As the world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia is blessed with abundant natural resources and biodiversity, but it has also come under severe pressure from human growth and exploitation. This is no more apparent than in Sumatra Island’s Leuser Ecosystem, a 2.6-million-hectare expanse in Aceh province where some of the world’s most highly endangered species have managed to survive.

However, despite being named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004 and a protected National Strategic Area in 2008, the Leuser Ecosystem has continued to be ravaged by deforestation, infrastructure, commercialization, and weak law enforcement. Worse, the Leuser Ecosystem Management Authority or Badan Pengelola Kawasan Ekosistem Leuser (BPKEL), which had been fighting the ecosystem’s destructive intruders in court, was abolished by the Aceh government in 2013.

Instead of giving up, some BPKEL ex-employees got together to form a new organization called the Forest Nature and Environment of Aceh Foundation or Yayasan Hutan Alam dan Lingkungan Aceh (HAkA), dedicated to protecting, preserving, and restoring the Leuser Ecosystem.

Leading HAkA from the beginning was a young woman named FARWIZA FARHAN who saw in the Leuser Ecosystem an opportunity not only to save preserve nature at its best but also to engage local communities in securing their own future. Born in Aceh in 1986, FARHAN as a young girl had fallen in love with its natural beauty, leading her to dream of becoming a marine biologist and working in conservation. Pursuing her education overseas and returning as an adult with a master’s degree in environmental management, she was stunned and saddened to see how her beloved forests had been ravaged by commercial exploitation.

Taking it personally, she joined BPKEL. When it was shut down, she founded HAkA. Instead of depending solely on the government, HAkA believed in the power of local people, especially women, to safeguard the ecosystem through a vigorous advocacy campaign, forest monitoring, and community empowerment.

Since its establishment, among other successes, HAkA helped to achieve a court verdict that led to USD 26 million in fines against a palm oil company that burned forests in the Leuser Ecosystem, and stopped a hydroelectric dam that would have threatened the elephant’s habitat. The money was used by the government to rehabilitate the damaged areas.

But an equally important albeit less visible victory has been HAkA’s mobilization of Aceh’s citizens in protecting their environment. HAkA has done this, first, by informing the people about the Leuser Ecosystem and its importance, and also by including the ecosystem in the curricula of local schools and universities. HAkA has employed a geographic information system and other forest monitoring tools to assist local governments, communities, and universities in monitoring Aceh’s forest areas in real time. Looking to the future, HAkA also promoted community-based sustainable forest management to ensure improved management of forests.

HAkA’s programs for and with women are particularly effective and encouraging. Women are given paralegal and citizen-journalism training, engaged in micro-entrepreneurship, and organized into women-led ranger groups that patrol forest areas to monitor poaching and illegal logging. The women are supported by men who are similarly trained.

In a society where women have traditionally been relegated to secondary roles, none of these would have been possible without the energetic, courageous, and visionary leadership of FARHAN. A young Muslim, she has defied conventions to serve as an inspiration and a model for a new generation of Indonesian women coming into their own and taking charge of their lives and future. As HAkA’s chairperson, FARHAN has not led from the top, but rather from below, encouraging decentralization to promote sustainability and resiliency within the organization and develop the next ranks of environmental champions. She often works in the background and with local actors, but she also liaises with government officials, donors, and academics—anyone whom she can bring into the fold of HAkA’s concerns for Aceh’s environment and its people.

For her efforts, FARHAN has been recognized by many international institutions. Her greatest reward, however, has been to see HAkA’s initiatives bear fruit, not only in a resurgent forest and environment but also in the change of values and attitudes among the people she and HAkA have reached: “Throughout my training, we were taught that the local members of the community are often the perpetrators of illegal logging, of poaching, of destructions in wildlife habitats,” she observes. “But then, when you spend more time with them, you will realize that they are also the best protectors of wildlife. They are also dealing with the pressure of losing their lands and their rights as much as the animals are losing their habitats.” With foresight and tenacity, FARHAN is a prime exemplar of what can be done against all odds: “I can’t stop global temperature from changing, but if it’s the forest, there’s a bit more that I can do than surrendering to global challenges.”

In electing FARWIZA FARHAN to receive the 2024 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes her profound understanding of the vital connection between nature and humanity, her commitment to social justice and responsible citizenship through her work with forest communities, and her promotion of greater awareness of the need to protect the beating heart and lungs of her country’s and Asia’s rich but endangered natural resources.

The Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, my fellow Ramon Magsaysay Awardees, members of the diplomatic corps, fellow activists, esteemed guests, ladies and gentlemen:

While I am humbled and honored to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the truth is, more than feeling humility and honor, I am in disbelief.
I could not believe that I am entrusted with this recognition – an Award that I would not even dare imagine.

I would like to thank the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for your trust, your support, but more so, the risk in bestowing me this Award.

Although it is my name inscribed on the medallion, this recognition and this achievement is not mine and will never be mine alone. The conservation work in the Leuser Ecosystem is being done by an entire community of dedicated and passionate individuals – from my colleagues at Yayasan HAkA, my co-founder, Badrul Irfan, our partners in the villages and at the government level, and in civil society as well as our donors and long-term supporters. This Award is theirs, and I stand before you to represent all of the people who are united in environmental protection.

Today, as we celebrate the good work that is being collectively done in the Leuser Ecosystem, the forest in Singkil Peatswamp located at its southwest corner continues to be decimated. This is proof that our work is far from over.

I am grateful that while there is so much more to be done, there are many people willing to collaborate with us. Together with Dhandy Laksono, my fellow Indonesians who received this same Award in 2021, we are launching a film called 17 Sweet Letters, a chronicle that poses the question: how well conserved are conservation areas in Indonesia?

As we roll out the promotion for this documentary, the authorities are already using tactics of intimidation to prevent its release and wide circulation. But it takes more than brute force to slow down a bunch of stubborn fighters like us. Bang Badrul, Rubama, Lukman, Irham, Fahmi, Agung dan Ikhsan, kegigihan dan ketangguhan kalian menjadi pilar kekuatan kerja-kerja kolektif kita. Your grit and determination have become the pillar of our collective work. I am grateful that we continue to find many stubborn fighters to be our allies. I hope you will join us in ensuring that the destruction of Singkil Peat Swamp is discussed in as many parts of Asia as possible.

In closing, please allow me to express my deepest love and gratitude to my parents, Dr. Ahmad Farhan Hamid and Ms. Ferry Soraya, the people who have raised me to be the person I am, and never give up on me when everything seems dark and impossible. Please stand up so others could see you too. Finally, no words could describe my gratitude to Prio Sambodho, the man who choose to marry this stubborn fighter and continue to support me in the work that I do.

The United Nations has called marine plastic pollution “a slow-moving catastrophe” that threatens the economy, health, and well-being of nations. It is truly a global, transborder problem that should challenge all since plastic dumped in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, carried by ocean currents, can appear on the shores of Kenya or Tanzania in Africa.

