"Polluted water, deforestation,
huge swathes of contaminated land, agent orange, depleted uranium, land
mines - all of these things combined are quite dramatically impacting
the environment," said Craig Williams, Director of Chemical Weapons
Working Group, speaking in his office at the Kentucky Environmental
Foundation in Berea. "It's really a human rights box that all of this
stuff fits into. When you recognize that there are more refugees due to
environmental problems around the globe than there are war
refugees, then you get the magnitude of it."
Winning the 2006 Goldman Environmental Prize, an award considered the Nobel Prize of environmentalism, put Williams in a position to address a larger audience. His recognition of environmental abuses impacting human rights was part of his acceptance speech for the Goldman Prize, and it was integral to his recent talk at the Harvard JFK School for Government.
Williams says that many think of human rights in terms of issues concerning torture and political and religious freedoms. "If you don't have water to drink," said Williams, "it doesn't matter what your politics are. People's fundamental need for clean air and water and the need to plant crops on land free of contamination and unexploded ordinance are basic to their entitlement as human beings."
Winning the 2006 Goldman Environmental Prize, an award considered the Nobel Prize of environmentalism, put Williams in a position to address a larger audience. His recognition of environmental abuses impacting human rights was part of his acceptance speech for the Goldman Prize, and it was integral to his recent talk at the Harvard JFK School for Government.
Williams says that many think of human rights in terms of issues concerning torture and political and religious freedoms. "If you don't have water to drink," said Williams, "it doesn't matter what your politics are. People's fundamental need for clean air and water and the need to plant crops on land free of contamination and unexploded ordinance are basic to their entitlement as human beings."
Each year the Goldman Prize, which includes a $125,000 award, is given to individuals from the different continental regions for their work to protect environments and the communities that inhabit them. Notification to the recipients goes out well in advance of the award presentation. This, explained Williams, allowed plenty of time for the logistics, both political and travel-related, of getting the prize winners out of their countries and to the U.S. "I had to sit on this for six months and not tell anyone that I'd won the prize," said Williams. "That doesn't come easy for me."
In April, Williams was flown to San Fransisco where he met the other recipients. "These people are really heroes," said Williams, speaking of the other recipients who hailed from Africa, China, South America, Europe and Papua New Guinea. "All of them are remarkable, and some of them put themselves out there on issues they believe in at significant risk to themselves and their families."
The six of them had two days of preparation before the whirlwind of media interviews, luncheons, meetings and receptions. After the award ceremony in San Fransisco, they were flown to Washington, D.C. for another award ceremony at the National Geographic Society. They had meetings at the Brookings Institute, the World Bank and at various non-governmental organizations in the Washington area.
"There's no doubt that we bonded very strongly over those two weeks we were together," said Williams. They discussed their different environmental causes and ways that they could network and support one another. That supportive network includes previous prize winners.
The Goldman Environmental Prize was founded in 1990, and so far 117 people have received the award. Williams hopes the prestige of the award along with the collective of prize recipients can be used as leverage to help particular causes. "If one of the recipients was in a situation where a critical decision was about to be made by a government, an industry, or a multinational that would effect the issue," he asks," is there a mechanism through the commonality of this prize by which additional focus and attention could be brought to that issue to try to have a positive impact?"
To further illustrate what he's advocating in discussions with staff at the Goldman organization, Williams brought up another prize recipient. Stephanie Roth, an activist in Romania, received the 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize for her support of landowners and farmers in Rosia Montana, Romania, who oppose the development of a cyanide leach gold mine where they live. A multinational has designs to do the project, which would become Europe's largest open-pit gold mine. The development would displace more than 2,000 people, transform the valley of Rosia Montana into four open pits, and place an unlined tailings pond for mine waste into an adjacent valley.
