Despite being initially looked down upon as “mere entertainment,” animation has come into its own as an art form, indeed among the most popular in the world today. By producing the illusion of motion, early animators brought wonder and delight to audiences wherever it was introduced. It offered a visual alternative—but also a recognizable analogue—to everyday reality, enabling critical comparisons in an often comic way. Over time, animation did more than entertain. It became a useful and effective medium for education.

Today, with the help of artificial intelligence, digital animation has pushed the boundaries of the possible in both positive and negative directions, further blurring the line between illusion and reality. Beyond topics and themes of interest to children, animation now tackles mature and complex subjects, from war and psychosocial trauma to climate change and sustainable development.

For some, animation is a technique, another way of presenting things by cleverly combining art and engineering. For a dedicated few, it is a passion and a way of life, a means of exploring the truth through the magic of visual fiction.

Among  those  few,  one  name  stands  out:  that  of  MIYAZAKI  HAYAO (born 1941), the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, today one of the industry’s foremost exponents of animated films made expressly for children but with a much broader appeal.

Founded in 1985, Studio Ghibli has produced many of the world’s most memorable and beloved animated feature films. These include such classics as My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo (2008), and The Boy and the Heron (2023). More than being commercial successes—three Ghibli productions are among Japan’s ten top-grossing films—these are works that display a deep understanding of the human condition, engaging their viewers to reflect on their own situation and exercise their humanity.

That could be said of most notable films, except that MIYAZAKI and Studio Ghibli have set the bar higher by aiming for a segment of the audience that could be the most difficult to engage and please: children. Ghibli films have a devoted adult following, but MIYAZAKI has never lost his original and main focus. For him, children comprise a clear and critical audience capable of imbibing complex issues if their imaginations can be suitably provoked and directed.

“I think it is vain to think that we can confront problems of the adult world through animated films,” he says. “That is not to say that films aimed at children are easier; they can be even more difficult because they deal with origins and fundamentals. But I think these are concepts that are especially suited to animation. I want to depict the reality of present-day children in Japan—including their desire—and make films that will inspire heartfelt enjoyment. This is something fundamental, something we should never forget.”

Reflecting his respect for his young audience, MIYAZAKI does not simplify his plots or stories. He tackles complicated issues, using his art to make them comprehensible to children, whether it be about protecting the environment, advocating for peace, or championing the rights and roles of women in society. Some of these subjects can be sensitive and controversial in the context of traditional Japanese society, but MIYAZAKI handles them as a good teacher would—connecting with the young, opening their minds, raising fundamental questions, and inviting them to map the way forward. He educates by entertaining.

As the animator John Lasseter observed in 2014, “Miyazaki has directed eleven feature films [twelve in 2023], more than any other animation director in history. Not only did he write as well as direct those movies, he also drew all of the storyboards, every single drawing for each film himself. And every film he has created is a masterpiece. Each film is full of ideas, images, and emotions that are so immensely creative that it’s hard to conceive that one man thought of them all. Every time I watch a MIYAZAKI movie, I learn something new about the craft of filmmaking.”

But beyond his craft, it is MIYAZAKI’s humanity that has engaged many millions of viewers around the world—his sense of what connects us to nature and to one another. And Studio Ghibli practices what it preaches, as MIYAZAKI has sought to share his success with other workers in the industry, advocating for better working conditions.

In electing MIYAZAKI HAYAO to receive the 2024 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees hails a gifted and exemplary artist who has demonstrated, in his work and outlook, a lifelong commitment to the use of art, specifically animation, to illuminate the human condition, especially lauding his devotion to children as the torchbearers of the imagination, to whom he has passed the light and spark of his own.

Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

My name is Yoda Kenichi, Vice President for Events and Exhibitions for Studio Ghibli. It is my honor to represent our co-founder Miyazaki Hayao, at the 66th Ramon Magsaysay Awards.

Please allow me to read a letter that Miyazaki-san has written for this occasion.

Letter from Hayao Miyazaki

I first heard of the Ramon Magsaysay Award when I was a child.

I think it was in the school playground, and my teacher told me that such an award had been created.

The name made an impression, so it has remained in my mind ever since.

Being honored with this award made me think of the Philippines once again.

In 2016, the former Emperor and Empress visited Manila, which was the setting of urban warfare during World War II, to pay their respects to thousands who have lost their lives.