In Indonesia, a young Frenchman, GARY BENCHEGHIB, is a remarkable and surprising warrior in the fight against marine plastic pollution. When he was nine years old, his parents chose to live in Bali and this has been his home ever since. Moved by a love for nature and adventure, he discovered early on that Bali was not entirely tourism’s picture-perfect paradise; over 30,000 tons of plastic refuse travel down Bali’s waterways annually. Indonesia is the largest contributor of marine plastic pollution in the world after China, accounting for more than 600,000 tons of plastic dumped into the world’s oceans every year. GARY was only fourteen-years-old when he and his sister Kelly, age sixteen, and brother Sam, twelve, started a weekly beach clean-up with friends. This effort turned into an organization called “Make a Change World,” that would produce inspiring, educational multi-media content on plastic pollution and environmental protection.

In Indonesia and the United States (where GARY took up filmmaking at the New York Film Academy), GARY and his team pursued what he calls “crazy ideas,” exploring the polluted waterways of New York City, circumnavigating the island of Bali in a repurposed traditional fishing boat, and documenting brother Sam in his run across the American continent with recycled plastic shoes. Raising public awareness of the environment, and realizing the important role of documentary filmmaking, particularly among the young, would lead him to produce more than a hundred videos on plastic pollution and environmental protection, posted on YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms, from short-form videos 00:01:30-00:02:09 in length to feature films that have been seen by millions.

In 2017, GARY and his team kayaked and filmed an expedition on the Citarum River in West Java, dramatizing the state of what was called “the world’s most polluted river.” The documentary, a dramatic series of nine videos, generated wide public interest and triggered a response from President Joko Widodo himself as the Indonesian government embarked on a seven-year Citarum River rehabilitation program.

This would inspire GARY as well to move from publicity to field implementation when he and his siblings established Sungai Watch in 2020. In the project, multiple types of locally fabricated, moveable trash barriers are chosen and deployed according to the river’s characteristics and location; the trash is collected daily and sorted by staff and local volunteers; and “audited” in a process in which each piece of plastic is identified according to type, brand, and producer (using methods like scanning barcodes). It is an all-around, data-driven effort that involves community-level education and participation, partnerships with other environmental organizations, and community and corporate sponsorships of individual trash barriers and other activities. Sungai Watch likewise runs Indonesia’s first trash hotline for citizens to report trash locations on a dedicated WhatsApp line. To date, Sungai Watch has set up 150 trash barriers in Bali and twenty trash barriers in Java and have collected over a million kilograms of organic and non-organic waste. The organization’s next goal is to install a thousand trash barriers across Indonesia’s most polluted rivers. Of his “crazy ideas,” GARY says: “The problem of plastic pollution is a huge one but if we have that dream, that conviction, and that passion, then things can happen.”

In electing GARY BENCHEGHIB to receive the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his inspiring fight against marine plastic pollution, an issue at once intensely local as well as global; his youthful energies in combining nature, adventure, video, and technology as weapons for social advocacy; and his creative, risk-taking passion that is truly a shining example for the youth and the world.

Maligayan pagbati sa Pilipinas na… walang plastik!

Now imagine if that was a saying. “Welcome to a Plastic Free Philippines!”

My short life’s journey has pretty much only revolved around plastics.

In fact so much so that when I was a young boy, I will always remember walking to school one day, when my mother told me, “If you don’t do your homework you’ll end up being a garbage man.”

Today I am deeply honored to be receiving the Ramon Magsaysay award for my work as a garbage man.

Sometimes, I wake up and it feels like a never-ending battle. We will be knee-deep in a river cleaning it up and feeling victorious, but the very next day with big rains, the river is filled with more trash than the previous day.

A new study reveals that there is no surface on earth without signs of plastic pollution. This means that every island in the Philippines, in Indonesia, under some shell, under some rock has plastic pollution.

Every single minute, a garbage truck full of plastic pollution enters our ocean from rivers globally.

In the next decade, we are set to triple global plastic production. Is this really the legacy that we want to leave behind?

It calls for collective action, we need a radical shift in how we think and how we use plastics. And it starts directly in our rivers, where we can still stop this disaster from destroying our planet and our health.

We need to focus on scalable solutions and implement them quickly. In 2 short years of running Sungai Watch, we have seen the potential for change by harnessing the power of community. In 2 short years of running Sungai Watch, we have already had to move some of our barriers because no more plastics are polluting those rivers due to growing public awareness about plastic pollution. It feels as if those rivers have officially “graduated” from our programs.

But we are destructing our planet, quicker than we can fix it. And now, we need to let our planet rest.

We have cleaned up some of the worst disaster relief areas. And when we fully restore these areas and let nature do its work. We have seen mangroves regrow. We have seen fish come back.

But cleaning up plastics is only half of the battle. Processing the trash and turning it into valuable products is a whole other game. So that is what we are doing. We are collecting, sorting, processing, treating, and recycling the trash that we collect.

What if we could sweep all the plastic out there and use it for good? Turn garbage into an economical incentive to fund back our cleanup programs.

Our next goal is to install 1,000 barriers throughout the world’s most polluted rivers but we can’t do this alone. There is a lot of work ahead of us and this is just the beginning, but I hope that everyone here today will join me in some small way on this lifelong journey against plastic pollution.

The little boy inside of me would have never dreamed once to become a garbage man doing everything in my power to make sure that we can win this plastic war. What a celebration it is to be here in the Philippines tonight!

In recent decades, China’s relentless drive for economic growth has put the environment under great stress—poisoning China’s water and air, polluting cities and farmlands, and putting the lives of millions at risk. That China’s environmental problem has reached crisis levels is acknowledged by China’s central government, which has passed and strengthened a large number of environmental protection laws. But the success of this effort hinges on the strength of public participation in addressing what stands as one of China’s most serious challenges.

This is where WANG CANFA, a fifty-five-year-old environmental lawyer, has played an essential role. The son of peasants in Shandong province, WANG knew early on how the poor can be crippled by a sense of powerlessness. He worked long and hard to earn law degrees from Jilin University and Beijing University, and rose to become a leading environmental legal scholar and lawyer in China.

In 1998, as a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, he founded the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims (CLAPV), the first center of its kind in China to focus on providing free legal help to pollution victims. Manned by WANG as director, a deputy and a pool of pro bono volunteer lawyers, CLAPV has handled through its hotline more than thirteen thousand environmental complaints; filed more than 550 cases, including some class action suits involving as many as 1,721 plaintiffs; and scored victories against chemical, steel, mining, waste incineration and other plants. CLAPV’s legal victories have led to the suspension of some environmentally-destructive projects and secured compensation for victims.

