Judith Kimerling

From WikiCover

On August 29, 2007, The Field Museum will grant Judith Kimerling the Parker Gentry Award in recognition of her courageous and unrelenting efforts on behalf of indigenous peoples of Amazonia and Alaska, and their natural resources.

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. 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.

To shine an international spotlight on what she had observed, Kimerling wrote Amazon Crude. 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.

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.

Kimerling's investigation of Amazonian oil field standards and practices, which more recently has focused on Occidental Petroleum in Ecuador, was informed by speaking directly with indigenous organizations and communities.

Parker Gentry Award for Conservation Biology website: http://www.fieldmuseum.org/parkergentry/