Former United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres has been named the recipient of the inaugural Jane Goodall Earth Medal, which honors those who “unite science, courage and responsibility.”
Goodall, a primatologist, conservationist and a persistent voice of hope, died in October 2025 at the age of 91. She also served on Mongabay’s advisory council.
The Jane Goodall Earth Medal was awarded by the board of the Starmus Festival, an international gathering celebrating science, space, and the arts. This year, the festival will take place from Oct. 17-22 in Spain.
Figueres, who served as executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and led negotiations for the 2015 Paris climate agreement, discussed the award on the Mongabay Newscast hosted by Mike DiGirolamo.
Figueres told DiGirolamo that Goodall was “an absolute giant” to her very last day. “And the fact that a medal has been made in her honor, and that I will debut that, is just an unbelievable honor.”
Astrophysicist and Starmus co-founder Garik Israelian, who joined the podcast, said that advisory board members Brian May — astrophysicist and guitarist for the rock band Queen — and fellow musician Peter Gabriel together conceived the idea for the Jane Goodall Earth Medal. Israelian added that May “was very active in protecting animals” through his foundation Save Me, while Gabriel works closely on human rights causes.
The upcoming Starmus Festival centers on the theme of “The Search for Truth,” addressing information integrity in what political ecologist Bram Buscher previously characterized on the newscast as a “post-truth era.” During the episode, both Figueres and Israelian said that social media platforms rely on engagement-driven algorithms that prioritize profit over scientific facts.
“We are swimming in both disinformation and misinformation all the time without even knowing it,” Figueres said, calling their expansion an abuse of free speech.
“The fact that we choose to consume more misinformation and disinformation than science-based, truth-based information is to me the root of the problem of why these companies do what they do with algorithms,” she added.
Israelian said the way to counter this is through education. “It’s much harder to lead very educated, very knowledgeable people to this route of using misinformation and … to inform them completely wrong things,” Israelian said. “But also limiting the power of tech companies. Those who do social media, to limit the algorithms or to control those algorithms. They should be under control.”
Listen to the full conversation with Christiana Figueres and Garik Israelian here.
Banner image: Jane Goodall on her Hopecast podcast. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