But WANG’s work extends beyond litigation. Knowing that enlightened action is the key, and working constructively in what is a relatively new field, CLAPV has conducted training in environmental law for around a thousand lawyers, judges, and other stakeholders and built a network of practitioners of environmental law. Going even further, WANG and his colleagues have participated in the drafting and review of more than thirty environmental laws and regulations. His participation in legislation has promoted directly the establishment of some legal systems which is benefit of victims’ rights protection and punishing polluters. CLAPV has raised wide public awareness in environmental protection and guarding environmental right through publications, mobile consultancy services, and linkages with other organizations. Energetic and highly respected from both nongovernment and government, WANG is at the center of all these efforts.

In 2010, WANG took another bold step when he established a public interest law firm specializing in environmental law that provides pro bono services. Beijing Huanzhu Law Firm, with more than thirty lawyer-volunteers, has continued and bolstered CLAPV’s litigation efforts. To date, the firm has tenaciously pursued some two hundred litigation and non-litigation cases

For WANG and his colleagues, the difficulties are seemingly insurmountable— working with and through China’s web of laws and regulations, shifts in policy, and a weak justice system; negotiating the divide between central and local governments; confronting powerful corporate interests; and raising the funds to sustain their pro bono programs. But WANG is undeterred.

Working out of a tiny law office in a rundown Beijing apartment block, this diminutive, amiable, and unprepossessing man is “larger-than-life” for those who know of his work as leader of a broad network of environmental lawyers, academics, and community groups. WANG knows the way ahead is not easy, but he remains resolutely optimistic. “As long as we persist, the goal of establishing Chinese environmental rule of law will be achieved someday,” he asserts.

In electing WANG CANFA to receive the 2014 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his discerning and forceful leadership—through scholarly work, disciplined advocacy, and pro bono public interest litigation—in ensuring that the enlightened and competent practice of environmental law in China effectively protects the rights and lives of victims of environmental abuse, especially the poor and the powerless.

One month ago when I was visiting the UK, I was told that I have been selected as one of the winners of the 2014 Magsaysay Award. Professor Bob from the University of Exeter looked happier than me, and soon put my award-wining news as important news to his University’s front page. Peking University, which I once attended, also released the news on its webpage. Thousands of my colleagues and friends from NGOs and other agencies sent congratulations to me by various channels. I am very happy to share this great honor with so many friends. Here I would like to thank the Magsaysay Family and Board members of the Magsaysay Foundation for an objective evaluation of CLAPV’s and my work. I also like to thank all CLAPV’s volunteers and other organizations and agencies for their contribution and support.

Frankly, I never expected to receive this prestigious award. As an ordinary professor at the law school, I just conducted my teaching and research on environmental law, and at the same time organized volunteers who care deeply about environmental rule of law to provide legal aid to pollution victims. We just tried to turn legal provisions in the books into actions. These efforts put greater pressure on illegal polluters to force them to comply with existing environmental laws; and push government agencies to take stricter action against violators.

The Magsaysay Award is not only in recognition of CLAPV and my work, but also a confirmation of the effectiveness of the support from others in promoting environmental rule of law in China. It recognizes both the challenges we face and the progress we are making in addressing the plight of pollution victims and constructing an ecologically civilized society.

It is certainly encouraging that CLAPV’s efforts have achieved some success. This year, China adopted the new amendments to the Environmental Protection Law, considered the best environmental legislation so far, and includes some strict measures and new legal systems. We in CLAPV will continue striving to play a greater role in advancing environmental rights protection and rule of law in China.

We only have one earth and environmental harm knows no borders. To protect China’s environment is to protect the world’s environment. To help pollution victims in China is to protect our individual environmental rights as well. I hope organizations dedicated to environment protection and social justice continue providing support to China to solve its environmental problems. This will help China not only to play a constructive role in global environmental protection; it will also transform its economic growth to be green growth.

Over the past recent years, the Magsaysay Award has been given to several Chinese environmental activists; because of this, I personally believe that the Magsaysay Award has, to some extent, promoted environmental protection in China.

I wish to close with a reminder that I had mentioned earlier: We have only one earth, and environmental harm knows no boundaries. So I ask you: Please, let us all work together to protect our home planet, and realize our green dream!

Few cases of social inequity are as stark and dramatic as these. In Bangladesh, around 150 decommissioned ships—mostly from rich nations—arrive every year, to be beached and dismantled as scrap. These ships poison coastal waters with toxic chemicals, and expose 20,000 ship-breaking workers – many of them child laborers—to extremely dangerous working conditions. Also, in Bangladesh, irresponsible but powerful private developers are converting critical wetlands into commercial real estate through landfills, in utter disregard of the law. In doing so, they displace settlers, damage a fragile ecosystem, and worsen the country’s vulnerability to catastrophic floods.

Lawyer SYEADA RIZWANA HASAN has committed her life to seeing to it that all this must stop. Born in Dhaka to a family with a tradition of public service, HASAN earned a master’s degree in law and immediately went to work for the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), a pioneer in public interest litigation founded by the highly-respected lawyer-activist Mohiuddin Farooque. When Farooque died in 1997, HASAN assumed leadership as BELA’s executive director. Since then, BELA’s legal activism has widened. It has taken on close to a hundred cases involving industrial pollution, sand extraction from rivers, forest rights, river pollution and encroachment, hill cutting, illegal fisheries, waste dumping, and others.

Two precedent-setting cases raised BELA’s visibility and generated wide public support for the cause of environmental justice. Since 2003, HASAN and BELA have fought a battle in the courts to prevent toxin-laden ships from entering Bangladesh unless they have been decontaminated at their origin, and to enforce standards for the protection of workers and the environment. Even as this battle is not over, HASAN has scored significant successes. Compensatory fines were ordered—the first time in Bangladesh’s judicial history that a polluter was fined. Then, in 2009, the Supreme Court directed the closure of all thirty-six ship-breaking yards in Bangladesh that have been operating without environmental clearance, and directed the “pre-cleaning,” at origin or before entering Bangladesh, of all ships to be imported for breaking.

In 2000, BELA mounted a successful campaign for a law that would ban the filling up of wetlands, but the law was never enforced. In 2004, HASAN put the law to a test by filing a case against a large and powerful land development company, for filling land for a new township in the middle of a flood-flow zone. HASAN and her small team had to face twenty senior, high-profile lawyers, navigate court corruption, and endure protracted delays. Eventually, they won, when the court ruled the housing project to be illegal. However, the judgment was undermined by the fact that the developer had already sold lots in the meantime. Undaunted, even as appeals and counter-appeals have been filed, HASAN asserts: “Standing against all these forces is in itself a victory.” She and BELA have sent a clear message that it is not going to be business-as-usual, and that despoilers of the environment are going to be challenged.

