Skip to content
Menu
REDD-Monitor
  • Start here
  • About REDD-Monitor
  • REDD: An introduction
  • Contact
REDD-Monitor

Global Witness wins TED and Skoll Foundation awards

Posted on 6 March 20147 January 2022

Yesterday Global Witness won two prestigious awards: the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and the TED Prize.

The Skoll Foundation gave the award in recognition of “the organisation’s extraordinary innovation in disrupting an unjust and unsustainable status quo” and TED gave the award because of Global Witness’ “bold and creative vision to spark global change”.

The awards are together worth $2.25 million. It’s a nice birthday present for Global Witness, which is in its 20th anniversary year.

I met Simon Taylor and Patrick Alley in the early 1990s when they were researching their first trip to Cambodia. They came to Oxford where I was working with a team of people on rainforest campaigns. I was obsessed with Vietnam and one of my colleagues was obsessed with Cambodia. Back in the days before the internet, we’d collected several filing cabinets of information, including one drawer labelled “Cambodia”.

Simon and Patrick spent a couple of days working through the files. I remember them getting very excited when they read that the Tonlé Sap, the tributary of the Mekong that flows through Phnom Penh, changes its direction of flow twice a year.

A year or so later, I met them again in Bangkok. I was on my way to Vietnam to work in a tree nursery. Simon and Patrick were there posing as timber buyers and using a hidden camera to film their meetings with a company called Display Tech. One of Display Tech’s directors told them, “I pay both sides, from the Khmer Rouge, mostly the wood it belongs to the Khmer Rouge.” I was amazed by Simon and Patrick’s courage as well as their determination to uncover corruption and environmental crimes.

Since then, Global Witness has continued to uncover illegal logging and corruption in the forestry sector. The organisation has expanded into a campaign aimed at combating “blood diamonds”, and has launched an oil and corruption campaign. The recognition from the Skoll Foundation and TED is thoroughly well deserved. Congratulations to Charmian, Patrick and Simon and all at Global Witness!

Here’s Charmian Gooch’s 2013 TED talk – the transcript (with detailed foot notes) is available on the TED website – and the video has been watched more than one million times:

Corruption is not just something that happens “over there”, as Charmian points out:

“So many of these scandals are hidden in plain sight — they’re down the road in the City of London. They’re in our company boardrooms. They’re in the corridors of power we walk past every day. What we need to do is piece these things together, expose the links and then we can start to break them.”

 

  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
  • Reddit
  • email
  • Facebook

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

SUBSCRIBE!

Enter your email address to receive notification of new posts.

Recent themes
Natural Climate Solutions
WWF's conservation scandals
Aviation and offsetting
Conservation Watch

Recent Comments

  • Chris Lang on The Carbon Credit Registry carbon credit “reformatting” scam continues: A company calling itself Williams & Gray is running a recovery room scam
  • Kay on The Carbon Credit Registry carbon credit “reformatting” scam continues: A company calling itself Williams & Gray is running a recovery room scam
  • Ian on Oakmount Management Partners, Oakwood Financial Management, Oakmount and Partners, Baron Traders, Emerald Knight, Oakmount Global Management, MH Carbon, DMD Media, Morgan Forbes, and Centrium Capital Markets: A network of scam companies
  • Chris Lang on Green IS Group: An FSC-certified Ponzi scheme
  • Tom Rayner on Green IS Group: An FSC-certified Ponzi scheme

Recent Posts

  • Indigenous Sengwer urge donors “to stop funding conservation projects that are stealing our land and destroying our life”
  • The return of the Kamula Doso REDD project in Papua New Guinea: This time run by Mayur Resources, a mining company, and Santos, an oil and gas company
  • Oakland Institute and Survival International call on UNESCO and IUCN to cut ties with the Tanzanian government over the most recent human rights abuses against the Maasai in Loliondo
  • Statement from Kichwa Indigenous communities about the Cordillera Azul National Park REDD (PNCAZ) project: “No to the false climate solutions offered as ‘Nature Based Solutions’ and ‘carbon neutrality’ by oil and mining companies that pollute in other regions of the world, such as Shell, Total, BHP, and others, who buy carbon from the PNCAZ.”
  • 30×30 target “not supported by the science”

Recent Comments

  • Chris Lang on The Carbon Credit Registry carbon credit “reformatting” scam continues: A company calling itself Williams & Gray is running a recovery room scam
  • Kay on The Carbon Credit Registry carbon credit “reformatting” scam continues: A company calling itself Williams & Gray is running a recovery room scam
  • Ian on Oakmount Management Partners, Oakwood Financial Management, Oakmount and Partners, Baron Traders, Emerald Knight, Oakmount Global Management, MH Carbon, DMD Media, Morgan Forbes, and Centrium Capital Markets: A network of scam companies
  • Chris Lang on Green IS Group: An FSC-certified Ponzi scheme
  • Tom Rayner on Green IS Group: An FSC-certified Ponzi scheme

Issues and Organisations

30x30 AB 32 Andes Amazon Boiler rooms California Can REDD save ... ? Carbon accounting Carbon Credits Carbon Offsets CDM Conservation-Watch Conservation International COP21 Paris Cryptocurrency Deforestation FCPF FERN Financing REDD Forest definition Fossil fuels FPP Friends of the Earth FSC Greenpeace Guest post ICAO Illegal logging Indigenous Peoples Natural Climate Solutions NGO statements Plantations Poznan R-M interview REDD and rights REDD in the news Risk RSPO-Watch Safeguards Sengwer The Nature Conservancy UN-REDD UNFCCC World Bank WRM WWF

Countries

Australia Bolivia Brazil Cambodia Cameroon Canada China Colombia Congo Basin region Costa Rica DR Congo Ecuador El Salvador European Union France Germany Guatemala Guyana Honduras India Indonesia Kenya Laos Madagascar Malaysia Mexico Nicaragua Norway Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Republic of Congo Sierra Leone Sweden Tanzania Thailand Uganda UK Uncategorized United Arab Emirates USA Vietnam West Papua
©2022 REDD-Monitor | Powered by WordPress and Superb Themes!