The Japanese did a lot of terrible things back then.

They killed many civilians.

The Japanese people must not forget this.

It will always remain.

With such history, I solemnly accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award from the Philippines.

Thank you very much.

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!

Being an archipelago in the heart of the Coral Triangle, the global center of marine diversity, it is not surprising that the Philippines is one of the top fish-producing countries in the world. Yet, the tragic irony is that fishermen—particularly municipal fishermen, who constitute 85% of over 1.6 million people employed in the fisheries sector—are among the poorest labor groups in the country. Traditionally unorganized, small-scale, with meager assets and access to outside assistance, they have suffered over past decades as their life-sustaining resource, the marine environment, is severely degraded.

One 53-year old fisherman has broken the mold by leading his community in preserving the coastal environment that has been the life-source for generations of fishing families. He is ROBERTO BALLON (fondly called “Ka Dodoy”). His Visayan parents migrated to the village of Concepcion in Kabasalan, Zamboanga Sibugay province in Mindanao, when he was in his teens. KA DODOY knew the realities of diminishing fish harvests in once rich fishing grounds; how his father, like other village fishermen, would spend long hours at sea and come home earning barely enough to buy rice for the family. Poverty prevented KA DODOY from going to college; so he knew he would have to “go back to the sea.” Having started his own family, he had to take command of the situation he was in.

In 1986, DODOY and thirty other fishermen started Kapunungan sa Gagmay’ng Mangingisda sa Concepcion (KGMC), or Association of Small Fisherfolk of Concepcion. Seeing how rampant fishpond conversion was, and how the abandonment of these fishponds when the business collapsed had destroyed the mangrove forests, KGMC decided to focus on mangrove reforestation. With little help and meager returns (since the benefits of reforestation are not felt quickly), the association saw its members dwindle to just three but KA DODOY, the association chairman, persisted.

Their perseverance attracted government support, reaching a milestone in early 2000, when the fishermen were granted tenurial rights to the reforested land under a government forestry co-management program. The fifty hectares they replanted by 1994 had expanded to five-hundred hectares of mangrove forests in 2015. What was once a desert of abandoned fishponds is now an expanse of healthy mangrove forests rich with marine and terrestrial life. Fish catch has improved dramatically from 1.5 kg per fishing trip of eight hours to as much as    7.0 kg in three-to-five hours of fishing. The improvement in the fisherfolk’s quality of life has been evident in their ability to buy a boat engine or simple household appliances and send their children to school.

From a handful members in the 1980s, KGMC now has a membership of 320 households. The group’s success led to other projects. In partnership with the municipal government, KGMC members were deputized to conduct the local Bantay Dagat or Sea Patrol volunteer program, aimed at protecting municipal waters from illegal fishing and mangrove logging. They have also attracted partnerships with development institutions in livelihood and social enterprise projects like oyster production, shell and crab culture, and seaweed farming. KGMC’s initiatives have been replicated in other towns in Zamboanga Sibugay and even beyond. These and other changes have given new life to Kabasalan, now regarded as the seafood capital of the province and an ecotourism destination.

The key mover in this transformation is DODOY BALLON. His exceptional dedication to serving others and self-sacrificing leadership that puts the group’s interest before his own have transformed his community. When KA DODOY and his fellow fishermen were starting out and it seemed like there was no one to help them but themselves, he said: “Our families depend on the sea for our survival, not on politicians or other people, so it is only right that we make its protection our priority.”

In electing ROBERTO BALLON to receive the 2021 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his inspiring determination in leading his fellow fisherfolk to revive a dying fishing industry by creating a sustainable marine environment for this generation and generations to come, and his shining example of how everyday acts of heroism can truly be extraordinary and transformative.

“Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.” These words from Pope Francis in his encyclical letter – Laudato Si exemplify the choices I made and continue to make, as an ordinary fisherman – to dauntlessly see riches from ridges to reef and thereby choose to rise, to choose what is good, and to choose to make a new start. By God’s grace, standing before you at this moment, remind me of these humble choices that yielded fruits and even earned international recognition.

I am profoundly honored and pleased to be chosen as one of the Awardees of the most prestigious award in Asia, in honor of the legacy of the late Pres. Ramon Magsaysay. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I will be counted among the array of great community leaders to be recognized by the Foundation.

