The 2025 Kilimo Environmental Prize was awarded to a group of individuals and community organisations whose work demonstrates that environmental protection, climate resilience and social justice are inseparable. At a time of accelerating climate instability, biodiversity loss, land degradation and growing pressure from extractive development, these laureates have shown that locally rooted solutions grounded in care for land, water and people can restore ecosystems while sustaining livelihoods. Their work reflects long term stewardship rather than short term gain, and collective responsibility rather than individual profit.
Across the Albertine region and the Lendu Plateau, where forests regulate rainfall, wetlands sustain agriculture and rivers bind communities together, the 2025 laureates have taken action in landscapes under severe stress. They operate in contexts marked by deforestation, declining soil fertility, shrinking biodiversity, pollution of water sources, unequal land access and economic vulnerability. Yet their responses are not driven by crisis alone. They are shaped by Indigenous knowledge, intergenerational responsibility, women’s leadership, community mobilisation and a deep understanding that human wellbeing depends on healthy ecosystems.
Together, the 2025 laureates embody the core vision of the Kilimo Environmental Prize and Environmental Defenders. They defend the environment not as an abstract cause, but as a lived practice that feeds families, protects dignity and secures the future. Their actions show that environmental justice is not separate from food security, gender equity or economic justice, but is the foundation on which all these rest.
Several laureates, such as Okumu Yozenia Uguti and Unega Michel, represent decades of continuous stewardship. Their forests, water sources and agroforestry systems were not created in response to donor funding or policy cycles, but through patience, inherited knowledge and daily labour over 40 years, 50 years and more. In protecting indigenous species such as shea and African mahogany, they have preserved biodiversity that is now globally threatened, while sustaining local economies and cross border trade networks rooted in culture and nutrition.
Women leaders such as Urera Nyakara Generose demonstrate how climate action is inseparable from gender justice. Her work addresses not only land restoration and water protection, but also unequal access to land, the disproportionate burden placed on women and girls, and the need for women to lead decisions about resources. By integrating agroforestry, water access, small livestock, non timber forest products and community education, she shows how women’s leadership multiplies impacts across food security, health and climate resilience.
Faith based leadership is represented by Notre Dame de Logo Parish, which mobilises thousands of people through moral authority and spiritual values. By translating ecological responsibility into collective action, the parish demonstrates how belief systems can protect forests, stabilise local climates and provide livelihoods in regions where agriculture depends almost entirely on reliable rainfall. Their work affirms that environmental protection is also an ethical and cultural responsibility.
Other laureates focus on restoring ecological connectivity and preventing species loss. Umirambe Wathum Yozadak and Uvoya Laurent work to reconnect fragmented forests, restore degraded land and rebuild native ecosystems. By creating forest corridors and biodiverse landscapes rather than monocultures, they enable species to adapt to climate change, move safely across landscapes and avoid local extinction. Their work contributes directly to long term conservation goals in ecologically significant corridors linking rivers, mountains and forest complexes in Ituri Province.
Community organisations such as APAPE show the power of collective action in fragile lakeshore environments. By combining reforestation, waste management, fishing rights advocacy, women’s leadership and human rights education, they address the root causes of environmental degradation and social vulnerability. Their large scale native tree nurseries, sanitation campaigns and rights based advocacy demonstrate how environmental protection becomes sustainable when communities are organised and empowered.
Other laureates, including Cwinyaay Abinenoiwu Augustin, Gaudesio Jersey Ojwiga, Ucol Ukethwengu Jean Bosco, Ulama Sindani Dhamas, Uwonda Sikumbili Dieudonné and Abeda Valeriano, illustrate how restoration and conservation can be embedded in everyday economic life. Through tree planting, agroforestry, land rehabilitation, youth employment, indigenous species protection and defence of land rights, they show that climate action is not separate from survival. It is survival. Their work reduces poverty, strengthens food systems, creates jobs and protects ecosystems at the same time.
Collectively, the 2025 laureates reflect a shared understanding that the climate crisis cannot be solved through technology or finance alone. It requires people who are rooted in their territories, trusted by their communities and committed to long term care. Their actions restore degraded land, protect water sources, revive biodiversity, strengthen local economies and uphold social justice. They offer living proof that environmental defenders are not obstacles to development, but architects of a more resilient and equitable future.
The 2025 Kilimo Environmental Prize recognises these laureates not only for what they have achieved, but for what they represent. They represent hope in landscapes under pressure, stability in times of uncertainty and a vision of development that values life over extraction. Through their leadership, Environmental Defenders affirms its commitment to standing with communities who protect the environment while sustaining dignity, livelihoods and future generations.