Under HASAN, BELA expanded its programs and sparked wide awareness that the “right to environment” is part of the constitutional “right to life.” A charismatic and intense advocate, she is unswayed by the threats and intimidation that have come her way. She remains focused and passionate. Fighting those who violate environmental laws with impunity, she explains: “My job is to revive hope in the judicial system among Bangladeshis, to give the message to the people that the law and lawyers do not always exist for the mightiest.”

In electing SYEDA RIZWANA HASAN to receive the 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her uncompromising courage and impassioned leadership in a campaign of judicial activism in Bangladesh that affirms the people’s right to a good environment as nothing less than their right to dignity and life.

Let me first of all express my heartfelt gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for giving me this honor and for recognizing my work for environmental justice. This indeed, is recognition of, and a definite encouragement for all movements around the world for the protection of the mother earth.

My journey as an environmental lawyer started back in 1993 when I joined Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, BELA which imbibed the visionary and dynamic leadership of its founder Dr. Mohiuddin Farooque. The BELA leadership inspired young lawyers like me to work for the cause of environment and explore innovative ways of using law to defend rights and denounce injustices. Since then, our journey for environmental justice has been a relentless one. We, at BELA, are proud to be associated with a cause that deeply affects the life of every Bangladeshi and indeed every human being around the globe.

We began our first fight against the plundering of our natural resources by those privileged corporations and bodies who enjoyed a long culture of impunity. Our effort was aimed at halting such trends of plundering by subjecting the wrongdoers to due process of law. We had to rebut erroneous economic arguments and challenged mindsets that made our job eventful, challenging, adventurous and thrilling. We believed the law was for all and had to ensure for all equally.

We are fighting for the rights of our farmers, our fisherfolk and our forest-dwellers. We stand for the protection of the trees, the hills, the lakes and the rivers to whom we are all indebted for our wellbeing. We continue to question the faulty, short-sighted and exploitative path of development that destroys the natural resource base. Our fight is against deprivation, maladministration and abuse of power.

Due to the mighty vested powers involved in the game, the process of change has been cumbersome and lengthy. We live with hope and on the face of adversities, gather strength from the force of truth and truth only.

Nineteen years down the road, we may not claim to have righted all the wrongs, we are unable to paint a rosy picture, but we can boldly and strongly assert that hardly any environmental wrong or any attempt to interfere with people’s environmental rights in my motherland goes unattended or unchallenged.

Although we may seem unconventional in what is considered traditional legal practice, this recognition by the Magsaysay Award Foundation today testifies that we are on the right track and reasserts the validity of our movement for environmental justice. This Award, I firmly believe will help strengthen the process greatly.

With my full commitment to continue more rigorously in pursuing the cause of environmental justice particularly for the poor, let me conclude by echoing the famous words of Martin Luther King Jr.

“No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice pours down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Nowhere in the world is the challenge of environmental protection as dramatic as in China. In just three decades, China has risen to be the world’s third largest economy, a “boom” that has no clear parallel in history in its speed and scale. But China’s aggressive growth has exacted a terrible toll on the environment. It has polluted the country’s skies, decimated its forests, befouled its lakes and rivers, and created conditions that have resulted in disturbing levels of human mortality and community displacement caused by pollution and environmental disasters. 

Since 2002, when President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao assumed power, the environment has become a major national concern. New laws have been introduced; initiatives taken to reduce pollution and develop clean energy sources; and the state budget for environmental protection has been substantially increased. These state initiatives, however, are entangled in complex issues of enforcement, public participation, central-local government authority, and inter-ministry cooperation. 

In this context, two individuals, from two ends of the state bureaucracy, have done bold, constructive work in seizing and creating opportunities to address China?s environmental crisis. 

At the national level, PAN YUE has been a key figure in the Chinese government’s efforts in environmental protection. With a doctorate degree in history, fifty year-old PAN already had a rich and varied career as a government official when he became deputy-director of the State Environmental Protection Administration in 2003. Now vice-minister of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, he has proactively implemented such laws as the Environmental Assessment Law of 2003 and the Open Government Information Regulations of 2007. In doing so, he has taken on some of China’s biggest industries to disclose their environmental practices and to clean up their operations. 

In 2005, he boldly led the so-called “environmental protection storms,” during which seventy-six energy-generating projects, worth billions of dollars, were either suspended, shut down, or issued ultimatums for non-compliance with environmental regulations. Moreover, PAN has widened the space for civic participation by encouraging non-government organizations, citizen complaints, and public consultations to address the environmental impact of state and private development projects. 

PAN also pushed for the implementation of the controversial “Green GDP,” a national accounting system to determine China’s real national gross domestic product (GDP) adjusted to compensate for negative environmental effects. Introduced on a trial basis in 2004, its implementation was suspended after a few years. But in pushing for this and other measures, PAN set a standard for public action, declaring forthrightly: “China’s development has had a tumultuous history. Now is the time for a fair and sustainable model of growth.” 

At the local level, village chief FU QIPING has shown how great things can be done even in a village as small as Tengtou, eastern China’s Zhejiang province. Tengtou has a population of a mere eight hundred thirty citizens. A farmer who has worked as a village official since 1980 and as village chief since 1997, FU used the opportunities of China’s decentralized system to turn Tengtou into one of China’s most prosperous villages. 

Three decades ago, Tengtou was impoverished, flood-prone, and resource-poor. Today, it is known internationally as a “miracle village.” Collectively organized as an economic enterprise, it has built a base in agriculture and ecotourism, operates business companies, and hosts some sixty investors engaged in textile, food processing, and other activities. Remarkably, all these came hand-in-hand with a commitment to environmental protection. 

In 1993, Tengtou set up China’s first-ever village-level environmental protection committee that has, among others, rejected over fifty companies wanting to set up shop in Tengtou because they failed to meet environmental standards. The village practices environment-friendly agriculture, invests in renewable energy, boasts of a wastewater treatment system and solar-powered streetlights, and carries out environment-related science-and-education projects. All these have been made possible by the solidarity of the village and, in large part, by the innovative leadership of sixty-two-year-old FU QIPING, who has devoted his life to creating a village both environmentally healthy and economically secure. “This is my ideal,” he says, “and it is in pursuing it that I can do my country, party and other villagers proud.” 

In electing PAN YUE andFU QIPING to receive the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes their exemplary vision and zeal as public servants at two levels of the state bureaucracy, in advocating the inseparability of development and the environment in uplifting the lives of the Chinese people. The board recognizes PAN YUE for his bold pursuit of a national environmental program, insisting on state and private accountability, encouraging state-citizen dialogue, and raising the environment as an issue of urgent national concern; likewise, the board recognizes FU QIPING for his enterprising leadership and undeniable success in demonstrating how village-level economic development can be achieved without damage to the environment.

The Honorable Benigno S. Aquino III, Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and friends. Today, I am honored to stand before you to accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award. 

