Maria Osmarina Marina Silva Vaz de Lima is a Brazilian environmentalist and politician. Ms. Silva was a colleague of Chico Mendes, who was assassinated for defending the Amazon environment. She was a member of the Worker's Party until August 19, 2009 and served as a senator before becoming environmental minister in 2003. In 1996, Ms. Silva won the Goldman Environmental Prize for South & Central America. In 2007, the United Nations Environment Program named her one of the Champions of the Earth and the 2009 Sophie Prize. Running in the 2010 Brazilian elections for the Green Party, she earned 19.33% of the popular votes.
In 2010, she, along with Cécile Duflot, Monica Frassoni, Elizabeth May and Renate Künast, were named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers, for taking Green mainstream. In 2012 she was one of the eight people chosen to carry the flag into opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games.
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