Marc Ona Essangui is founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of Environment Gabon, a network of NGOs. Marc Ona Essangui led efforts to expose agreements behind a Chinese mining project in

Gabon Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north ...

, a country in West

Central Africa Central Africa is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries according to different definitions. Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, ...

, that threatened

equatorial rainforest Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Description TSMF is generally found in large, discon ...

ecosystems. According to Ona Essangui, the proposed

Belinga Belinga is a location in Gabon with as yet unexploited iron ore deposits. These ore deposits extend into neighbouring Cameroon and Congo. Mining The Belinga iron reserves were discovered in 1895.Douglas A. Yates, "Gabon", in ''Africa Yearbook ...

development, a $3.5 billion project, was secretly negotiated. Local communities were not consulted and are unaware of the effect that the project would have on their environment. Ona won the 2009 Africa

Goldman Environmental Prize The Goldman Environmental Prize is a prize awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists, one from each of the world's six geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. ...

for his work. The project is currently on hold due to a lack of financing. In March 2013, Ona Essangui was sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence and an approximately $10,000 USD fine for defamation of Liban Soleman, senior advisor to President

Ali Bongo Ondimba Ali Bongo Ondimba (born Alain Bernard Bongo; 9 February 1959),"Bongo Ali", ''Gabon: Les hommes de pouvoir'', number 4Africa Intelligence 5 March 2002 . sometimes known as Ali Bongo, is a Gabonese politician who has been the third president of Ga ...

. Since January 2020, Marc Ona Essangui is the president of Tournons La Page movement for democracy i
Africa

References

Gabonese environmentalists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Goldman Environmental Prize awardees 21st-century Gabonese people {{environmentalist-stub