I will highly value this award given to me, and I sincerely thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. If I were only receiving this award because of what I have done for my village, I would feel embarrassed to accept it. The success of Tengtou is due to the joint efforts of the officers, the villagers and the government departments. So this award does not only belong to me but to all the people who contributed to the success of our village. 

Thirty years ago, I became the head of Tengtou village. It was hard to be the leader of a village that faced problems of poverty and underdevelopment, to have such huge responsibilities with a low salary. Even with these problems, I could not let go of my responsibilities because of my love and devotion to our village. I am willing to give up everything to help Tengtou’s villagers live an ideal life. 

Tengtou, though a small village, strove to create a miracle, which fully shows that Chinese peasants are capable of changing their destiny. We hope to share our experience with others, so that more peasants in China and elsewhere can live a better life. We also wish to draw more knowledge and gain experience to further develop our village. 

My favorite hobby is to get up every morning and walk around the village. Whenever I pass by orderly and beautiful houses while walking through the clean and green streets, I feel deeply the changes that have taken place in our village. I always think about the dramatic transformation that has happened in Tengtou village, and it fills me with emotion. 

I am glad that I was involved in this great undertaking, and at the same time thankful that Tengtou’s villagers have given me a chance like this. We have higher goals to achieve; therefore I will continuously exert great efforts for the betterment of our village. This award encourages me to work harder, and to serve the village even more. Thank you very much!

Water pollution is one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the government and people of China. Massive industrialization has left 70 percent of China’s rivers gravely contaminated, threatening the health and livelihood of hundreds of millions of its people. 

A stark example is Huai River, China’s third largest, that runs a thousand kilometers through four provinces and forms a major agricultural basin which is home to over 150 million people. Industries have dumped millions of tons of waste and sewage into Huai, transforming it into China’s most polluted river. Pollution’s threat to people’s health is dramatized in the emergence of so-called “cancer villages”—poor riverine communities where there is an extraordinarily high incidence of tumors and cancers associated with contaminated water.

The Huai River is dying, and so are people living along its most toxic stretches. In 1994, China’s government responded to this problem with a multi-billion, basin-wide pollution control project. The project’s impact, however, proved inadequate.

One of the most seriously threatened areas along the Huai River is Henan province, and in Henan the county of Shenqiu has the largest cluster of “cancer villages” in China. In 1987, Huo Daishan, a newspaper photographer from Shenqiu, was so shocked by the river’s blackened water, poisonous fumes, and dead fish that he started to document the river’s pollution. Armed with a cheap camera, pen and notebook, he began a one-man campaign to publicize the issue, taking it up as a full-time mission in 1998, and organizing a group called “Guardians of the Huai River” in 2000. The following year, he staged his first exhibit along a street in his village by stringing together on a clothesline photographs of the river. With the help of his wife and two sons, he worked out of his family’s small apartment in Shenqiu, with very meager resources and little outside assistance. But he threw himself into his mission with such determination, he eventually succeeded in calling wide public attention to the tragedy of Huai.

Through fifteen thousand images, Huo has laboriously documented Huai River’s pollution in over twenty cities and counties across Henan. He has mounted seventy exhibitions in cities, universities, and villages; written letters exposing the illegal activities of local officials and factory owners; and championed the cause of the river and its people in media and conferences. His images of waters wreathed with noxious foam and village children wearing gas masks stirred wide public debate. Still, Huo went beyond taking pictures: he engaged in research and documentation; organized site visits for students and concerned groups; and recruited and trained hundreds of volunteer “guardians” who now work in teams to regularly monitor the river and conduct water-testing along the river communities.

Harassed by local officials and factory owners, he did not relent in his campaign. By dint of his sincerity and persistence, Huo has since succeeded in building cooperative relations with local authorities and industries. A major polluter in the area, and one of China’s biggest MSG manufacturers, is now working collaboratively with Huo in implementing pollution-control measures. Moving forward, Huo has taken other steps to address the urgent needs of affected villagers: linking up with government and private institutions, he has installed deepwater wells and low-cost water filtration systems in local communities; hundreds of cancer patients have also been provided muchneeded medicines.

Efforts by government and citizens have resulted in some improvement in the condition of the Huai. But the problem of pollution remains critical. When Huo started out in his crusade, he dreamed, he said, of “returning the river to its pristine condition when I was still a child.” In his lifetime, this may remain only a dream. But in passionately pursuing this dream, fifty-six-yearold Huo has already shown what great things can be done by a single, ordinary citizen to protect a river and its people.

In electing Huo Daishan to receive the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his selfless and unrelenting efforts, despite formidable odds, to save China’s great river Huai and the numerous communities who draw life from it.

I feel greatly honored to be elected as one of those to receive the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Award. First of all, I would like to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. Thank you for paying great attention to me since a long time ago. It is because of your great work that I stand on this stage today.

From the bottom of my heart, I feel that this award belongs to all the volunteers of the Huai River Guardians and the villagers living along the Huai. Because at each time that I was in peril, it was they who stood firmly with me and devoted all they had to keep our endeavors alive. It was they who offered me their homes in the villages to protect me and keep me safe. I have no doubt that without these people, I could not have held on up to this day, and be able to talk to you on this great occasion.

I also want to thank my wife Dong Sulin and my children. For more than ten years, they have shared my pressures and responsibilities. Even though they are not getting any pay because they are merely volunteers, my two sons — Min Hao and Min Jie have had no reluctance to become the second generation of Huai River’s guardians.

Last but not least, I cannot forget the support I got from China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection throughout these years. I thank them for treating me as a pair of eyes to watch over Huai River. They allowed me to directly communicate with them. I reported to them so many times while standing right on the spot where the Huai River’s pollution was breaking out.

I come from a county in Henan Province which lies on the banks of the Huai River. I was raised on the waters of the Huai. I love my hometown so deeply. Today, I accept this award as an honor, and as a responsibility. I am going to spend the prize money which the award gives me for building more water purifying systems in the villages along the Huai. I hope by doing so, the farmers in these villages, who are the innocent victims of pollution, will understand our Magsaysay Award from a much closer distance, and feel its impact in their own lives.

Nowhere in the world is the challenge of environmental protection as dramatic as in China. In just three decades, China has risen to be the world’s third largest economy, a “boom” that has no clear parallel in history in its speed and scale. But China’s aggressive growth has exacted a terrible toll on the environment. It has polluted the country’s skies, decimated its forests, befouled its lakes and rivers, and created conditions that have resulted in disturbing levels of human mortality and community displacement caused by pollution and environmental disasters. 

Since 2002, when President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao assumed power, the environment has become a major national concern. New laws have been introduced; initiatives taken to reduce pollution and develop clean energy sources; and the state budget for environmental protection has been substantially increased. These state initiatives, however, are entangled in complex issues of enforcement, public participation, central-local government authority, and inter-ministry cooperation. 

In this context, two individuals, from two ends of the state bureaucracy, have done bold, constructive work in seizing and creating opportunities to address China?s environmental crisis. 

