One Latina Won the “Green Nobel” and Kept Fighting from Exile

Armed men showed up at Yuvelis Morales Blanco's home in Colombia in early 2022. She left for France and sought asylum. The fight she started back home kept going without her, and two years later Colombia's Constitutional Court ruled in her community's favor.

This year, she won the Goldman Environmental Prize, the award known as the "Green Nobel." So did five other women. For the first time since the prize was founded in 1989, every one of the six winners, one from each of the prize's six global regions, was a woman.

That is not a coincidence of the selection committee. It is a picture of who actually does this work. When a river is poisoned or a mine is proposed, it is rarely the executives who pay first. It is mothers, young organizers and community leaders who end up between the project and the water their families drink.

Here is who won in 2026, what they won, and why it should matter to us, Latinas.

Who Won the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize?

The six 2026 winners, announced in April, are Yuvelis Morales Blanco (Colombia), Alannah Acaq Hurley (United States), Theonila Roka Matbob (Papua New Guinea), Sarah Finch (United Kingdom), Borim Kim (South Korea) and Dr. Iroro Tanshi (Nigeria). It is the first all-women cohort in the prize's 37-year history.

How did Yuvelis Morales Stop Fracking in Colombia?

Morales grew up in the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches, on the banks of the Magdalena River, Colombia's largest, where oil pollution already threatened the fish and farms local families depend on. When the government advanced two pilot fracking projects there, she co-founded the youth group AguaWil, which went door to door warning neighbors about what fracking could mean for their water.

After armed men came to her home, she went into exile in France. Her coalition kept organizing. In August 2024, Colombia's Constitutional Court found that the pilot projects had violated the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches' right to free, prior and informed consent, according to the Goldman Environmental Prize.

She was 24 when the prize was announced.

Fracking? Here’s What It Is and Why It Matters

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, as a method of extracting oil or natural gas by injecting high-pressure fluid into underground rock. It can increase energy production, but it also raises concerns about water use, pollution, earthquakes, and climate impacts.

How are Global Women Defending Land and Water?

Morales' story repeats, with different river environments, around the world.

• Protecting Alaska's salmon. In Bristol Bay, Yup'ik leader Alannah Acaq Hurley led United Tribes of Bristol Bay, representing 15 tribal nations, in the campaign against the proposed Pebble Mine. In January 2023, the EPA vetoed the project under the Clean Water Act, protecting the world's largest sockeye salmon run.
• Holding Rio Tinto accountable in Bougainville. Theonila Roka Matbob, a community leader and parliamentarian in Papua New Guinea's Bougainville region, was lead complainant in a 2020 human rights complaint filed by 156 community members over the abandoned Panguna mine. Rio Tinto funded an independent impact assessment, completed in 2024, and in November 2024 signed an agreement acknowledging the mine's harms and starting a remediation process.

Why Do Environmental Wins Matter for Latinas and Indigenous Across the Americas?

Because the pattern is familiar. Women are often the first to notice the water tastes wrong, the first to show up at the hearing, and the last to be credited.

For Latinas, Afro-Latinas and Black women across the U.S. and Latin America, environmental health is not a distant topic. It shows up in tap water, in utility bills, in a child's inhaler and more. And it is often Latin American women doing the most dangerous version of this work: Latin America remains the deadliest region in the world for land and environmental defenders, according to annual tallies by the watchdog group Global Witness.

Real environmental progress rarely starts at a summit. It starts in a neighborhood meeting, a kitchen table conversation, and a woman who decides she is not moving.

Which of these six fights looks most like one happening in your community? Tell us.