Williams says that he received an alert from the Goldman organization that important decisions regarding the Rosia Montana situation were immenent, and that Roth's organization was looking for support. The Kentucky Environmental Foundation engaged with the request for support by first identifying which people and organizations would be most effective to target with their input: gold mining company officials, Romanian governmental agencies and officials, the media, etc. Then they contacted individuals and organizations with whom they have strong connections, to have them articulate their concern on Roth's organization's behalf. Other prize recipients were acting in concert.
Such activities conducted through the Internet, Williams sees as low-level engagement. "If it were exploited to its fullest degree," said Williams, "there are ways to use the prestige that is associated with the Goldman Prize to leverage the kind of results you want in lots of issues around the world." He would like to see a dozen Goldman Prize recipients from around the world flown to one locality where crucial decisions regarding an environmental issue are on the verge of being made, like Rosia Montana. They would spend time in the effected community getting to know the challenges first hand. Then they would accompany a group of citizens to the capital, Bucharest, and meet with the environmental regulatory ministers, the media and so on.
"You'd in effect be saying that this is not just a quaint little Romanian issue up in the mountains. The world is watching. This is a big deal to these people, and we're here in solidarity," said Williams. "You'd get international press coverage. You'd bring attention to it. I think it would have an impact on the whole dynamic. It would seem to me to be a powerful tool to give folks that are fighting these kinds of issues, raising their visibility and increasing their participation in these decisions." This kind of thinking and envisioning of possibilities reflects his passionate engagement. It was through his engagement with the issue of chemical weapons disposal in Kentucky that he learned the ropes of gaining visibility and getting to participate in decision making.
"If nobody's paying attention to you," said Williams, "it's hard to get a place at the table. One of the things we did here was to integrate into our efforts a very broad and diverse group of folks within the state of Kentucky - people willing to get educated on the issue and then give their support." They included politicians at all levels of government, activists, conservatives, the religious community, chambers of commerce - basically anyone who could recognize that they had an interest in seeing that the safety of the region was given the highest priority in any planning to destroy the weapons stockpile in Richmond.
The Berea-based group decided to reach out to the other communities across the country harboring chemical weapon stockpiles that were facing the same issues: the Chemical Weapons Working Group was created, and it brought a larger presence or clout to their efforts. Every step taken, says Williams, had the aims of gaining recognition, building credibility and becoming a force to be reckoned with in the context of the debate.
When the Army held a public meeting in Richmond in 1984, it was to announce that there were stockpiles of old chemical weapons at the local Army base that would be incinerated. That decision had been made, and the challenge to the local citizenry was to study that decision, and ultimately, to change it. In 2003 the Army decided to use the technology of neutralization followed by super critical water oxidation to destroy the Richmond stockpile.
"Now, I never expected it to take so many years to get them to change their minds," said Williams. "Maintaining a constant vigilance and engagement is an ingredient that has to be present. That doesn't mean that you're always happy about it or that you don't get discouraged and burned out occasionally. There have been moments and periods of time when I felt that we may not prevail, but I never let that interfere with my persistence, which was based on the belief in what I felt was a safer and more sound approach to getting rid of those weapons."
Preliminary construction of the neutralization facility at the Richmond Army base is underway. Construction should be completed by 2010. Then a full year will be devoted to systemization - a thorough testing of the whole process. Actual destruction of the stockpile is projected to start around 2011 and to be completed by 2014.
"I feel great right now about where we are with this," said Williams. "We've got a good technology, a good government agency [Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative Program] and a good contracting agency [Bechtel Parsons Bluegrass] that understands the value of transparency and open exchange and consensus building and so on. This moment we're in good shape."
Williams will stay engaged. As a member of the Citizen's Advisory Commission, which was created through the governor's office and under federal mandate, and its offshoot, the Citizen's Advisory Board, he'll be part of the public scrutiny of the whole process of destroying the chemical munitions in Richmond. It's taken 21 years of engagement, but Williams has seen his community prevail in stopping the burning in its midst of some of the most lethal chemicals on earth. "It boils down to fundamental human rights," said Williams." The right not to be threatened by your military, not to be dictated to by your government and not to be polluted or poisoned by corporations."