For the first time in history, the Goldman Environmental Prize — often dubbed the “Green Nobel” — has been awarded entirely to women.

Since 1990, the prize has recognised ordinary people taking on extraordinary environmental battles.

The six winners this year are Theonila Roka Matbob (Bougainville), Yuvelis Morales Blanco (Colombia), Borim Kim (South Korea), Alannah Acaq Hurley (United States). Sarah Finch (England), and Iroro Tanshi (Nigeria).

This year’s theme for the awards was “Change Starts Where You Stand — we are all agents of change, every one of us”.

Their work spans environmental justice, mining and drilling, climate and energy, and wildlife protection, focusing on the breadth of challenges — and leadership — at the frontlines of the climate crisis.

At the awards ceremony, held on April 20 in San Francisco, the winners’ speeches addressed a multitude of issues plaguing the planet today.

“This award honours all of us. Those who stood against all odds, those who never wavered in speaking up against greed and destruction, who have shown up year after year, writing letters, testifying at hearings, protests, and raising their kids to value people over profit,” said Alannah Acaq Hurley, whose work has confronted the threat of mining across indigenous lands.

Borim Kim, another winner, noted: “Disasters are treated as individual tragedies to be endured, alone.”

Also among the winners is Pacific representative, Theonila Matbob, an Indigenous Nasioi woman from Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea.

Matbob said it was inspiring to be one of six women honoured, and that around the world, women were increasingly taking a leading role in land guardianship.

“It is becoming more prevalent that in land guardianship, and finding sustainable economic avenues to make a living and find an identity, that women are paying a lot of attention to issues that are impacting the human connection to land, and the responsibility of guardianship,” Matbob said.

An ‘extraordinary feat’
“It is no small feat to bring Bouganville to global attention… in a way, that is extraordinary.”

At just 35, Theonila Matbob’s advocacy has driven significant change, confronting the traumatic legacy of the Panguna Mine.

It has had a fraught history of violence, displacement and severe environmental damage during its operation between 1972 and 1989, sparking a decade-long civil war that killed 10,000 to 15,000 people and left around one billion tonnes of waste on the island.

According to Bougainville Copper Limited, in the 17 years prior to its closure in 1989 the Panguna Mine produced concentrate containing three million tonnes of copper, 306 tonnes of gold and 784 tonnes of silver. The production had a value of 5.2 billion PNG kina which represented approximately 44 percent of Papua New Guinea’s exports over that period.

Matbob herself grew up in the shadow of the mine, and the civil war it ignited.

As a child, she witnessed her father being dragged away by rebels as it unfolded.

He was later killed.

Refugee camp
Her mother took Matbob and her siblings to nearby Arawa, where she spent years of her childhood detained and displaced in a refugee camp, which was tightly controlled by the PNG Defence Force.

Matbob’s experiences shaped an instinctive and undeniable urge to address the environmental and social harms that this caused, resulting in years of advocacy work.

In 2013, she co-founded the John Roka Counselling and Learning Centre with her husband, an NGO supporting communities affected by the civil war through education and trauma counselling.

By 2014, Matbob wanted answers and reconciliation to address the impacts of the war, and the mine’s enduring harms.

She later worked with the Human Rights Law Centre to collect villagers’ testimonies on ongoing environmental damage. These testimonies informed the 2020 report After After the Mine: Living with Rio Tinto’s Deadly Legacy, which advanced efforts for recognition.

She is the lead complainant and campaigner for the Basikang clan in Bougainville, working through the government’s Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment to seek further accountability for the abandoned mine.

“When you have a lived experience, and you have all these episodic childhood memories… you find the right words to craft your story of accountability, and that’s sort of a win, in a way for my advocacy work,” Matbob said.

‘Tailoring your advocacy’
“You really tailor your advocacy to an intention that is focused. Sometimes you may come up with campaigns, but if you don’t have the lived experience to craft something… you can’t invest real passion. You find what your purpose is, in life as a guardian of the land and tribal child who belongs to a clan, a family,” she added.

