Reuters-Seven Activists Receive Glo

[tinkyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Reuters-Seven Activists Receive Global Environment Prizes 

Seven Activists Receive Global Environment Prizes
02:14 p.m Apr 19, 1999 Eastern
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A lawyer campaigning for Cameroon's rainforests
and two Aboriginal women fighting an Australian uranium mine were among
seven activists awarded a top world environmental award Monday.

Other winners of this year's $125,000 Goldman environmental prizes included
a young Burmese man jailed and tortured for opposing government
environmental and human rights policies and a Canadian fisherman who has
organized grass-roots strategies for protecting world fish populations.

``During the past 10 years, the recipients of the prize have opened our eyes
to the obstacles and risks faced by individuals pursuing environmental
interests worldwide,'' Richard Goldman, president of the Goldman
Environmental Foundation, said in a statement.

``We believe that bringing attention to their issues raises the credibility
of these individuals and offers them personal protection.''

The San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation awards the prizes
annually to grass-roots environmentalists from six regions of the world.

This year's winner for Africa was lawyer Samuel Nguiffo of Cameroon, 33, who
has devoted his work to stopping the liquidation of the once-mighty
rainforests of central Africa's Congo Basin, second only to those in the
Amazon in size.

``What is happening at this moment in the Congo Basin cannot be supported by
anyone of good faith,'' Nguiffo said. ``It is unacceptable that the basis of
life for millions of individuals be destroyed in order to satisfy the greed
of a few private companies, that are generally foreign.''

>From Australia, Aboriginal activists Jacqui Katona, 33, and Yvonne
Margarula, 41, shared the prize for their efforts to stop mining of the
Jabiluka uranium deposits in Kakadu, Australia's largest national park and
site of numerous examples of ancient Aboriginal art.

Katona and Margarula have led a massive opposition campaign to the mining
plan, ranging from legal action to a massive civil disobedience
demonstration which resulted in 550 people being arrested, including the two
women.


Barnard Martin, 45, was this year's winner from north America, a fourth
generation fisherman from Newfoundland, Canada, who has used lessons learned
from the collapse of Canada's Atlantic fisheries to promote sustainable
fishing techniques around the world.

``When I speak to people in other parts of the world about the collapse of
Canada's East Coast fisheries, I like to say 'if we have nothing else to
offer at least take some lessons from us in how not to manage your
fisheries,''' Martin said. ''Ultimately, that may be our most valuable
fisheries export.''

The Asian award went to Ka Hsaw Wa, 28, of Myanmar (formerly known as
Burma), who was briefly jailed and tortured for participating in 1988
student protests and later fled into hiding in the forests, where he
developed into a committed chronicler of the links between environmental
depredation and human rights.

``By destroying our forests, our trees, our wild animals, and our rivers,
the Burmese dictatorship and its partners in crime also destroy who we
are,'' he said in a statement.

``Even though they have the money, guns and power, we have truth and justice
on our side to defend human rights and the environment.''

The two other winners of this year's prize were Jorge Varela of Honduras,
51, who has pioneered new models for sustainable commercial shrimp farms in
the delicate Gulf of Fonseca, and Slovakian hydrologist Michal Kravcik, 43,
who mobilized residents to block construction of a large dam that had been
conceived by Communist central planners before the ``Velvet Revolution'' of
1989.