Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation.

Leendertz has led ground-breaking investigations into pathogens like Anthrax and Ebola, exploring how the contagions jump between animals and humans. He led a group of researchers who tracked a 2014 outbreak of Ebola back to a single, bat-filled tree in Guinea.

“What is amazing is to do science that has an effect,” said Leendertz. “Doing work in an innovative environment, that I can see in my lifetime is having an effect, is really motivating.”

Leendertz became interested in zoonotic diseases – contagions that vault between humans and animals – while doing PhD research on chimpanzees in Côte D'Ivoire. That started a lifelong career in primate ecology and pathogens, the micro-organisms that transmit disease.

“I started with a focus on the health and disease of these wild chimpanzees,” explains Leendertz. “From there it was the logical next step to see if the pathogens we find in great apes would also be found in the human population, and to learn where the pathogens come from.”

He now heads the eponymous Leendertz Lab focusing on zoonosis at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. His team investigates the sources and reservoirs of microorganisms in wild primates and other animals, and their transmission between species. Leendertz was recently named as one of ten researchers selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Investigating the source of Ebola
In 2014, days after Ebola was confirmed in Guinea, Leendertz led a team of 17 anthropologists, ecologists and vets charged with finding the source of the virus outbreak. Their work centred on the village of Meliandou, where some of the earliest cases were found.

“When we told the residents we were there to find out how this had happened they were keen to assist,” he explains. “They helped guide our team, because they know their village, they know where the animals are.”

Their information helped the team track the outbreak from what scientists believed was patient zero, a two-year-old boy in Meliandou, to a tree home to a colony of Angolan free-tailed bats. These bats are suspected to be one of the Ebola reservoir species.

Leendertz is quick to credit the local scientists across Africa that he collaborates with on these pathogen investigations. These interdisciplinary teams with their multifaceted approaches have been key to tracing the origins of diseases.

Leendertz incorporates a One Health approach to his work on zoonotic disease outbreaks. This means integrating public health, veterinary medicine and environmental expertise. His lab is part of the African Network for Improved Diagnostics, Epidemiology and Management of Common Infectious Agents. Working with four partner countries – Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa – the network helps states detect, respond to and prevent common infectious diseases, including COVID-19.

The increasing risk of pandemics
During his two decades in the field, Leendertz says diseases with “pandemic potential” are increasingly threatening humanity.

Urban population growth, agricultural encroachment and illegal mining are destroying the buffer zones that separate humans from wild animals, even in and around national parks. “With more people and more presence in the parks, the risk of micro-organisms and the exchange of pathogens between humans and wildlife is a rising risk.”

Once a disease makes the jump, its potential to become a pandemic is also mounting, he says. “People are more connected. There is better accessibility to remote areas, so if you have a spill over from a pathogen to the human population it is easier for it to reach a big city and from there to travel around the world.”

Leendertz cautions diseases can also jump from people to animals, sometimes with devastating effects. Great apes he was studying at the Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire, for example, were inadvertently being infected by guides and researchers. Leendertz’s work resulted in the 2015 publication of hygiene and training guidelines for humans, including tourists, who enter national parks with great apes.

He and 25 experts also published a letter in Nature calling for tourism and research trips to be halted amid COVID-19, fearing the disease could vault into the ape population. They noted, “Such efforts should include ways to offset loss of earnings from tourism, while taking care not to interfere with work to save human lives.”

“2020 has shown us how devastating pandemics are to our lives and our economies. The research Dr. Leendertz has conducted over the past two decades is crucial in helping us understand not only where these diseases come from, but also what is causing them,” said United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen. “The science is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of zoonotic diseases in the years ahead. To prevent future outbreaks, we must protect and restore our natural environment.”

Leendertz says everyone can help protect wild animals through their consumer choices and the politicians they support. “Environment, human and animal health are connected,” he says. “We need to see this bigger picture and support those who work and fight to protect and restore nature.”

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Fabian Leendertz is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

Mindy Lubber

What defines Mindy Lubber as an advocate, and what makes her such a fitting winner of the 2020 Champions of the Earth award for Entrepreneurial Vision, is her ability to change not only hearts and minds but also the way money flows around the world.