In November 2024, mining giant Rio Tinto signed a landmark memorandum, addressing the environmental and social damage caused by the long-dormant mine.

Speaking to RNZ Pacific, Matbob said the award carries significant weight given the calibre of nominees for the Goldman Award.

“It is the highest environmental recognition in the world, but I believe my response would be — I am grateful for the personal growth and alignment in serving our real purpose. It’s a great networking platform, and a way to have more connectivity to other indigenous cultures.”

“But at the regional level, Bougainville is the big inspiration… Bougainville is, in no way, in the zones of being well-secured. We are not guaranteed a resource market, and so it is no small feat to bring Bougainville to global attention in a way like this that is extraordinary,” she said.

Translating into action
Matbob added that this recognition must now translate into action.

“Putting spotlight onto accountability. To use this platform to rise and demand commitment, because we can’t afford to wait any longer… or patiently wait for a solution, in a deal and a mess that was not part of our agreement.”

Looking forward, Matbob has advice for others.

“Defending the environment as a land guardian is a challenge. It’s intimidating. It comes with a lot of pressure, but that is your fight… be the person you are. You are equally powerful, and only when you dip your feet into the cold, that is where you will grow.

“Take no fear, have your mind right, listen to your guts and you will be able to be your authentic self as a land warrior. You owe it to your past generations, and you owe it to your future generations,” she said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Bougainville community leader and MP Theonila Roka Matbob has received the Gwynne Skinner Human Rights Award in recognition of her outstanding work to hold mining giant Rio Tinto to account for the legacy of environmental devastation caused by its former Panguna mine.

Matbob, 31, is a traditional landowner from Makosi, just downstream from the mine.

She was one of 156 Bougainville residents, represented by the Human Rights Law Centre, who last year filed a human rights complaint against the company with the Australian government.

The complaint received global media attention and led to Rio Tinto publicly committing in July to fund an independent human rights and environmental impact assessment of the mine.

“I’m deeply honoured to receive this award on behalf of myself and my people,” Matbob said.

“We have been living with the disastrous impacts of Panguna for many years and the situation is getting worse. Our communities live surrounded by the vast mounds of waste left over from the mine, which continue to poison our rivers with copper.

“Kids get sick from the pollution. The farms and villages of communities downstream are being flooded with mine waste.

“Many people lack basic access to clean water.

Years of struggle
“Now, after many years of struggle, at last we have an agreement with Rio Tinto to fund a proper investigation of these urgent problems to develop solutions.

“I would like to express my thanks to all those who have supported us to reach this point. But now is not the time to rest. Our work will continue until Rio Tinto has fully dealt with the disaster it left behind.”

Human Rights Law Centre legal director Keren Adams said that Matbob had worked tirelessly over the past few years to brings these issues to world attention and compel Rio Tinto to take responsibility for the devastating consequences.

“It is in large part thanks to her leadership and advocacy that the company has now taken the first important step towards addressing this legacy,” she said.

“At the same time as doing all this, Theonila ran for Parliament and was elected one of Bougainville’s youngest and only female MPs and subsequently made the Minister for Education. She is an inspirational human rights defender and a thoroughly deserving winner of the award.”

Matbob previously worked with the Human Rights Law Centre to document the stories of the communities affected by the mine, including from many inaccessible villages whose stories had rarely been heard.

This work led to the publication of the report After The Mine.

Featured in PJR
She also featured in the documentary Ophir about Bougainville and also in the Pacific Journalism Review Frontline investigation by Wendy Bacon and Nicole Gooch published in the research journal last week.

Matbob will be presented with the award at a virtual ceremony on October 22.

Professor Gwynne Skinner was a professor of law at Willamette University in the United States who spent her career working at the forefront of efforts to develop greater accountability by companies for their human rights impacts.

The award was created by the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable to honour her legacy and recognise the work of individuals and organisations that have made significant contribution to corporate accountability.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz