Two leading Canadian climate and environmental justice advocates, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger and Alex Doukas, are among the four recipients of this year’s Climate Breakthrough awards.

They’ll each receive US$4 million over three years to develop, launch, and scale new initiatives with breakthrough potential to address climate change—Deranger for a new International Indigenous Climate Justice Initiative, Doukas to build the Polluter Pays Project, a global coalition to require climate polluters to cover the cost of decommissioning and cleaning up their extraction sites.

Two other awards this year went to Tero Mustonen of Finland and Kimiko Hirata of Japan.

“Indigenous peoples have been some of the most formidable advocates in advancing climate change as a global political issue, “ said Deranger, a Dënesųłiné woman from Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and executive director and co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action.

“We have been calling for the most progressive targets, mitigation, and adaptation strategies in the world and our communities are responding to the climate crisis in ways that draw from our traditional knowledge systems to create effective climate solutions,” she added. “It is about time that we receive this level of investment into Indigenous leadership in climate policy and solutions.”

“There is no vital exhaust port on the Death Star that is the fossil fuel industry,” Doukas said. “But it turns out that simply making the oil and gas industry clean up after themselves comes pretty close.” Climate Breakthrough says Doukas’ “groundbreaking initiative” would hold the industry liable for trillions of dollars in cleanup costs resulting from its “dine and dash” approach to fossil fuel extraction.

Climate Breakthrough formed in 2016 after three key major climate philanthropies—the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Oak Foundation, and the Good Energies Foundation—concluded that charitable funding for climate work too often favoured incremental programs over more transformative efforts.

Now, “our mission is rooted in recognizing the complex and intersectional nature of climate change and the necessary need to champion efforts that not only confront environmental challenges but also root causes of injustice,” the organization states. “Impactful climate endeavors must be intertwined with the values of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in order to forge a lasting positive impact on the planet and humanity.”

Past Canadian recipients of the Climate Breakthrough award include Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty founder Tzeporah Berman (2019) and Canopy founder and executive director Nicole Rycroft (2020).