Lubber is the head of Ceres, a non-profit organization that shows investors and multinational corporations how to factor sustainability risks like climate change, water pollution and deforestation into what they do and how they invest. Ceres is also working to improve regulatory and policy systems to ensure investors and companies are mandated to factor climate risk and water risk into their work.

In her 17 years at the organization, Lubber has been proving that it is possible to be profitable as well as environmentally and socially responsible.

“It’s not just policy and people. It’s also markets because whether we like it or not, they drive so much of the world,” she says.

When Lubber talks about “markets”, she’s referring to capital markets, a broad term that includes the policies that govern our financial system as well as the trade in financial instruments, like stocks and bonds.

Ceres, and other organizations like it, use hard data to convince investors and corporations that investments in technologies like solar power, wind energy and water recycling can be a boon for the bottom line. The goal is to spur investments that align with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). (Climate Action 100+, an initiative Ceres helped co-found, has more than 500 investors with $47 trillion in assets under management.)

“To make real progress against climate change, the Paris Agreement and SDG agenda must be part of the imperative of business, not something to hold your nose at and fight against,” says Lubber.

A lifetime visionary
Long before she got involved in capital markets, Lubber was honing her advocacy skills alongside the consumer advocate Ralph Nader. She rose through the ranks of the Massachusetts chapter of the Public Interest Research Group to become its director. Gradually, her interest in consumer protection was surpassed by an even greater passion: a commitment to be a steward not only of the Earth but also of its inhabitants.

“Sustainability is the future of the planet and of its people,” she says. “You cannot have a just and sustainable future without humanity – the subjugation of women, or poverty, or food shortages... all of these are conditions that people cannot survive in.”

As the founder and CEO of the impact investment firm Green Century Capital Management in the early 1990s, Lubber remembers the skepticism and cynicism that greeted pitches for environmentally focused investments.

Now, she says with a note of triumph, “it’s normal business. So, we have to go further. We have to change the way we do business, and we still have a long way to go.”

United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen calls Lubber “a lifetime visionary...who sees the complex intersections between humanity and the world around them not as a challenge but as an opportunity. We are proud to celebrate Mindy Lubber as a 2020 Champion of the Earth, she demonstrates that with careful planning and collaboration, there needs not be a confrontation between environmental sustainability and economic growth.”

Sending the right signals
Lubber is proud of Ceres’ efforts to integrate sustainability into capital markets, and their success in demonstrating that acting on climate is good for the economy, not a burden.

In 2004, Ceres partnered with the United Nations Foundation to host a biennial investors summit on climate risk. Responses from companies were initially tepid: some sent interns. But today, the forum is a gathering place for CEOs, political leaders, major investors and development experts.

“It’s become a very special part of our history and partnership,” she says.

Lubber works directly with nearly 120 companies, and indirectly with hundreds more to develop and implement target-driven roadmaps for sustainability. She, and Ceres, also work with 198 investors including the largest pension funds in the US whose portfolios hold the biggest companies in our economy.

“When the largest owners of the largest companies say we want to see you act, and change, it’s a very different response,” she says.

These investors, she says were critical to the success of the Paris Agreement, the landmark global commitment to combat climate change reached in 2015.

“Capital markets work if there are honest pricing signals,” she says. “Our job, when it comes to sustainability and the impacts of environmental degradation, is to find those signals.”

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Mindy Lubber is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

Nemonte Nenquimo

Nemonte Nenquimo didn’t ask to be a celebrity, not to become friends with Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio, nor to be named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in the world.

What the indigenous rights activist wanted was for her four-year-old daughter to live in peace, surrounded by the richness of the Amazon rainforest, in her ancestral lands deep in the middle of Ecuador.

“I grew up surrounded by the songs of the wise women of my community who said the green forest that we see today is there because our ancestors protected it,” said Nenquimo, a member of the Waorani indigenous community, who says she is of “warrior blood."

Nenquimo, winner of the 2020 United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth award for Inspiration and Action, has continued that legacy of environmental stewardship. But her weapon of choice has been a modern one: the lawsuit.

