Goldman Prize for Kenya’s Environmental Activist

By Esther “Essie” Wambui 

A Kenyan environmental activist has won the prestigious Goldman Prize and her’s is a heroic story.

Phyllis Omido was awarded the annual prize for rallying her community in Mombasa to shut down a smelting plant that was exposing people to dangerous chemicals and making them sick.

The burgeoning solar industry in Kenya has increased demand for lead, recovered by recycling car batteries. The plant, in the Mombasa slum of Owino Uhuru was melting down car batteries to extract the lead.

Omido, a single mother to a baby boy was originally employed by the battery smelting plant to manage its community relations.

Among her first tasks was to put together an environmental impact report. Working with a team of experts, she found that the plant’s proximity to the local community left residents vulnerable to dangerous chemicals.

She also discovered that the plant was operating under illegally obtained permits. Her report recommended closing the factory and relocating, but management dismissed the recommendations.

Three months into her job, Omido’s son became very ill and was hospitalised. Tests for malaria, typhoid, and other likely ailments all came back negative.

After further tests, doctors discovered that he had acutely high levels of lead that could have been passed through his mother’s breast milk.

The plant paid her son’s hospital bill which had ballooned to more than $2,000 in exchange for her silence, but Omido quit her job in 2009 and began cleaning houses to make ends meet.

With encouragement from a local pastor, Omido reached out to community members about what they had seen and experienced.

She found that people were complaining of health problems including high fevers, stomach aches, miscarriages and still births and chickens were dying after allegedly drinking water that was infected by lead coming from the smelter.

Omido founded the Center of Justice, Governance, and Environmental Action (CJGEA) through which she agitated to have the community tested for lead. Researchers discovered unusually high levels of lead in the soil.

Equipped with hard evidence, Omido went back to the plant’s management and the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) to shut down the smelter but her pleas rebuffed.

Working alongside the community of Owino Uhuru, Omido wrote campaign letters to government officials and staged peaceful protests but the campaign was ignored.

Eventually, due to mounting community pressure, the smelter plant was shut down in 2014.

Omido has paid a personal price for her campaign. She was arrested in April 2012 and charged with holding an illegal gathering and inciting violence. Later, she was brutally attacked by two armed men one night on her way home.

Since the plant’s closure, members of Kenya’s senate health committee have toured the former smelter site. Appalled at what they saw, they pledged to provide testing for all community members and clean up the contamination.

Omido’s campaign is however not over as she’s building a court case against the government to ensure that the area is cleaned up in line with the constitutional commitment to provide a safe environment for Kenyan citizens.

– By Essie Wambui

Goldmanprize.org

~Wakenya Canada