Earth Day More Heroes for Mother Nature

Standing Tall

Residents of Louisiana's "cancer alley" -- the 120-km (75-mile) stretch of the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans that is lined with 136 petrochemical plants and refineries -- have learned to endure choking fumes, stunted gardens, contaminated crayfish and abnormally high rates of cancer and other ills. But with help from Janice Dickerson, of the New Orleans-based Gulf Coast Tenants Organization, they are no longer suffering in silence.

Since the early 1970s, Dickerson, 38, has visited bungalows and trailer camps, tank farms and railroad sidings trying to alert cancer alley's destitute inhabitants about the dangers of the area they live in. "Chemicals aren't racist or prejudiced," she tells her listeners. "Eventually they will move into your community. To fight industry, all you've got to do is get organized."

Dickerson is no stranger to the blighted area. She grew up in Reveilletown, a farming community that abutted a chemical plant until it was relocated in 1988 as the result of a class action she instigated. A former captain in the corrections department, Dickerson began working full time for Gulf Coast in January and helped organize this week's Second Great Louisiana March Against Poisons. "All we want," she says, "is for the air and water to get cleaner so that it doesn't pose a danger."

The Battle to Keep the Beaches Beautiful

When Linda Maraniss visited the Texas Gulf Coast four years ago, she expected to see pristine sand and water. Instead, she found rotting garbage, old diapers and discarded furniture. Determined to do something about the situation, Maraniss returned to Austin, where she serves as regional director of the Washington-based Center for Marine Conservation, and organized the first Texas Coastal Cleanup. It has since become an annual event; last fall more than 8,000 people bagged 158 tons of trash. And 24 other states now hold their own cleanups.

Maraniss, 40, who worries about the damage that beach litter does to marine life, promotes her cause at churches, schools, clubs and conferences. Her message seems to be getting through. At least one oil company has banned Styrofoam cups on its drilling rigs in the Gulf. And next year Texas will require codes on plastic bottles to identify the type of material they are made of, a measure that will make recycling easier.

Protector for the Amazon

Jose Lutzenberger, an ecologically oriented agronomist, is Brazil's most unflinching environmentalist. Lutzenberger aroused the anger of the administration of former President Jose Sarney by daring to declare publicly that the rest of the world had a legitimate interest in the fate of the Amazon rain forest. "If you set your homes on fire, it will threaten the homes of your neighbors," Lutzenberger noted with simple eloquence. Because of his reputation for outspokenness, the international environmental community was dumbfounded in March, when newly inaugurated President Fernando Collor de Mello named Lutzenberger Secretary of the Environment.

His first priority will be to halt the destruction of the Amazon, but he has also vowed to protect Brazil's last remaining Atlantic forests and gravely threatened savannas. Some Brazilians are concerned that the new Secretary might be too inflexible and idealistic for the rough realities of government, but Lutzenberger, 63, calls himself a "possibilist." The Gaia Foundation, a private organization he set up, finances problem-solving environmental projects. Example: an effort to help poor settlers improve agricultural techniques so that they do not have to clear as much forest land to produce enough crops.

A Women's Brigade of Tree Planters

In 1977 Wangari Maathai took on a formidable mission: holding back Kenya's advancing desert. Rampant tree cutting and unchecked population growth have stripped much of the country's land, generating hunger and poverty. In response, Maathai organized the Green Belt Movement, a national tree-planting program run by women. "Because women here are responsible for their children, they cannot sit back, waste time and see them starve," explains Maathai, 49, who was the first Kenyan woman to earn a Ph.D. (in anatomy) and the first to become a professor at the University of Nairobi.

With GBM's support, women establish nurseries within their villages and then persuade farmers to accept and raise tree seedlings. GBM pays the women 2 cents for each native plant they grow; exotic species are worth one-fifth as much. Farmers get the plants for free. So far, Maathai has recruited about 50,000 women, who have spurred the planting of 10 million trees. She still has a long way to go toward her original goal of planting a tree for every Kenyan (the population is now about 24 million), but in the meantime, her idea has inspired similar movements in more than a dozen other African nations.