Chico Mendes
Amazon rubber tapper and union leader who organised peaceful stand-offs against forest clearance and championed extractive reserves. He was shot dead at his home in Xapuri in 1988.
Legacy
They left a footprint
Remembering those whose lives changed our relationship with Earth. This is a place for remembrance and learning, not celebrity: every profile asks what each person left behind, and how we know.
Some footprints disappear in the sand. Others change the direction of history.
Environmental defenders
Those who lost their lives defending people, places and the living world
Berta Cáceres
Lenca leader who co-founded COPINH and led the campaign against the Agua Zarca dam on the Gualcarque River. She was shot dead at her home in 2016.
Sister Dorothy Stang
US-born Catholic sister who spent decades supporting small farmers and sustainable land use in the Brazilian Amazon. She was shot dead near Anapu in 2005.
Ken Saro-Wiwa
Ogoni writer and MOSOP leader who campaigned non-violently against oil pollution in the Niger Delta. He was hanged by Nigeria's military government in 1995 after a widely condemned tribunal.
Isidro Baldenegro López
Tarahumara farmer and community leader who led non-violent resistance to logging in the Sierra Madre, winning the Goldman Prize in 2005. He was shot dead in 2017.
Those who left their footprint
Lives whose work still shapes how we understand and protect Earth
Wangari Maathai
Kenyan biologist who founded the Green Belt Movement, linking tree planting with women's empowerment and democracy, and became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Rachel Carson
Marine biologist and writer whose 1962 book Silent Spring warned of the harm caused by indiscriminate pesticide use and helped shape modern environmental policy.
Yacouba Sawadogo
Burkinabè farmer who adapted the traditional zaï planting-pit technique to restore barren land and grew a diverse forest, inspiring farmers across the Sahel.
Jane Goodall
British primatologist whose long-term study of wild chimpanzees at Gombe changed scientific understanding of animals, and who built a global conservation and youth movement.
How we research these profiles
Every profile uses at least three sources, including at least one from an institution such as a UN body, an award foundation or a government archive. We separate what courts have established from what is alleged. If you knew one of these people, or can correct a detail, please tell us.
Know someone whose environmental legacy should be remembered? Suggest a profile.