As a simple fisherman, I only have one desire for the community that makes me do what I have been doing: to offer myself to help provide a better environment, sustainable livelihood, and an empowered community to realize our vision and mission in life – that is, to have 3,8…agahan, tanghalian at hapunan, tatlong kainan in English, breakfast, lunch, dinner, so 3 eat.  If we have 3 eat, 3 meals in a day, I believe we would be content.

But more than this, I see a hunger that not even three full meals could satisfy.  Day after day, I see the need to strive for progress, to live a harmonious life propelled by a sustainable and equitable co-existence in the coastal vicinities of Zamboanga Sibugay. This has always been our aspiration as municipal fisherfolks together with our government and other stakeholders in preparation for a better and productive environment for the next generations.

Because of this Award, I am exceedingly grateful and hopeful that this platform could be a great mechanism to help our poor fisherfolk sector attain more leverage to sustainably manage our coastal resources. Through this stage, I am advocating my fellow fisherfolk in the entire archipelago that this initiative will not stop with this award but will serve as a vehicle to sail smoothly and navigate towards sustaining our natural wealth.

What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up? Asks Pope Francis using the lenses of the same encyclical. Today and in the years to come, we respond to the daunting task of making the earth truly a home. To my fellow fisherfolks, let us help our government by keeping our coastal habitat protected and sustainably utilized.

1. Let us support our fishery program while being faithful to the laws and local policies that augment coastal measures in our pursuit for better production and environmental preservation.
2. Let us take heed of the environmental cries that continue to haunt us because of sheer apathy and personal interest resulting in environmental abuses which badly affects the poor.
3. Let us take the step of empathy because progress entails sacrifices and unity. If our government fails, we also fail. If our government succeeds we also succeed. However, let us also be vigilant to the developments that are offered…we don’t just exist and be lavished with what the world can render us but take the proactive step instead and see for ourselves what we can render to those who need us most.
4. Let us not hook our destiny with the ways and means that our government has for us. We are capable of shaping our own. We break the silence of each dawn with a noble purpose. Ours is not a passive waiting for whatever the government can do for us. Ours is the call to be proactive and thus help our government achieve its goal for the common good.

My fellow fisherfolk, it is not our government leaders who brave the waves and the storms to earn a good catch from the seas. While others just stand at the stretches of the coast, we find ourselves delving into the deep because we are confronted with much deeper and greater responsibilities.

This is where we earn a living. But beyond quenching this human need is the vocation to give life to our natural resources, to see life from ridges to reefs, and eventually bring life to our common home.

To our family in the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, I am deeply thankful that you have recognized, if I may say, the collaborative efforts that empowered poor fisher folks like us, and thus take our initiatives in a larger arena which now garners greater consciousness for the protection and conservation of our coastal environment. Thank you for making us realize that even the smallest efforts that we exert for such advocacies are not futile and never stupid. Convinced that we shall reap more bountiful harvests, we are able to see that all these are appropriate actions – most valid and ethical contributions that we can offer to our future generations.

Let me take this chance to render my sincerest appreciation to our community development workers on the ground who have always been my company even when the sail goes rough and perilous.

1. To the Local Government Unit of Kabasalan who has given support since 2001 in the protection of our municipal waters until now. The Office of the Municipal Agriculture despite having the least fund allocation never ceased to stir collaborative efforts with our fisherfolk organization and for cementing strong policy support in the Integrated Coastal Resource Management.
2. To the Provincial Government of Sibugay, national government agencies like the Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the DA – Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the Department of Science and Technology, the Philippine National Police, and the Coast Guard for pushing us to reach our potentials and for supporting us in one way or another.
3. To all our able partners who have been my constant support, foremost to the Xavier Agriculture Extension Service Foundation of Ipil that honed my skill and talent in community development and coastal resource management.
4. To the various   Non-Government Organizations namely, the Forest Foundation Philippines formerly PTFCF, Condura, the Peace and Equity Foundation, AADC, AsiaDHRRA, RARE Philippines, PAKISAMA, HEED Foundation that funded our mangrove reforestation projects, strengthened our association, developed our leaders, and provided us functional technical knowledge and skills.
5. To the various academic institutions, the Ateneo de Zamboanga -School of Medicine, Xavier University, Ateneo de Cagayan, MSU – Naawan, UP Manila for providing us scientific results as basis for our local legislation and ongoing programs.
6. To my immediate community of Balungis, Concepcion, Kabasalan, Zamboanga Sibugay, the KGMC and COMFAS for always believing in me, for tirelessly supporting me.
7. To our  Local  Church in the Diocese of Ipil for raising in me profound consciousness to be faithful despite our very poor condition, for molding my values since my youth to be a grateful and responsible steward of God’s creation.
8. Lastly and most importantly, I would like to thank my family — my parents and my siblings who raised me and taught to me fulfill my responsibilities as a leader; to my wife, Rebecca, and my eleven children, who are my source of joy and who give me strength and give light to the path I take every day.

