Congrats to Goldman Environmental Prize winner Kristal Ambrose!

We knew Kristal Ambrose was talented, whip-smart, and visionary when she was an intern at GRID-Arendal in the summer of 2018. Now we’re excited that the rest of the world knows it too.

Ambrose has been named as a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s most prestigious award for grassroots environmental activists, given each year to six impressive individuals from around the globe. She was honored for her work convincing the government of the Bahamas to ban single-use plastic bags, plastic cutlery, straws, and Styrofoam containers and cups. Ambrose, whose nickname is Kristal Ocean, had become alarmed at the plastic waste polluting the beaches of her island nation, so in 2013, she started the Bahamas Plastic Movement to engage local young people in developing solutions for plastic pollution.

Ambrose is a scientist as well as an activist. With a background in marine biology, she spent her time at GRID-Arendal analysing data about the distribution of marine litter on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera and using predictive mapping to understand the variables that drive plastic pollution onto local shorelines. This work led her to publish a paper in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin in 2019, co-authored by two colleagues from GRID-Arendal – Georgios Fylakis, a GIS expert, and Joan Fabres, who was then leading our marine litter work. Ambrose is now working toward a PhD focused on plastic pollution at the World Maritime University in Malmö, Sweden.

In an article about Ambrose’s award-winning work, The Guardian reports reports that this “young, working-class black woman” had to overcome racism, classism, and sexism. Most citizens of the Bahamas are black, but the nation’s environmentalists have traditionally come from the white, wealthy, elite class. Ambrose bucked that stereotype and refused to accept limitations on what she could achieve.

The Goldman Environmental Foundation summed up her accomplishments like this:

“Operating outside of the traditional power structures in the Bahamas, Ambrose used science, strategic advocacy, and youth empowerment to get her country focused on plastics; then she convinced the government to enact a nation-wide single-use plastic ban.”

We will be cheering her on as she continues her important work. We can’t wait to see what she achieves next!