She dared to call Vladimir Putin a crook She spotted trees marked for felling with red crosses, even though the forest was an officially protected area and, on investigating, found that a planned £5 billion motorway from Moscow to St Petersburg was scheduled to bisect the forest. The road is to break a notorious bottleneck, but the route had been chosen over others that would have avoided the reserve. Outraged, she gave up her job to fight the plan, putting out home-produced leaflets and forming a rapidly growing local protest group that collected tens of thousands of signatures. As the campaign grew, a majority of Russians told polls they were against the road going through the forest. Yet in 2009 Putin signed a decree changing its protected status to allow for "transport and infrastructure." That, Chirikova told me, was a crucial moment. "I had thought that I lived in a just nation that protected its resources," she said. When I realised that the country was being led by a crook, I got mad. Corruption is notoriously rife in Russian construction projects, and she believes that the real reason the road is to go through the forest is to open it up to developers. And she says that one of those involved in the project is an old friend and supporter of Putin's. Whatever the real motivation, the resistance seems to have provoked a violent reaction. Mikhail Beketov, a local journalist who had taken up the cause, was beaten so badly that he lost several fingers and a leg and suffered such severe brain injuries that he can no longer speak. Another journalist, Oleg Kashin was also violently beaten, as was Kostantin Fetisov, a protester. And on the very day that Chirikova received her prize, a young activist, Alexei Dmitriyev, was attacked. Chirikova is among many dissenters who have been thrown into prison and last year, she told me, officials turned up on her doorstep to take away her children, saying she was abusing them. My reaction was completely unmitigated rage. I recorded myself describing what had happened and posted the video on the web. There were so many calls to the department that they withdrew. Undaunted, she has persuaded the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank to shun the project. She has lobbied Vinci, a French firm that's helping to build the road, and has presented US authorities with a list of "several dozen" top Russians - headed by Putin - who, she says, are involved. And she is credited with stimulating nationwide interest in political reform. "It never crossed my mind that my tiny little campaign could go so far," she says. She is to spend the prize money setting up a nationwide campaign called Our Land to fight similar causes, and has already been to some key environmental battlegrounds. Once, she says, an imprisoned activist was released on her approach. Are they scared of you? A little bit. Are you frightened of them? Why should I be afraid of crooks? But aren't they powerful? We still have more people than they do. Softly, softly, Dave shows that he's the real Green Deal Well, it was a speech more for the Twitter age than the Churchillian one. At the last minute, David Cameron pulled out of making his long-heralded first major oration on the environment since becoming Prime Minister to a summit of energy ministers on Thursday. Instead he produced "remarks," before engaging in a private to-and-fro in London's Lancaster House. Disappointed greens lambasted "a failure of leadership," but they overreacted. One of the main reasons for the scaling down is that, in the present febrile atmosphere, Number 10 couldn't get its act together to produce a proper speech. But in what he said - and in the way he said it - both publicly and in private, Mr Cameron made clear his personal commitment to the green economy. Mind you, he overstated his case by claiming that his Government is already the "greenest ever." He cited the Green Investment Bank, the world's first payments for using renewable heat, and the energy-saving Green Deal. But the bank cannot yet borrow, the payments have been stalled for householders, and the Green Deal may be emasculated by the row over the so-called "conservatory tax." And while it's true, as he said, that renewable energy has grown fast in the past two years, that's mainly down to measures introduced by the last government. So there's quite a way to go. Brazil turns its back on safeguarding the rainforest Brazilian politicians have approved legislation that will reverse years of success in reducing felling in the Amazonian rainforest. Since 2004, when deforestation hit a peak, it has been slashed by almost 80 per cent, thanks to strict enforcement of the country's Forest Code and a crackdown on illegal logging. This was good for the indigenous people, for wildlife, and for Brazilian agriculture, since the trees generate much of the rain that falls on the country's farmland. And it saved carbon dioxide emissions of some 870 million tons a year, making Brazil the country that has done most to tackle global warming. But now, after a push by the country's powerful rural lobby, Congress has approved changes to the code that relax requirements on farmers to preserve forest, grant an amnesty to past illegal loggers and permit felling close to fragile river banks. The effect is to endanger another 690,000 sq kms of Amazonia. It's particularly embarrassing for Brazil, as the country is about to host the biggest environmental summit for a decade in Rio. It's quite a test for Brazil's relatively inexperienced president, Dilma Rousseff, who has promised in the past to veto such a measure. Even if she intervenes, Congress can overturn her veto. Bad news, indeed.