Goldman Prize for ‘fracktivist’ in Karoo
AN activist who helped secure a moratorium in South Africa against fracking has won a prominent US environmental activism prize in California, where the debate over the oil and gas extraction technique is heating up.
Treasure Karoo Action Group chairman Jonathan Deal, a photographer and landowner in the Karoo, said he had had to battle against the plans of Royal Dutch Shell to use hydraulic fracturing in the region and secured a countrywide fracking moratorium, which was lifted in September.
Despite having no previous experience in activism, or the oil and gas industry, 54year-old Deal said he would keep challenging Shell to demonstrate its methods were safe.
“The onus is on the industry to prove that their plans and their technology are a benefit to the world and that it’s a benign technology,“he said. “The onus is not on me to prove that it’s dangerous. If they want to change the status quo, they have to prove that it’s a good change.”
While Deal said his Karoo property was run entirely by solar power, he accepted that fossil fuels played an important part of his lifestyle.
His argument was against drilling deeper in areas short of water, or environmentally sensitive areas such as the Karoo and the Arctic.
“What I’m kicking against is extreme extraction and extreme energy,” he said.
“They’re going after extreme energy when there are viable alternatives close by that happen to be owned by somebody else.”
Deal was due to collect his prize from the Goldman Environmental Foundation at a ceremony in San Francisco, along with five other prize-winners from different parts of the world.
Deal said his biggest challenge was a shortage of time and money, so he hoped to use the $150 000 (R1.38-million) prize to build ties with other activists.
Civil rights organisation Afriforum head Julius Kleynhans said: “We salute Jonathan Deal in his efforts to stop shale-gas mining in South Africa. He is a true hero, an environmental guardian.”
Deal will travel to Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas and West Virginia – all states where fracking takes place – while in the US.
He arrived in California as the state looks at how to regulate fracking in the massive Monterey shale, and just days after a federal judge challenged the way the US government awarded leases for shale acreage in the state.
He has also landed in the backyard of Chevron, an oil company with headquarters just east of San Francisco, which said in December it would explore the Karoo basin along with Falcon Oil and Gas Limited.
Deal is the second South African to be recognised with the Goldman Prize.
Bobby Peek was awarded the prize in 1998 for his fight against industrial pollution in the south Durban region.
The other Goldman prizewinners for 2013 are Azzam Alwash, who has sought to restore marshes in Iraq; Rossano Ercolini for work on waste disposal in Italy; Aleta Baun for her challenges of the mining industry in Indonesia; Kimberly Wasserman, who campaigned against dirty US coal plants; and Nohra Padilla for work on recycling trash in Colombia.
The prize, created in 1990 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman to encourage environmental protection, has been awarded to activists in more than 80 countries.
The 1991 winner for Africa, Wangari Maathai, went on to win the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.