At the national level, PAN YUE has been a key figure in the Chinese government’s efforts in environmental protection. With a doctorate degree in history, fifty year-old PAN already had a rich and varied career as a government official when he became deputy-director of the State Environmental Protection Administration in 2003. Now vice-minister of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, he has proactively implemented such laws as the Environmental Assessment Law of 2003 and the Open Government Information Regulations of 2007. In doing so, he has taken on some of China’s biggest industries to disclose their environmental practices and to clean up their operations. 

In 2005, he boldly led the so-called “environmental protection storms,” during which seventy-six energy-generating projects, worth billions of dollars, were either suspended, shut down, or issued ultimatums for non-compliance with environmental regulations. Moreover, PAN has widened the space for civic participation by encouraging non-government organizations, citizen complaints, and public consultations to address the environmental impact of state and private development projects. 

PAN also pushed for the implementation of the controversial “Green GDP,” a national accounting system to determine China’s real national gross domestic product (GDP) adjusted to compensate for negative environmental effects. Introduced on a trial basis in 2004, its implementation was suspended after a few years. But in pushing for this and other measures, PAN set a standard for public action, declaring forthrightly: “China’s development has had a tumultuous history. Now is the time for a fair and sustainable model of growth.” 

At the local level, village chief FU QIPING has shown how great things can be done even in a village as small as Tengtou, eastern China’s Zhejiang province. Tengtou has a population of a mere eight hundred thirty citizens. A farmer who has worked as a village official since 1980 and as village chief since 1997, FU used the opportunities of China’s decentralized system to turn Tengtou into one of China’s most prosperous villages. 

Three decades ago, Tengtou was impoverished, flood-prone, and resource-poor. Today, it is known internationally as a “miracle village.” Collectively organized as an economic enterprise, it has built a base in agriculture and ecotourism, operates business companies, and hosts some sixty investors engaged in textile, food processing, and other activities. Remarkably, all these came hand-in-hand with a commitment to environmental protection. 

In 1993, Tengtou set up China’s first-ever village-level environmental protection committee that has, among others, rejected over fifty companies wanting to set up shop in Tengtou because they failed to meet environmental standards. The village practices environment-friendly agriculture, invests in renewable energy, boasts of a wastewater treatment system and solar-powered streetlights, and carries out environment-related science-and-education projects. All these have been made possible by the solidarity of the village and, in large part, by the innovative leadership of sixty-two-year-old FU QIPING, who has devoted his life to creating a village both environmentally healthy and economically secure. “This is my ideal,” he says, “and it is in pursuing it that I can do my country, party and other villagers proud.” 

In electing PAN YUE andFU QIPING to receive the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes their exemplary vision and zeal as public servants at two levels of the state bureaucracy, in advocating the inseparability of development and the environment in uplifting the lives of the Chinese people. The board recognizes PAN YUE for his bold pursuit of a national environmental program, insisting on state and private accountability, encouraging state-citizen dialogue, and raising the environment as an issue of urgent national concern; likewise, the board recognizes FU QIPING for his enterprising leadership and undeniable success in demonstrating how village-level economic development can be achieved without damage to the environment.

In Burma, large-scale human rights abuses are being committed and natural resources despoiled by the ruling military regime. The voices of the victims have largely been silenced. One young man has decided that these voices should be heard in the outside world, and their legitimate concerns addressed. 

KA HSAW WA ceased to be a teenager abruptly and prematurely. As a seventeen year-old student activist in the anti-dictatorship demonstrations of 1988, he was arrested and tortured for three days by the military. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the student uprising of August 1988 when an estimated ten thousand people were killed, he fled to the jungle (as did many others) to seek refuge. His wanderings exposed him to scenes and stories of the horrible atrocities committed against ordinary villagers. He decided then, instead of taking up arms as an insurgent as he had planned, he would take up the pen, record the abuses, and find a way to get these stories out into the world. 

For five years, he talked to more than a thousand victims and witnesses of human rights and environmental abuses. Most of these abuses were connected to the building of the Yadana Gas Pipeline. Financed by the US-based Unocal and the French corporation Total, Yadana was then the largest foreign investment in Burma. In enforcing the project, the ruling junta, the project’s principal beneficiary, had militarized the area along the pipeline, dislocated communities, imposed forced labor, and damaged a rich, biodiverse environment. 

KA HSAW WA was later joined in his documentation work by a visiting law student, Katie Redford, who had entered Burma to investigate the human rights situation. In 1995, they founded EarthRights International; they were married the following year. EarthRights is a nonprofit organization with offices in the US and Thailand. It focuses on what it calls “earth rights,” the intersection of human rights and the environment, and combines “the power of law and the power of people” in defense of these rights. 

In 1996, EarthRights filed a case in the United States against Unocal with the help of private and public-interest lawyers. The suit alleged that Unocal was complicit in the human rights and environmental abuses committed by the Burmese military in the building of the Yadana pipeline. After nearly ten years of complicated litigation, Unocal agreed to compensate the eleven victim-petitioners in the case. The petitioners decided to commit substantial funds from the compensation to humanitarian relief for other victims. 

This precedent-setting case has served as a warning to the Burmese government and to multinationals investing in Burma. It has also inspired KA HSAW WA and EarthRights to investigate other infrastructure projects in Burma and the larger Mekong Region, such as the mega-dams along the Mekong River and the Shwe natural gas pipeline project in which Burma’s military junta is collaborating with foreign investors. 

EarthRights does much more than litigation-related work. It carries out research, publication, and advocacy on behalf of the people of Burma. It maintains EarthRights Schools in Thailand, training young people from Burma and other countries in nonviolent social change, environmental monitoring, and community organizing. Its network of alumni has become, for EarthRights, an important resource for mutual assistance and information sharing. Equally important, the network has inspired EarthRights to hope that by training young people from Burma and neighboring countries it is planting the seeds of civil society throughout the region. Despite the constant threat of government reprisal, Ka Hsaw Wa stays committed to the mission he found in the jungles of Burma. “There’s no dead end for me,” he says. “I don’t give up easily, and I don’t like to give up.”

In electing KA HSAW WA to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his dauntlessly pursuing nonviolent yet effective channels of redress, exposure, and education for the defense of human rights, the environment, and democracy in Burma.

Thank you so much. I am so honored to receive for this Award, especially here in Asia, where many government officials — especially those in my country — like to say that human rights is a Western concept. They say that human rights is not part of Asian culture, and this award is an important testimony to what I believe: that human rights are universal and all of us are entitled to dignity and human rights. 

I believe that one of the most fundamental human rights is the right to a clean and healthy environment. If you look around the world you can see so many human rights violations go hand in hand with the exploitation of natural resources, and the destruction of the environment. This is the main focus of EarthRights International, where we combine the power of law and the power of people in defense of human rights and the environment. 