In February 2019, the Waorani filed suit against the Ecuadorian government, claiming officials failed to consult with them before offering huge swaths of the Amazon rainforest to oil companies. An estimated one million indigenous people, representing more than 400 different communities, reside in the forest, but their livelihoods, land rights and self-determination have been challenged by central governments for generations.

A decision in April of that year in the Pastaza Provincial Court was historic, protecting 500,000 acres of Waorani territory in the rainforest from exploitation.

In June 2020, a provincial court ordered that improvements be made to the monitoring of illegal mining and logging, along with drug trafficking, on the grounds that those industries were vectors of COVID-19.

“As indigenous people we must unite in a single objective: that we demand that they respect us,” said Nenquimo. “The Amazon is our home and it is not for sale.”

UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said Nenquimo’s lawsuit win was a seminal moment for indigenous communities in the Amazon basin.

“At least a quarter of the world’s land area is owned, managed, used or occupied by indigenous peoples and local communities,” she said. “Their contribution is essential to halt degradation of these ecosystems. Inclusion of indigenous communities in policy-making and supporting environmental defenders like Nemonte Nenquimo are at the heart of UNEP’s efforts to protect the environment.”

Working with Indigenous communities
In addition to safeguarding the Amazon, Nenquimo is also pressing for other rights for indigenous communities. Her organization, the Coordinating Council of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador-Pastaza, works with indigenous non-profit Ceibo Alliance (Alianza Ceibo), which Nenquimo co-founded in 2014. The alliance brings together four different indigenous nations – the A'i Kofan, the Siekopai, the Siona and the Waorani to confront threats to their rainforest territories and cultural survival. Ceibo Alliance also builds sustainable indigenous-led alternatives for the protection of their lands and livelihoods by improving access to education, involving young people in leadership, promoting solar energy, and creating economic opportunities for women.

Celebrity connections
Indigenous self-determination and environmental stewardship are also focus areas of Ceibo Alliance’s sister organization, Amazon Frontlines, which Nenquimo helped to establish and which received early support from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. In partnership with indigenous and environmental organizations, the Amazon Frontlines works to build indigenous capacity and autonomy to protect the Amazon’s ecological systems and address climate issues.

It’s through this initiative that Nemonte got to know and eventual friend, the Oscar-winning actor, who nominated her for Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

“It motivates me that the world is recognizing our collective struggle, and the struggle of indigenous peoples in many countries,” she said. “Thanks to this international recognition, we want to keep fighting.”

Nenquimo sees a growing desire among countries to address deforestation in the Amazon. That push, she says, can’t come too soon. This year, the region endured the worst cycle of forest fires in a generation, with more than 76,000 blazes burning across the Amazon basin over the dry months of June, July and August.

“If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed little by little, of course, that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change,” said Nenquimo. “The struggle we do is for all humanity because we all live connected to the land.”

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Nemonte Nenquimo is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

Maria Kolesnikova

If a picture is worth a thousand words, for Maria Kolesnikova, this year’s Champion of the Earth for Entrepreneurial Vision, a picture was worth starting a movement.

It was 2016 and Kolesnikova, a public relations professional, then aged 28, was volunteering for MoveGreen, a youth-led environmental organization in the Kyrgyz Republic.

There, someone showed Kolesnikova a picture of Bishkek, looking down from the mountains that surround the Kyrgyz capital. “Only you couldn’t see the city,” she said. “Bishkek was just covered in this blanket of grey. We didn’t know what to call it; what we knew was that it was really bad.”

Bishkek, home to roughly 1 million people is among the world’s cities with the worst air pollution. During winter months, it is often trapped under a dome of smog derived both from its natural environment – the city’s temperature is, on average, 5°C warmer than its surroundings – and smoke from the coal used to heat most homes. “We wanted to understand more about what was in the air that we were breathing, and what data the city was collecting in order to try and make things better,” said Kolesnikova. “But we didn’t find any relevant, actual data – either it was not being collected or it was not being shared. So, we decided to produce data ourselves.”

