Catherine Coleman Flowers’ hometown of Lowndes County, Alabama, is where she learned about environmental justice—and injustice—firsthand.
“I grew up walking through corn fields, sampling ears of corn, picking melons from vines, and eating plums and green apples off trees,” said the honoree at the 2025 TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23.
But the rural landscape wasn’t just idyllic, it was educational: there, she saw how inadequate infrastructure impacted rural development. Many of the homes in the area didn’t have access to seemingly basic services like paved roads, drainage ditches, piped water, indoor plumbing, and a sewer system. And, she learned after setting up the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise in 2002, the lack of adequate sanitation meant businesses weren’t compelled to invest in the region. Many of the problems stemming from the county’s sewage crisis only worsen with heavier rainfall and flooding brought about by climate change.
Witnessing these issues motivated Flowers to advocate for change for more than two decades. She’s worked with banking executives, public-health researchers, the Environmental Protection Agency, and politicians across the political aisle including Vermont democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and Alabama Republican former Sen. Jeff Sessions. Flowers “found that the most effective method for driving change isn’t to tell people what these communities are dealing with, but to actually show them—often by literally bringing them to the neighborhoods that are affected most,” said Iraqi-American activist and writer Zainab Salbi, who presented the award.
As a result of her advocacy, the Biden Administration announced in 2022 a federal program to provide assistance to more than two million people across the U.S. who lack access to clean running water and indoor plumbing as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. For that, Lowndes would serve as a pilot area.
Flowers paid tribute not only to the lessons she learned from her environment but also to the people she grew up with. “Listening to the conversations of the adults in my life who were deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement, I knew that justice was just around the corner, that we too have fought, died, and suffered to prove that we were part of the America we helped to build,” Flowers said.
She pointed to her work building on that of generations before her as evidence of progress and to future generations as beacons of hope.
“I am the answer to my ancestors’ dreams, hope personified. Not just my ancestors that are obvious, but the ancestors that entered what later became the United States of America, before it became a nation,” Flowers said. “Like they fought for the right to live the American dream and the right to vote, I too fight for the future for my children and grandchildren and seven generations to come. My ancestors passed the torch to me, and at some point, I too will be passing that torch to my daughter and my grandchildren. … That is what gives me hope for the future of this planet.”
TIME Earth Awards was presented by Official Timepiece Rolex and Galvanize Climate Solutions.