The San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize, an annual award that recognizes grassroots environmental leaders from around the globe.

Now in its twenty-fourth year, the program honors emerging leaders from the world's six permanently inhabited continental regions who are working to protect the environment and their communities. With an individual cash prize of $150,000, the Goldman Prize is the largest award for grassroots environmental activism in the world.

This year's Goldman Prize recipients are Jonathan Deal of South Africa, who is leading a successful campaign to prevent fracking in the Karoo, a semi-desert region treasured for its agriculture, beauty, and wildlife; Azzam Alwash of Iraq, who is leading local communities in restoring once lush marshes that had been turned to dustbowls during the reign of Saddam Hussein; Rossano Ercolini, an elementary school teacher in Italy whose public education campaign about the dangers of incinerators in Tuscany developed into a national movement; Aleta Baun of Indonesia, who helped stop the destruction of sacred forestland on the island of Timor by organizing hundreds of local villagers to peacefully occupy marble mining sites; Kimberly Wasserman, who led Chicago-area residents in a successful campaign to shut two of the oldest, dirtiest power plants in the United States and is helping transform the city's old industrial sites into parks and multi-use spaces; and Nohra Padilla, who organized marginalized waste pickers in Colombia to advocate for making recycling a legitimate part of waste management practices there.