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Ron Finley, the “Gangsta Gardener” from Los Angeles, has been working to spread the word about importance of gardening for our planet, community, and our own soul. He is an activist and advocate who started gardening in the low-income neighborhood where he lives and, in the process, not only changed his own life but also influenced a whole lot of people in his neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles and beyond.
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Gloria Majiga-Kamoto is a program officer for the NGO Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy inMalawi, Africa. She led a grassroots movement, campaigning against the plastics industry andsucceeding in bringing about a national law in 2019 that banned the production, import, distribution,and use of single-use plastics there. Malawi produces about 75,000 metric tons of plastic a year, and80% of it is a single-use plastic products like plastic packaging, bags, bottles, and cups, so the ban is amajor victory against plastic pollution there. Read more
For over 20 years, Dr. Tero Mustonen has worked with Indigenous communities on conservation effortsacross Alaska, Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Sámi territories, and Northern Russia. He is theformer head of the village of Selkie, in Finland, and the President of the Snowchange Cooperative, anindependent nonprofit that extends the entire Arctic. Read more
Nemonte Nenquimo, from Waorani tribe, is fighting for indigenous rights in Ecuador. She has organizeda campaign and legal action of the indigenous groups aimed at protecting large swaths of Amazonrainforest and their tribal territory from oil extraction. Her fight is now joined by other tribes, aiming toprotect additional areas of rainforest from oil extraction. Read more
Delima Silalahi of North Sumatra, Indonesia, is a defender of the last intact Sumatran rainforests and therights of Batak Toba Indigenous peoples to maintain control over their ancestral area. She heads anonprofit advocacy organization, KSPPM, focused on forest protection on Sumatra — home to carbon-storing peatland and critically endangered tigers and rhinos. Read more
Umidjon Ulugov is working with NGO Peshsaf, in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, to remove toxic wastefrom the soil and rehabilitate polluted land throughout the country. Until 2021, Ulugov wascollaborating with Pure Earth/Blacksmith Institute in the USA to identify toxic sites and organize clean-up and inform people living on those sites about the health hazards they pose. Since 2021 he continuesthis work with Tajikistan’s own international organization EHPMI. Read more