A modest beginning
MoveGreen started with just three sensors to measure air quality, namely, by monitoring for the first time in the Kyrgyz Republic, the levels of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) – produced by burning coal and other fuels, combustion, and dust. In high enough concentrations, it can cause inflammation of the lungs and other respiratory illnesses. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution causes up to 7 million deaths every year.

When the first measurements came back, Kolesnikova and the team at MoveGreen took a bold decision. Launching a campaign called “School Breathes Easily”, they took their message to a population that was ready to listen: Bishkek’s schoolchildren. Globally, 93 per cent of children live in environments where air pollution levels are above WHO guidelines. Around 600,000 die prematurely each year because of air pollution, and exposure to dirty air can also impair cognitive and motor development and puts children at greater risk for chronic disease later in life.

In Bishkek, sensors were installed in schools to measure air quality so that classrooms could keep their windows closed when the air pollution was too much. Educators also used the data to warn parents about keeping their children from being exposed to the fine particulates. Today, there are over 100 sensors installed in the city and region.

The success of the school-based campaign encouraged Kolesnikova, who by this time had risen to become the Director of MoveGreen. It was not enough to collect the data; a movement was needed to convince decision-makers to improve Bishkek’s air quality.

MoveGreen developed an app, now available globally, called AQ.kg a real-time collector and transmitter of actionable data about air quality. The application aggregates data every 20 minutes from the two largest Kyrgyz cities, Bishkek and Osh, about the concentration of pollutants in the air, including the tiny particle PM2.5 and its larger cousin, PM10.

“Our data has been challenged, our methods have been challenged – by those who say that citizen monitoring data is unreliable,” said Kolesnikova. “But we kept having meetings and we kept going back and now, they listen. The result of our work has been connection with the government, to improve environmental monitoring in Bishkek, to do a better job of monitoring and reducing emissions.”

“Kolesnikova’s work reflects how individuals and citizens can drive environmental change by leveraging the power of science and data”, said Inger Andersen Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. “So often, people wonder if there’s anything they can do to combat pollution, climate change and the other threats to the planet. Maria Kolesnikova proves that there is. Her dedication is remarkable and shows that we can all play a role in putting the planet on the path to a better future.”

Future plans
MoveGreen’s plans in coming months include calling for policies at the municipal and national level to develop bills that require regular public information sessions about the results of air quality measurements. The Kyrgyz Republic has committed to global targets to fight climate change, including an unconditional goal of reducing Green House Gas emissions by over 16 per cent by 2025.

There are immense opportunities for alternative energy sources; just 10 per cent of Kyrgyzstan’s hydropower potential has been developed, and other renewable energy options could include boosting heating and electricity supply through wind, solar and biogas. There are immense opportunities for alternative energy sources; just 10 per cent of Kyrgyzstan’s hydropower potential has been developed, and other renewable energy options could include boosting heating and electricity supply through solar, wind, a biogas, a fuel often produced from agricultural waste.

According to Kolesnikova, if there was more investment in science in Kyrgyzstan, the country would be able to engineer its own solutions and create an eco-friendly society that exists in harmony with the nature around it, including her beloved mountains.

Because air pollution has no borders, Kolesnikova and MoveGreen are entering into regional arrangements with other Central Asian countries. Her goal is to convince the region’s six states to collaborate on ways to tackle air pollution in their growing cities. Putting in place systems and standards to assess air quality will be critical. A recent UNEP study found that only 57 countries continuously monitor air quality, while 104 have no monitoring infrastructure in place.

Kolesnikova says she’s driven by the desire to make the world a better place.

“So often, you can get demotivated as an activist – you work so hard, don't see results of your endeavors and, finally, you feel like you don’t want to keep going. But then you realize, no. Someone has to take responsibility for the future. Why shouldn’t it be me?”

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth and the Young Champions of the Earth recognize individuals, groups and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment. Presented annually, the Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared the years 2021 through 2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations together with the support of partners, it is designed to prevent, halt, and reverse the loss and degradation of ecosystems worldwide. It aims at reviving billions of hectares, covering terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems. A global call to action, the UN Decade draws together political support, scientific research, and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration. Visit www.decadeonrestoration.org to learn more.