Ben Soans

Ben Soans was the leader of a grassroots movement, which planted millions of trees in two Indian States: Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

He has established five tree nurseries and training centres for farmers and school children. He received India's highest environmental award in 1985. He died on 24 June 1989.

Mr. G. V. and Mrs. K. Karlekar

The Karlekars, through the Calcutta Special Project, have worked for many years in degraded urban environments. They run a non-formal school teaching basic skills to the scavenger children of the Dhapa garbage dump in Calcutta.

Chandiprasad Bhatt

Leader of India's famous "Chipko" movement to protect and replant trees in the Himalaya forests.

Anil Agarwal

Mr. Agarwal, an Indian national, is an environmental journalist and writer, who is currently the Director of Centre for Science and Environment, one of the leading voluntary organisations involved in environmental research in India.

Centre for Science and Environment

The Centre for Science and Environment has published outstanding reports on the state of India's environment in 1982 and 1985. These "citizens' reports", based on grassroots information, serve as examples of national environment reports.

Friends of Trees of Living Beings

A grassroots movement operating in 2000 villages in Orissa, India, the Friends of Trees of Living Beings has since 1970 promoted sustainable development in rural areas through projects in forest protection, establishment of seed bank and nursery raising of indigenous species, wildlife conservation, plantation, environmental conservation, education, communication and training, bio-farming, family welfare, health care, sanitation, leprosy eradication, women's development, and water management, research, documentation and education.

Maitraye Devi

Ms. Devi directed an orphanage on the outskirts of Calcutta, India and disseminated conservation and tree-planting among her wards and the community through ceremonies and cultural festivals. She lobbied government to prevent indiscriminate logging and land speculation in her neighbourhood.

Harekala Moideen

Mr. Moideen in 1969 mobilized fellow landless peasants in a successful campaign to preserve 120 hectares of wasteland, which they converted into a fruit plantation.

In 1978/79 he and his volunteers planted nearly one million trees in the Western Ghats area. These achievements are examples of environmental action for marginal farmers elsewhere. His latest project is the planting of 750,000 trees in the area.

G. Radhamohan

Professor Radhamohan, a social worker and teacher, has mobilised students and rural youth in "greening" barren hills in Orissa, India. With his volunteers he established a 1,000 hectare cashewnut plantation and campaigned for forest conservation and afforestation of major dam project areas.

Professor Radhamohan has promoted forest conservation in more than 5,000 villages in Orissa.

Dr. Felix Augustine Ryan

For the past 30 years Mr. Ryan has been promoting income-generating projects for the poor based on rural raw materials, waste and appropriate technology in Africa and Asia. The three volumes of his popular book "better life technologies for the poor" is a valuable text for rural extension workers.

He is the founder president of Ryan Foundation International which innovates ecofriendly low technology to solve problems created by high technology and also the chief monitor of the global movement "Survival by Sea Water" which was made part of UN Secretariat document by the UNCED Prepcom in Dublin.

Mr. Ryan shows the rural poor ways to desalinate sea or saline water into drinking water at almost no cost and plant trees that grow in sea water and shows the employment this generates. He was advisor to UNIDO and ILO.