The Amazon forest. A Brazilian activist who helped thousands of people
in the Amazon rainforest to use their land sustainably won an
international environmental award on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Bonn, Germany
A Brazilian
activist who helped thousands of people in the Amazon rainforest to use
their land sustainably won an international environmental award on
Wednesday.
Despite threats from logging companies,
Maria Margarida Ribeiro da Silva, from the northern state of Pará, has
been campaigning for more than a decade for the right of local people to
use land for hunting, fishing and harvesting wild plants.
Ribeiro
da Silva, who lives on the Verde para Sempre Extractive Reserve, a 1.3
million hectare area protected by the government, helped persuade
officials to allow the community to manage the forest, including cutting
and selling timber.
Amazonian communities
“I
hope that this award will help to guarantee the continuity of support
(for) the Amazonian communities in their work to protect the forests for
future generations,” she said in a statement.
She was
awarded the $20,000 Wangari Maathai Forest Champions Award - an annual
prize named after the late Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and
environmentalist - at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, a conference
on sustainable land use.
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