Gabriel Păun, founder of Agent Green, received the 2026 International Eco-Hero title in Toronto
Gabriel Păun, founder and president of Agent Green, received the 2026 International Eco-Hero title in Toronto on Saturday evening, awarded at the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival, one of the most important international festivals dedicated to environmental film and communication.
The distinction holds special significance for Agent Green, because it does not simply reward environmental activism in its classic sense. International Eco-Hero is awarded to people whose work has had a significant impact in raising awareness of environmental issues through artistic expression. For Gabriel Păun, the award thus marks a new chapter in a career built over more than two decades through field investigations, science, litigation, non-violent direct action, public campaigns and exposing those responsible for the destruction of nature.
This time, the tool that carries the story further is film.
Wild East: evidence turned into memory
The ceremony in Toronto was followed by a screening of the documentary Wild East, directed by Maia Wikler, which follows years of Agent Green’s fight for Romania’s last natural and old-growth forests and its investigations into forestry practices and supply chains associated with IKEA/Ingka. Maia Wikler was present in the auditorium, and after the screening she was joined by Gabriel Păun, via a live link from Europe, for an extensive question-and-answer session that went on late into the night in Toronto and into the early hours of the morning in Europe.
Questions came both from the organisers and from the audience, in surprisingly large numbers and with a great deal of substance, about IKEA, Romania’s forests, certification, wood consumption, activism and the real possibility of changing the policies of a global company. For the film team, the fact that the audience did not stop at applause, but wanted to understand, to challenge and to continue the conversation, was perhaps one of the finest confirmations of the evening.
Wild East turns years of documentation, confrontations, investigations, trips into the forest and testimonies into a story that can reach people in a way that a technical report, a legal complaint or even a court victory does not always manage to.
In his speech broadcast live in Toronto, Gabriel Păun summed up this difference simply: activists gather evidence, lawyers turn it into case files, scientists into data, and filmmakers who understand the cause can turn evidence into memory. And memory travels.
The aim is not for IKEA to disappear, but for it to change
The IKEA campaign is central to the film, but the stakes are bigger than a single company. For almost a decade, Agent Green has been investigating how IKEA/Ingka manages its forests and wood supply chains in Romania. The organisation published its first comprehensive report on the subject in 2024, and a new investigation is being finalised.
The aim is not for IKEA to disappear, but for it to change.
Agent Green is calling for an end to the logic of fast furniture, reduced pressure on natural forests, products built to last for generations rather than for sales cycles, close-to-nature forest management where it can preserve the integrity of the ecosystem, and zero commercial logging where these values cannot be protected otherwise.
“We don’t want IKEA to disappear. We want IKEA to become the company it tells people it already is,” Gabriel Păun said.
It is precisely the company’s size that makes this confrontation relevant far beyond Romania. If one of the richest, most technologically advanced and most influential furniture companies in the world can change its model, the effect will not stop at IKEA.
That is why, in Toronto, the International Eco-Hero award was not seen as a reward for a fight that is over.
“It is not a medal for a fight that has ended. It is fuel for one that continues.”
Gabriel Păun also spoke about the unseen side of filming Wild East: about Silva, who accompanied him for years through forests and investigations, about the moments when the film crew knew to put the camera down and choose the person over the shot, and about the unsettling feeling he experienced in Romania’s mountains, when a crew from across the ocean sometimes seemed more concerned about the fate of a Romanian forest than many of the people who live here.
He also spoke about the nature of activism: about the years it takes to save something that can be destroyed in a few days, and about the fact that environmental victories often begin with someone “unreasonable” enough to say that destruction is not normal and that they refuse to get used to it.
Lilou and the generation for whom the forests are being protected
The award was accepted on stage on behalf of Gabriel Păun by 12-year-old Lilou, born in Canada, accompanied by her parents, Catrinel and Iulian, childhood friends of Agent Green’s founder. Romanians who settled in Canada many years ago, the two have built solid careers in academia and IT in Toronto and are part of the Romanian community that continues to represent Romania abroad with discretion and prestige. Gabriel Păun took part in the ceremony via a live link from Europe. The choice to have Lilou hold the trophy also carried symbolic meaning: the generation for whom forests are being protected today was the one that received the award on stage.
On stage, Lilou said only a few words, but they were among the most important of the evening: “I’m proud to accept this award for Gabi and I hope one day we won’t need heroes to save forests because protecting them will simply be normal.” She then closed, simply, in Romanian: “Mulțumesc” (thank you).
In a few seconds, a 12-year-old child expressed the meaning of this fight perhaps more clearly than dozens of pages of strategy can. For her generation, protecting nature should not be a heroic act, nor an exception won after years of conflicts, lawsuits and campaigns. It should be the normal state of things: living together with the living world without first having to destroy it and then look for heroes to save it. The fact that Lilou received the trophy on behalf of Gabriel Păun held special significance: the generation for whom these fights are being fought today reminded us what tomorrow’s world should actually look like.
Finally, Gabriel Păun also thanked Silva, still by his side and about to turn 22, for a lesson people tend to forget: the living world is not the backdrop to our civilisation. It is the reason civilisation is possible.
From the Amazon to the Carpathians
The stature of International Eco-Hero is also illustrated by the previous edition’s laureate. In 2025, the distinction was awarded to Juma Xipaia, an Indigenous leader from the Amazon and one of the important voices in the fight for the forests and the rights of Indigenous peoples in Brazil. Her story is at the heart of the documentary YANUNI, directed by Richard Ladkani and produced by, among others, Juma Xipaia and Leonardo DiCaprio. The film won the Best International Feature award at Planet in Focus 2025.
There is also a personal connection between these two stories: Gabriel Păun met Richard Ladkani two years earlier, at Earth Talks in Vienna, an event held under the patronage of the President of Austria. At the time, the two fights came from seemingly very distant worlds, the Amazon and the Carpathians. Now, through Planet in Focus, they meet again through film and through the same idea: sometimes protecting nature needs not only evidence, but also stories powerful enough that people can no longer forget them.
For Agent Green, the recognition in Toronto thus confirms a change of tool, not of mission. Nature protection is won in the forest, in the courts, through science, public pressure and legislation, but sometimes also in a cinema, when an image or a story manages to turn a statistic into an emotion and an emotion into a decision.
Wild East continues its international run. Agent Green’s investigations into IKEA continue as well. The story did not end with the film.
