Wirdi woman and sustainability advocate Murrawah Johnson has been awarded the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize in the category of climate and energy.
Johnson is one of seven recipients of the global award that recognises exceptional leaders in environmental activism across fields including land conservation, food and agriculture, oceans and coasts and wildlife protection.
Johnson, an Indigenous and Traditional Owner from the Birri Gubba Nation, is the co-founder of Youth Verdict, a Queensland-based transformative justice advocacy group working towards self-managed communities where equity and human rights are observed.
In 2022, her organisation successfully won a court case against billionaire Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal Ltd in Queensland, resulting in the state’s Land Court proposing a dismissal of a mining lease that would have added 1.58 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over its lifespan and destroyed the 8,000-hectare (20,000-acre) Bimblebox Nature Refuge in the Galilee Basin.
The historic court victory was a huge game-changer for environmental activism in Australia. It was the first successful case to associate the impacts of climate change with human rights, and the first to include “on-Country” evidence from First Nations witnesses.
Speaking to Mongabay Newscast this week, Johnson said the Waratah Coal project would have affected the cultural and biodiversity for First Nations communities in Queensland.
“The loss of any species is significant and has an actual personal human effect as well,” she said.
“It takes a toll on the ability for First Nations people to be able to continue our cultural knowledge because [those] species that may be very significant to certain Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples … if they don’t exist anymore, then how do we then relate to Country?”
Johnson, 29, hopes to use her latest win to encourage other First Nations people to use the legal system.
“I really respect litigation and when First Nations people do take up litigation and win, it’s not just little wins, it’s huge, significant wins that really change this country,” she said.
She hopes more First Nations people will assert their rights and push for acknowledgment.
“It can be a lonely place and you find yourself asking what’s it all for. But I have to remind myself that sometimes the work needs to be done … because it’s just the right thing to do.”
During the Adani Carmichael coalmine battles, Johnson worked as a youth spokesperson for the Wangan and Jagalingou family council — a pivotal moment in her life she recounts to The Guardian.
“I was 19 at the time and I said, ‘Where’s the environmental impact statement?’ – is there anything about the environmental impacts,” she said, referring to a community meeting where she was asked to speak before Adani’s lawyers and hundreds of Indigenous people to represent youths.
“You want us to make a decision to essentially give our consent to this project but you’re withholding the facts of the impacts to our country.”
Other winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize include Andrea Vidaurre, Teresa Vicente and Alok Shukla.