In Burma, when corporations mine for gold, jade, copper and other precious resources, they do not let local people or sensitive ecosystems get in the way of their quest for the highest profit. In the process, they use chemicals and procedures that are outlawed in other parts of the world, whether or not these poison the villagers, the wildlife, or the ecosystems. Many people are suffering new diseases, dying in new ways due to pollution caused by the mining industry in my country. Is this a human rights or an environmental problem? Usually, pollution is considered an environmental problem. But I believe that this is an earth rights issue-the violation of both human rights and the environment. 

Think about this: when Unocal hired the brutal Burmese military to secure its gas pipeline, soldiers forced people off their lands, forced them to work as slaves, raped women and girls, and tortured and killed those who got in their way. These were earth rights abuses. When people could no longer feed their families because their farms had been destroyed, their forests logged, and they had to flee their homes to become refugees, these were earth rights abuses. We knew this was injustice, and we had to do something to demand for accountability. But how do you do that in a country like Burma, ruled by a brutal military dictatorship? And as if that is not difficult enough, how do you do that when that junta is supported by powerful U.S. oil companies? 

What we did, and what we still do, is simple. We give tools to people to help themselves. In the case of Unocal, we used the law-we trained villagers and community leaders from Burma on how to document human rights abuses, then took that documentation and filed a lawsuit in U.S. courts. Using international human rights law, we demanded justice for the rape, torture, killing, forced labor, and other abuses that Unocal helped commit while building their Yadana gas pipeline. The world thought we were crazy-people laughed at us-how can the world’s poorest, most oppressed people take on a powerful junta and powerful oil companies? With the law as our weapon and hope as our strength, in 2005 we took one big step on the long road to justice when Unocal paid compensation to the villagers who sued them. These villagers sent a message loud and clear to human rights abusers everywhere: no matter where you are-in Burma, or anywhere else in the world-you can’t escape responsibility when you violate the earth and its people. 

This is still our simple strategy. We train and work with emergent leaders from communities who are on the front lines of destructive projects like gas pipelines, mines, dams, what our governments like to call “development” projects. We have two EarthRights Schools that train people like me-from countries like Burma, China, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand who want to stand up to injustice and make a difference for their communities. And we use the law as one important tool to help people find nonviolent solutions to some very violent and destructive realities. 

In all Asian countries, people need a healthy environment to live. And people need human rights-like freedom of speech and association, and access to information-to protect their environments. You cannot separate human rights from the environment. You cannot separate corporate abuse from government abuse. And most importantly, we cannot be divided or separated from each other. All of us must stand together to protect this one planet that we have, that we all depend on, for our own dignity and the future of our survival. 

There are many people like me who work every day, in secret, in hiding, and at great risk to themselves to protect their people and their planet. This award is for all those people who choose to address human rights and environmental abuses and who keep their commitment to justice in their hearts. I thank and honor all who speak the truth to those in power, and do so with dignity and graciousness. And I thank all of you who have made this evening happen.

Water is now a major issue in China, where majority of the rivers and lakes are polluted, and four hundred of its six hundred cities are facing water shortages. The problem has serious repercussions for health, food security, biodiversity, and economic growth. With rapid industrialization and urbanization, the problem has become even more critical. Forty-one year-old MA JUN is using creative and constructive ways to address the pollution crisis. 

MA joined the Beijing bureau of South China Morning Post after finishing his university studies in English and journalism. As he traveled the country and wrote reports, he saw how China’s economic boom was taking a destructive toll on the environment. In 1999, he published his book China’s Water Crisis, which has been hailed as China’s “first great environmental call to arms.” In it, MA warned: “Sixty percent of our rivers are polluted, the proliferation of dams destroys ecosystems, our air quality is deplorable. This is simply unbearable.” 

After leaving South China Morning Post, he worked as an environmental consultant, then went to Yale University and did comparative research on environmental governance in the US and China. His experiences as a journalist and scholar deepened his understanding of the environmental issues and how to deal with them in China’s unique economic and political context. He concluded that active, meaningful “public participation is the key to dealing with [China’s] environmental problems” and that access to information is the precondition for such public participation. 

Thus, in 2006, he established the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) and launched the China Water Pollution Map, the first public database of water pollution information in China. The database is a facility accessible in and outside China, using official data from various government agencies in charge of water resources and environment protection. Through the digital map, with the click of a button, people can survey the water quality in specific rivers and lakes all over the country, monitor pollution discharges, and find out which companies discharge pollution exceeding statutory levels. In this strategy of “name and shame,” thirty-five thousand records of violations by corporations have been posted in the map to date. 

MA expanded his work in 2007 with the China Air Pollution Map. Providing public access to air quality data, it has already named over ten thousand companies violating emission standards. Together with the water pollution database, this map has dramatically increased public awareness of the state of China’s environmental pollution. 

But MA and his organization do not just “name and shame”; they also proactively help companies resolve their pollution management problems. Polluters are removed from the offenders’ list after professional, third-party audits have shown that they have made changes to improve their company’s pollution control. To complement its database program, IPE, together with twenty other NGOs, has organized the Green Choice Alliance, which works on supply chain management systems by getting corporations to openly commit not to use polluters as suppliers of products or services. Leading multinationals like General Electric, Wal-Mart, and Nike which have made such a commitment are using the IPE database regularly to track the performance of their suppliers in China. 

It is MA’s fervent belief that public knowledge exerts pressure on government and corporations to act. Taking advantage of the government’s greater openness to public participation in environmental protection, he has introduced initiatives that are both constructive and realistic. For this reason, his work is exerting a unique influence on environmental practices in China. MA says that the next twenty years is a critical period for his country. “We need to make sure that this generation of Chinese has the best environmental health standards. We need to keep the best of our natural and cultural heritage, and hand it over to the next generation.”

In electing MA JUN to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his harnessing the technology and power of information to address China’s water crisis, and mobilizing pragmatic, multisectoral and collaborative efforts to ensure sustainable benefits for China’s environment and society.

It is a great honor for me to be elected to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award. I take this Award as a recognition of the multi-stakeholder efforts made in China to reduce pollution and achieve sustainable development. 

Like many Asian countries that are going through industrialization and urbanization, China is facing a multiple set of environmental challenges including water and air pollution, exhaustion of resources and degradation of the ecosystem, as well as climate change. These have posed a severe threat to the health of our people, and to the sustainability of our country. 

Increasingly, people have come to realize that environmental damage in such a magnitude could only be tackled through broad public involvement. But people cannot meaningfully participate in governance without access to information. Besides, economic globalization means that the damage to the local environment and communities caused by industrial pollution may occur in a place thousands of miles away from those who consume the cheap products made in developing countries. 

To promote environmental transparency in our country, and to contribute to global-level environmental monitoring, we at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs built a national water and air pollution database, taking advantage of the expanding penetration of the Internet and other IT technology. When people gain access to environmental quality data and factory-based violation records, large numbers of corporations are exposed to public scrutiny, and an increasing number of them start to change their behavior. 

