Thanks to all who joined us on September 15 to make our third Global Environmental Leadership Award Dinner a success!
The Walden Woods Project Global Environmental Leadership Award recognizes significant achievement in the areas of climate stability, biodiversity, natural resource stewardship, human understanding, and global environmental policy. It draws its inspiration from the foundational thinking of Henry David Thoreau and builds upon his ageless principles of environmental stewardship, global interconnectedness, and personal responsibility.
Program Overview
Welcoming Remarks – Don Henley Segment from new Walden Film by Ewers Brothers
(Ken Burns, Executive Producer)
Live Auction – Ed Begley Jr. introduces Jimmy Tingle, our auctioneer
Challenge Award Presentations
Great Old Broads for Wilderness
Green Leadership Trust
Boston Red Sox/Green City Growers for Fenway Farms
Global Environmental Leadership Award
Presented to Dr. Edward O. Wilson by Don Henley
Performance by Paul Simon
Global Environmental Leadership Award Recipient
Dr. Edward O. Wilson
In his long and accomplished career, University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard and this century’s most eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson (E.O. Wilson) spearheaded efforts to preserve the world’s biodiversity. He has led scientific expeditions to the far corners of the globe to document and advocate for the protection of the world’s “hot spots” of highest biodiversity, including the wild preserve of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, where he joined with Massachusetts philanthropist, Greg Carr, in working toward the park’s recovery after years of civil war.
Dr. Wilson’s work has earned him more than 100 awards, including the National Medal of Science and two Pulitzer Prizes for Non-fiction. In 2000, he was named one of the century’s 100 leading environmentalists by Time magazine.
E.O. Wilson’s new, highly-acclaimed book, Half-Earth, proposes an achievable plan to save our imperiled biosphere by devoting half the surface of the Earth to nature, thereby protecting 85 percent of species from extinction. Half-Earthoffers an attainable goal we can strive for on behalf of all life. Our survival is inextricably entwined with the survival of all species that call our planet home. Yet, our current destructive trajectory is resulting in mass extinction of species and irreparable damage to our world. With his Half-Earth call-to-action, E.O. Wilson has inspired a “moonshot” and created the groundwork for one of the grandest conservation efforts of our time, the Half-Earth Project (https://eowilsonfoundation.org/).
Challenge Award Recipients
Great Old Broads for Wilderness
Great Old Broads for Wilderness is 
a national grassroots organization, led by elders, that engages and inspires activism to preserve and protect wilderness and wild lands. Founded in 1989 by feisty older women who love wilderness, Broads gives voice to the millions of Americans who want to defend their public lands for future generations.
Today the organization has 40 grassroots chapters led by volunteers across the nation — called Broadbands or bands of Broads. The organization emphasizes four core activities: education, advocacy, stewardship, and fun—training and empowering women as conservation leaders. They bring knowledge, commitment, and humor to the conservation movement.
They work to keep wild lands wild and the Wilderness Act intact, to keep public lands in public hands, and to make public lands part of the solution to climate change.
Learn more about Great Old Broads for Wilderness at www.greatoldbroads.org.
Green Leadership Trust
Launched in 2013, Green Leadership Trust works to build an environmental and conservation movement that wins. They are a network of people of color and indigenous people who serve on the boards of environmental organizations, and are guided first and foremost by their responsibility as fiduciaries of the organizations they represent.
Green Leadership Trust is unique in a number of ways because they are the first cross-organizational effort focused on building power and diversity in any advocacy sector. Their work is focused on building a more powerful environmental movement by expanding the impact and leadership of people of color and indigenous people serving on these boards.
Learn more about Green Leadership Trust at www.greenleadershiptrust.org.
Fenway Farms, a partnership of Green City Growers and the Boston Red Sox
Fenway Farms is a 5,000 square foot rooftop farm sited within Fenway Park, from which more than 6,000 pounds of organically grown, fresh produce are harvested each growing season. Installed and launched for opening day of the 2015 season, Fenway Farms provides vegetables and fruit to Red Sox fans dining at Fenway Park’s EMC Club restaurant. Maintained by the farm team at Green City Growers, Fenway Farms is helping to make America’s most beloved and oldest ballpark also one of America’s greenest.
Green City Growers transforms unused space into thriving urban farms, providing a broad range of clients with immediate access to nutritious food, while revitalizing city landscapes and inspiring self-sufficiency. GCG works with corporate clients, retailers, schools, and residential properties to install and maintain organic edible landscapes ranging from raised-bed installations and small scale production farms, to the rooftop farms at Whole Foods Lynnfield and Fenway Farms.
They envision a world where rooftops and vacant lots become common and productive places to grow food – an agricultural revolution for a healthier nation, where people throughout urban areas will have access to a network of sustainable farms, fueling personal and environmental health, and local food sustainability.
The Boston Red Sox were established in 1901. Originally known as the Boston Americans, the team played its home games at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds in Boston before adopting the name Red Sox prior to the 1908 season and moving to Fenway Park in 1912.
The Sox captured the first ever World Series in 1903, and have gone on to win eight titles in all, as well as five additional American League pennants.
Today the Red Sox are led by owners John Henry, Tom Werner, and their partners, who purchased the team in December of 2001. Under their watch, the club created the longest sellout streak in major league baseball history, renovated and preserved Fenway Park, and won three World Series Championships, the first in 2004 which ended an 86-year stretch without a title.
Learn more about Fenway Farms at http://greencitygrowers.com/fenway-farms/.
Learn more about Green City Growers at http://greencitygrowers.com/.
Learn more about the Boston Red Sox at https://www.mlb.com/redsox.
