F

orty-four-year-old environmental activist Yuyun Ismawati, was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize along with five other recipients from various countries, for their environmental conservation efforts.

The prizes were presented by founder Robert N. Goldman, to seven recipients at the San Fransisco Opera House on Monday in conjunction with Earth Day.

The second ceremony will be held at the Smithsonian Museum for Natural History in Washington D.C. on Wednesday.

"We need people who are passionate about making positive changes toward environmental management," said Yuyun after receiving the prize.

The Goldman prize is presented annually to high-achieving individuals who work hard on various community-based and grass-roots environmental projects.

"This group prize recipients are as impressive as ever, taking on seemingly insurmountable struggles and achieving success," the organization's founder, Robert Goldman said in a statement.

"In this, our 20th year, we are pleased to bring attention to their courageous work."

The Goldman prize is awarded annually to grass-roots environmental heroes from each of the world's six inhabited continents and is the largest awards of its kind with an individual cash prize of US$150,000.

The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1989 by San Francisco civic leader and philanthropist Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda H. Goldman. It has been awarded to 133 people from 75 countries.

Prize winners are selected by an international jury from confidential nominations submitted by a global network of environmental organizations and individuals.

Previous prize winners have been at the center of some of the world's most pressing environmental challenges, including seeking justice for victims of environmental disasters at Love Canal and Bhopal, India, leading the fight for dolphin-safe tuna fishing, and fighting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Yuyun, a single parent of two teenage girls, is a an engineer who graduated from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). Since l996, she has started various community-based projects to improve the sanitation conditions of some urban slums.

In June 2000, she established the NGO, BaliFokus, aimed at promoting grass-root urban development programs.

Yuyun initiated a number of programs in Bali and other cities in Indonesia. Despite her commitment, Yuyun is skeptical of Bali's rapid development.

"Bali's environment will be catastrophic if provincial governments do not pay serious attention to the policy and strategy of the island's development," she said.

Uncontrolled development especially in the southern part of Bali will ensure the exploitation of natural resources."

The existing and uncontrolled rapid development, said Yuyun, needs to be coupled with serious sustainability plans.

"Poor environmental services and infrastructure will keep tourists away and disinterested in returning to Bali," she said.

As soon as the Balinese special autonomy bill comes into effect, Yuyun says the provincial administration will have to take serious plans to prevent massive new developments.