By Abdullahi Lukman
Renowned Nigerian environmentalist, architect and poet, Nnimmo Bassey has been selected as a winner of the Courageous Scientists Award for Environmental and Climate Justice 2026 for Lifetime Achievement.
The award, now in its second edition, honours six extraordinary individuals from across the world who are fighting for environmental and climate justice under the most adverse conditions.
The 2026 honorees, which include Seble Samuel from Ethiopia, recognised for urban sustainability, car-free cities and the plastic-free campaign Ye Zembil Melse, were announced ahead of a gala ceremony on Monday, 13 October 2026 at the famous Porgy and Bess Jazz Club in Vienna.
Bassey shares the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award with the late Honduran indigenous leader Berta Caceres (1971-2016), who was assassinated for her resistance against the Agua Zarca Dam.
Aside Bassey and Samuel, three other frontline defenders were selected as laureates, each receiving 5,000 Euros.
They are Ana Laide Soares Barbosa, from Brazil, a fisherwoman and intellectual voice of Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Sempre against the Belo Monte Dam; Akino Miyagi from Okinawa, Japan, an entomologist and activist documenting United States military waste in Yanbaru Forest; and Dr Malik Oedin from New Caledonia, a biologist and President of Gardiens Des Iles leading island biodiversity restoration.
A Lifetime Fighting Oil Extraction
According to the official winners dossier, Bassey was honoured for revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production and for his inspired work to strengthen the environmental movement in Nigeria and globally.
Bassey is Director of the ecological think-tank Health of Mother Earth Foundation, member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International, which he co-founded in 1995, and sits on the executive committee of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.
Bassey is also a member of the Advisory Board of NatureNews, Africa’s foremost independent newspaper reporting exclusively on environment, climate change and sustainable Earth.
He was Chair of Friends of the Earth International from 2008 to 2012 and Executive Director of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action from 1993 to 2013. Since 1993, he has been a key representative of the international climate justice movement.
The Vienna honour adds to a long list of global recognitions. He is co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, the Alternative Nobel Prize, the 2012 Rafto Human Rights Award, and Nigeria’s national honour Member of the Federal Republic in 2014. He has also received honorary doctorates from the University of York, United Kingdom in 2019 and York University, Canada in 2023, and the Wallenberg Medal from the University of Michigan in 2024.
A Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Bassey is also an acclaimed writer. His books include We Thought it Was Oil, But It Was Blood (2002), To Cook a Continent – Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (2012), Oil Politics – Echoes of Ecological War (2016) and I See the Invisible (2023).
Award for Courage Under Fire
The Courageous Scientists Award was initiated by Austrian architectural historian Dr Norbert Mayr and funded by the Forum for Eco-Social Transformations.
The award was created out of the conviction that, in light of ecological collapse, courageous and unconditional action for nature and the environment must be supported and made visible, Mayr stated in the winners announcement.
Jury member Dr Michael Staudinger, former Director of ZAMG, Austria’s weather and geophysics service, said the decisive criteria were connecting scientific findings with local and indigenous knowledge, alongside considerable personal courage.
For Bassey, who has for over three decades documented oil spills, gas flaring and human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, the Vienna recognition cements his status as Africa’s leading voice for climate justice and the rights of Mother Earth.
The official award ceremony and press presentation will take place on Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at Porgy and Bess, Vienna.