Let me say it again, no matter how simple we are, we are capable of rising above our weaknesses, capable of choosing what is good, and ever capable of making a new start. May this crusade continue until we can achieve our goal of becoming successful and progressive Filipinos in the entire nation and to the whole of Asia and the world.

MABUHAY ANG MANGINGISDANG PILIPINO! DAMO GUID NGA SALAMAT SA INYO NGA TANAN!

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.

The warm shallow seas of island Southeast Asia host one of the planet’s most productive natural systems. Coral reefs are nurseries for sea life of an astonishing variety and abundance, providing livelihood for fisherfolk and food for millions. But humans have preyed too hard upon the reefs.

Today, in the Philippines, 70 percent have been damaged or destroyed by predatory exploitation and pollution, and none has escaped harm. We now know that we must save what can be saved; this requires prudent restraint. But how can we rehabilitate what has been badly damaged, and bring back to vitality what has very nearly been lost? This task requires the practical application of science and has been the life’s work of marine ecologist ANGEL C. ALCALA.

A child of the sea-bathed Visayan Islands, ALCALA marveled at the wonders of coral reefs long before he understood them. At Silliman University he took up biology and pursued it through a doctorate at Stanford University. Returning to the Philippines, he made his career at Silliman, advancing in 1991 to become the school’s president.

As a young scientist ALCALA taught zoology, anatomy and botany to Silliman’s students and explored the local rainforests for undiscovered varieties of reptiles and amphibians. In 1974 he established the Silliman University Marine Laboratory. Based here, and working in collaboration with his research colleagues and students, ALCALA embarked on pathbreaking research.

On the island of Sumilon, ALCALA established his country’s first marine sanctuary. Here he observed that a healthy coral reef can yield sea life six times greater than previously thought possible. Moreover, ALCALA’s research revealed that if just one fourth of a reef is protected, the rest can be used as a fishing zone, providing a sustainable livelihood for nearby coast dwellers. When Sumilon’s reef was badly plundered after losing its protected status, ALCALA learned another lesson: Involve local people! On Apo Island, Silliman’s team worked hand-in-hand with local fishing families from the beginning; today the university has withdrawn and the people manage the restored reef themselves. These hopeful findings are now being put into practice throughout the Philippines. “This is my vision,” says ALCALA, “a series of marine reserves in all the islands, all contributing to keeping the surrounding seas healthy.”

Keeping the seas healthy and bountiful for growing numbers of Filipinos has been the object of much of ALCALA’s research. He built the Philippines’ first artificial reef, now a model for dozens of others. He induced the near-extinct giant clam and Philippine crocodile to reproduce in captivity and developed breeding programs for other valuable sea animals. He monitored the health of fish, corals, seagrasses and mangroves throughout the central Visayas and taught coastal communities how to increase the productivity of precious shallow waters. He studied the effects of pollution on marine organisms. As he learned, he also spoke out.

ALCALA is a conservationist who gets the facts first. Based on thorough research, he defended Negros Island’s surviving patch of virgin rainforest from hydro-electric dams and tourism and helped to evict commercial seaweed producers from the unique Tubbataha reef–now the Philippines’ first national marine park. ALCALA’s forceful and reasoned public stand for the environment is unwelcome in some quarters. But this down-to-earth scientist who prefers the sea’s breezes to air conditioning carries on fearlessly nevertheless, mindful of the Bible’s teaching that, “We are the stewards of Creation.”

ln electing ANGEL C. ALCALA to receive the 1992 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his pioneering scientific leadership in rehabilitating the coral reefs of the Philippines and in sustaining for Filipinos the natural abundance of their country’s marine life.

There are wonderful surprises that come our way, at one time or another, in our life. And to me this prestigious award is the greatest and most wonderful surprise of all.

