For Immediate Release Media contact: The Field Museum Greg Borzo 312/665-7106 gborzo@fieldmuseum.org Field Museum gives Parker/Gentry Award to environmental activist, attorney and author Judith Kimerling Award ceremony August 29, 2007 CHICAGO—In recognition of her courageous and unrelenting efforts on behalf of indigenous peoples of Amazonia and Alaska, and their natural resources, Judith Kimerling has won The Field Museum's prestigious Parker/Gentry Award "For the past 12 years, The Field Museum has given the award to inspiring environmental innovators who, in the spirit of Ted Parker and Al Gentry, have made a profound difference in conservation," said Debby Moskovits, senior vice president of The Field Museum for Environment, Culture, and Conservation. "This year we are extremely pleased to acknowledge Judith Kimerling's courageous efforts on behalf of indigenous peoples and vast forests in the headwaters of the Amazon and wilderness of Alaska. Kimerling's work to establish independent verification of the environmental impact of transnational corporations' practices is fundamental in a world that is becoming increasingly dominated by oil concessions." As an Assistant Attorney General for New York State during the 1980s, Kimerling litigated environmental cases, including Love Canal. In 1989, she became concerned about degradation and loss of the rainforests and began asking herself what a North American lawyer could do to help save the rainforests. She decided that to be effective she would need to work with the people who live in the rainforests so she moved to Ecuador and learned Spanish. She soon discovered that oil production was the driving force behind rainforest destruction in Ecuador, so she began to study the problem. "I was appalled by what I saw," Kimerling said. "It was as if everything we had learned in this country at Love Canal was being ignored in Ecuador. "I felt ashamed that U.S. companies would come into someone else's country and behave in this way," she added. "I didn't think that the American public or the Ecuadorian government would approve of this if they knew about it." To shine an international spotlight on what she had observed, Kimerling wrote Amazon Crude (Natural Resources Defense Council, 1991). The book exposed the exploitation of the Amazon basin by transnational oil corporations as well as their disregard for the well-being of local peoples. It prompted a $1.5 billion class action lawsuit in the United States, Aguinda v. Texaco. Kimerling is currently an Associate Professor of Law and Policy at The City University of New York, with a joint appointment at Queens College and CUNY Law School. Also, she is the international representative of Makarik Ñihua, an alliance of 38 Huaorani and Lower Napo Kichwa communities working to remedy environmental and cultural injuries caused by Chevron Texaco's operations in Ecuador. "I am honored to receive this award especially because The Field Museum's conservation work is not just based on advocacy from afar but also based on the realities on the ground," Kimerling said. "Field Museum scientists understand that conservation in the Amazon depends most of all on the people who live there." Continue>>