Goldman Environmental Prize winner Andrea Vidaurre said her award-winning efforts to improve California’s air quality are deeply tied to her own experiences.
Vidaurre, a Peruvian American, was born and raised in California’s Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles and with some of the worst air quality in the country.
Vidaurre, 29, has relatives and friends who work in the region’s sprawling freight industry. “It’s very personal to me because they are the front lines of all of this,” she said. “If you live somewhere in the region, you are affected by the air quality.”
Vidaurre was one of six people around the world – one for each inhabited continent – to receive the so-called “Green Nobel Prize” earlier this year. Vidaurre’s policies and community work were instrumental in passing new regulations in California, including the first emissions rule for trains and a path to zero emissions for truck sales by 2036.
Other states have also adopted California’s regulations, meaning Vidaurre’s work has had a national impact.
“This is a climate issue,” Vidaurre told NBC News. “We need to focus on transportation emissions if we want to do something about climate change.”
Vidaurre’s community organizing led her to co-found the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice in 2020, a nonprofit organization that advocates for clean air quality.
“It’s important to me to do that work, to ensure that more communities of color, especially the Latino community, are involved in the fight around the environment,” she said. “It feels very organic to do this work as a Latina, as a Peruvian American.”
“I think we need to see more of us standing up for our rights as human beings. We all have the right to breathe clean air. We all have the right to live in a healthy place,” Vidaurre said.
Vidaurre was recently featured on NBC News’ “The Latino 10” for Hispanic Heritage Month as one of ten Americans whose work was recognized or had an impact in 2024.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