I wish to thank the officers of the Magsaysay Award Foundation, particularly those who even began to think of me as deserving of this award to honor the great Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay. I also thank my numerous colleagues, friends, admirers, fellow ecologists, and conservationists for their kind words of congratulations. In my many years of painstaking research—of going deep into our forests and undertaking marine life conservation—a prestigious award of this kind was way beyond my wildest dreams.

I also wish to thank my wife Naomi and our children, whose loving support and understanding allowed me to be away from home for lengths of time pursuing my love of field research, spearheading conservation projects, and attending gatherings of scholars around the world.

I am grateful to Silliman University and Stanford University, which have given me excellent training in my chosen field of biology. And, of course, I thank my many research colleagues and the funding agencies that have made possible what the Magsaysay Award Foundation has perceived to be my achievements.

I hope that the recognition of my life’s work by the foundation serves to boost the morale of many of my fellow biologists and researchers, as well as dedicated teachers who work in relative obscurity.

On this occasion, I think of the great Silliman motto: Via, Veritas, Vita, particularly the word Veritas. I like to think that I’ve been given this award because of my passionate search for biological Truth. Indeed, I think I’ve done this search for Truth the way the great biologist Thomas Huxley described serious study:

Sit down before a fact like a little child. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and whatever depths nature leads. Otherwise you shall learn nothing.

But I also like to think that while I have learned truth in abundance, I have also made it my preoccupation to do the truth, to pursue its practice, to apply what I have learned, particularly in the areas of environmental enrichment and conservation of our nation’s natural wealth.

Indeed, I am highly honored that I am awarded for trying to know and do the truth. At the same time, however, I wish to confess, on behalf of all sincere environmentalists and conservationists, that our endeavors have not been sufficient to stem the tide of human error that has caused such tragedies as Ormoc, the deterioration of our marine life, the denudation of our forest reserves, and the annihilation of what we possess in abundance. In short, the alarming and wanton destruction of our natural resources.

So on this occasion of honor and celebration, allow me to express a warning and a challenge to all of us, Filipinos and Asians: that unless we move fast to put a stop to the rape of our natural resources, we will remain poor, destitute, pitiful, and even become worse off. If the environmental destruction continues without letup, it will be our children and our children’s children who will reap the tragic consequences.

My friends, we now find ourselves at the crossroads between poverty and prosperity. Our future is only as good as what we make of the present.

A shy, frail housewife and aspiring poet, MICHIKO ISHIMURE became a determined documentaries when “ businessmen with no conscience ” allowed toxic waste to pollute her community. Arousing the public will, she demonstrated how exacting search for fact could overcome bureaucratic inertia and hostile industrial interests.

Minamata was a naturally beautiful but poor fishing and farming center when one of Japan’s pioneer chemical companies established itself there in 1908. Growing into a great chemical complex before, and especially after, World War II, the company became the principal employer and dominant influence in local politics and government.

Official non-interest attended a puzzling “cat’s dance disease” that spread through Minamata nearly a quarter century ago, causing frenzied cats to die or drown themselves. Nor did officials show concern when people, especially fisher folk, were afflicted with a crippling and disfiguring disease that also was often convulsive and fatal. An exception was the late Dr. Hajime Hosokawa of the chemical company’s hospital, who, in 1957, enlisted research assistance from Kumamoto University Medical School. Their finding that the “mysterious disease” was a central nervous system disorder resulting from eating fish contaminated by mercury waste discharged into Minamata Bay was suppressed, though the City Hospital had to build special wards to accommodate the patients.

Impelled by her Buddhist upbringing to act against callous harm to life, Mrs. ISHIMURE quietly sought out the stricken. Her penetrating portrayals of their lives and agonizing illnesses within the context of a stratified society were first published in a small literary magazine in Kumamoto, Kyushu. When assembled into a book, Kukai Jodo Waga Minamata (Pure Land Poisoned Sea) in 1968, these poetic essays commanded national response.

The resistance of local and national authorities and the chemical industry was stubborn. Ostracized by unaffected residents whose living depended upon the polluting company, and over protestations even of relatives, Mrs. ISHIMURE persisted. A collection of essays by her and others, Waga Shimin Minamata-byo Toso (Minamata Disease My Dead People), was published in 1972. A second book, a compilation of her own perceptive writings previously carried in leading magazines and newspapers, Rumin no Miyako (City of Drifters), was in its third printing within a month after publication in March 1973.

