By Goldman Environmental Prize winner Andrea Vidaurre said her award-winning efforts to improve air quality in California are very much tied to her own experiences.
Vidaurre, who is Peruvian American, was born and raised in California’s Inland Empire, which is east of Los Angeles and has some of the country’s worst air quality.
Vidaurre, 29, has family members and friends who work in the region’s sprawling freight industry. “It is really personal to me because they are the front lines of all of this,” she said. “If you live anywhere in the region, you’re impacted by air quality.”
Vidaurre was one of six people around the globe — one for each inhabited continent — who were awarded what’s been referred to as the “Green Nobel” earlier this year. Vidaurre’s policy and community work was instrumental in the passage of new regulations in California, including the first emission rule for trains and a path to zero emissions for freight truck sales by 2036.
Other states have also adopted California’s regulations, meaning that Vidaurre’s work has had a national impact.
“This is a climate issue,” Vidaurre told NBC News. “We have to target transportation emissions if we want to do anything about climate change.”
Vidaurre’s community organizing led her to co-found the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for clean air quality, in 2020.
“It’s important for me to do that work, of ensuring that more communities of color, especially the Latino community, are involved in the fight around the environment,” she said. “It feels really 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 humans. We all have a right to breathe clean air. We all have a right to live in a healthy place,” said Vidaurre.
Vidaurre was recently featured in NBC News’ “The Latino 10” for Hispanic Heritage Month as one of 10 Americans whose work was recognized or made an impact in 2024.