Today the fast growth of the world’s population, and the even faster expansion of the scale of consumption and manufacturing, quickly consume the world’s limited resources and put mounting pressure on its fragile ecosystem. Meanwhile, a rising public awareness, evolving government policy, and an emerging sense of corporate responsibility have set the stage for participatory environmental governance. We trust that the green choice made by an informed public will provide the ultimate driving force for sustainable development. 

We are only at the beginning of a long journey towards sustainability. 

I am grateful to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for such a major acknowledgment to our work. It will go a long way in encouraging us and others to carry on the prolonged endeavor.

The Philippine marine ecosystem is one of the world’s richest, but it is also one of the most abused. Today, only 5 percent of its coral reefs remain pristine. Seventy percent of the country?s mangrove forests have been logged or converted to other uses. Half of all seagrass beds are now either lost or severely degraded. ANTONIO OPOSA, JR. remains convinced that the situation can be reversed, for the sake of future generations. 

The young OPOSA found his sentimental home in his grandfather’s seaside farm on Bantayan Island, in Cebu, and in his teenage years became passionate about preserving the environment. This passion later found expression in a career of wide-ranging and sometimes risky advocacies on behalf of Mother Nature: field enforcement of fishing and logging laws, environmental litigation, education on sustainable living, advising local governments on crafting environment-preserving legislation, establishing marine sanctuaries. 

As a lawyer and environmental activist OPOSA made his mark with an unusual case that later popularized the “Oposa Doctrine” in international legal circles. This was a class action he filed in which forty-three minors asked government to cancel timber licenses on the grounds that rampant logging violated their constitutional rights to a healthy environment. 

In a 1993 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the principle of “intergenerational equity,” affirming OPOSA’s argument that the interests of future generations could be protected in court. A triumph of principle, the case set a precedent for how citizens can leverage the law to protect the environment. OPOSA demonstrated this in 1999 when a citizens group boldly filed a case holding government liable for the pollution of Manila Bay and responsible for its cleanup. Marshalling the resources of law and pursuing the case for all of ten years, he won a Supreme Court decision compelling twelve government agencies to coordinate their efforts in rehabilitating Manila Bay, submit action plans, and to regularly report to the Court on the progress of their work. 

After earning a master’s degree in environmental law from Harvard Law School, in 1998 OPOSA decided to devote himself entirely to environmental work. Despite the attractions of a lucrative practice, he declared that from thereon “my clients will be the land, the air, and the waters.”

Setting up his base on Bantayan Island, he organized the Law of Nature Foundation, a network of citizen volunteers engaged in monitoring coral reef sites, establishing marine sanctuaries, and assisting local governments in drafting environmental legislation. Coordinating with law enforcement bodies, he organized the Visayan Sea Squadron, undertaking sea patrols and raids on boat operators and dynamite producers engaged in illegal fishing. 

At great risk to his life, he organized and led some of the most daring enforcement operations against environmental crime syndicates behind the banned dynamite fishing. Recognizing that education is the key to sustainable change, he founded School of the SEAs (Sea and Earth Advocates), a non-profit, experiential learning center that has already trained more than five thousand people in environmental awareness and sustainable living. 

Hailed as one of Asia’s leading voices in the global arena of environmental law, the ebullient OPOSA describes himself as basically a storyteller for man and nature, and explains that law is only his medium. Nonetheless, he says that the law is important as “a tool for thinking,” and to save the environment, “there must be a revolution of the mind, of attitudes.” “We need,” he says, “to change the way we think.”

In electing ANTONIO OPOSA, JR. to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his pathbreaking and passionate crusade to engage Filipinos in acts of enlightened citizenship that maximize the power of law to protect and nurture the environment for themselves, their children, and generations still to come.

Once upon a time, there was a group of islands so rich and so beautiful one poet called them the Perla del Mar de Oriente, Pearl of the Orient Sea. Its people had ready smiles, a generous spirit, and happy hearts. They also respected the earth, for they knew that the land, the air, and the waters were the sources of their life. 

One day, men from foreign lands came with symbols and fire. These aliens taught the happy people that to be happier, they should have more material things-things that they should take out from the earth as quickly as possible. In time, the islands were skinned of their life, disemboweled for a few pieces of silver, and the seas scraped for all they could give. And they called this economic development. 

My friends, I am only a story-teller, and law is the medium by which I tell the story that the environment is not about the birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees. It is about life and the sources of life — land, air, and waters (LAW). The land and the soil are the skin and flesh; the trees and the forests are the lungs; and the seas and the rivers are the blood and bloodstreams of life. 

The economic mindset of uncontrolled extraction and consumption is what got us into the environmental crisis that we are in now-among them the clear and present dangers of climate change. To get out of it, we need an opposite economic mindset-that of conservation, protection, and restoration or CPR. This is also known as the cardio-pulmonary resuscitation of the vital organs of life. 

Today, the good Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation gives me this great honor. Thank you from my inmost heart of hearts. Thirty years ago, I met an accident and went through unspeakable pain and humbling suffering. It taught me one important lesson: honor and fame, like power and money, are important not for what they are, but for the good they can do. 

And so I believe this honor belongs to all our co-workers in the environmental movement, especially to my fallen friend Jojo de la Victoria. This Award also belongs to the Supreme Court for reminding humankind that we are only trustees of the land, the air and the waters for the benefit of generations yet to come. May I ask my co-workers, environmentalists, members of the judiciary past and present, to please rise. This Award is for you. 

Together, we Filipinos send this message to the world: everything that we have done so far was only warming up. The main event is about to unfold. 

Together, we launch a movement to enlist ten million Filipinos for change. Not a change of personalities in power, rather a change within each and every one of us. Today, we also launch a revolution-a turnaround-in the government’s priority for the sources of life. 

Together, we will spark the natural genius of Filipinos and of Asians and restore our respect for the sources of life. Yes, we Filipinos and Asians restore are geniuses in our love for nature. After all, we live in the richest and most beautiful country and region on earth. 

In this revolution, our weapon of choice is not violence. Rather, it is the sword of reason, the fire of passion, and the will, the force, and the power of the law. We cannot have peace on earth unless we have peace with earth. Together, we send this simple message to our leaders: environmental security is the highest form of national security. Anyone who does not understand that has no right to aspire for any position of political power. 

Ten million, my friends, ten million… And that is only the beginning. 

Yes, I am idealistic. But then, my friends, so is each and every one of you. In the veins of every Filipino runs the blood of idealism and greatness, waiting only to be awakened. Let us remember, my friends, that “ideals are like the stars. We may not reach them, but we can look up, see their beauty, and always try to follow where they lead.”

Daghang salamat at magandang hapon sa inyong lahat.