As scientists, publicists and committees of concerned citizens have gained hearing in Tokyo, the Health and Welfare Ministry belatedly has acted. Though the chemical industry has begun corrective measures, the battle still is not won. As Mrs. ISHIMURE chronicles it, the Minamata tragedy is only a part of the ongoing struggle between the simple innocence of fishermen and farmers and the tyranny of mass industrialization that threatens to dehumanize society.

In electing MICHIKO ISHIMURE to receive the 1973 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes her as the “voice of her people” in their struggle against the industrial pollution that has been distorting and destroying their lives.

The anniversary of the surrender of Bataan makes it impossible for me to express my appreciation without honestly falling headlong into complex feelings of anguish, because as a human being of that country whose soldiers perpetrated that surrender in your land, I am to receive your most noble and humane national prize, the Magsaysay Award.

The setting sun over Manila Bay, the beauty of which is praised throughout the world as exquisite, sets also into my soul as if bathed in human blood. In like manner, the setting sun over Manila Bay reminds me of the beauty of the sun setting over my own Minamata Sea.

This same sunset has twilight the funeral march of my people on the seaside hills, and yet, while these dead were still among the living, this solar twilight cascaded over the canvas sails of their boats as if over so many flower petals being guided smoothly over the water on their way. And the shimmering sunlight presided over the wind romping across the sea beckoning to the many schools of swimming fish.

In the ancient and primitive religions of my country, the abundant light of the sun brought life to this world, and was worshipped as the goddess of affection and peace. Among other gods were those who misbehaved and brought disaster to people, causing the sun goddess to hide herself because of her overwhelming sadness; this left the people in fearful darkness pleading for the return of their goddess through prayer and self-restraint. This original mythology developed into a most simple but powerful morality for my people. Even today, when scientific civilization has become the object of faith, there is no doubt that the sun still remains the ultimate lord of life.

With this kind of faith already in existence, then, the national modernization of my country brought drastic modifications so that the hearts and minds of my people became alienated. Thus, in the last world war this warped faith was used as a slogan for the invasion of other countries. In spite of this, like people in your own country who have not yet been destroyed by the evils of civilization, so in my Minamata, there are people who cannot live without love for the life of others.

It is these kinds of people who have been attacked by organic and inorganic mercury and other industry-related heavy metal poisons so that, not only has their existence and life lost its physical viability through the accumulation of death-dealing quantities of poison metals, but also the aim of this intrusion has been the sneering and insulting execution of the unique, beautiful and delicate ethics yet remaining in my homeland.

This intruder came dressed in the garb of area industrial development and economic growth and he appeared before humble and simple people using a silky coaxing voice like that of the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood.”

While modern chemical industry was secretly depositing poisons, some of my own people died a sudden and anguishing death, and through 10 and 20 year periods, parents, children and then grandchildren were more slowly murdered. However, these people, caught in an unprecedented disaster, saw through those who sought to destroy them with the penetrating sight of unseeing eyes at death.

Over a long period of time, the people who remained were filled with the will of those who had, in such a manner, died, just as the people in your country had begun in a moment to observe in their hearts the Bataan surrender anniversary.

In the classic writings of my culture there is a saying which goes: “The bird’s most beautiful song comes at the moment of death.” At the end of one’s destiny, life, in and of itself, has a dignity and beauty which, even though denied, is not unappealing.

The final voice of that given destiny, after being murdered by a giant even more inhumane than “The Merchant of Venice,” does not stop offering, to those who are left, a deep revelation.

Many of my friends, infinitely more so than myself, have gone through a powerful resurrection of the soul through this death watch, and stand thus together with those who are suffering in order to create many practical and bold action groups. And these persons, expecting no return, humbly and with silent persistence pursue the kind of work that others would not do. My humble literary offerings have been enlightened by these people who act, not with words, but with deeds.

Modern industrial society proceeds in the direction of defacing the most delicate and deep receptivity of the human spirit. For example, when comparing the magnificent and mysterious structures yet remaining in the hinterlands of Southeast Asia, with the buildings in the modern cities of my own country, it can be seen that modern structures are only piles of concrete void of any personality.

My humble desire has been only to bring to life and make sound again this basic and rich receptivity that yet undoubtedly is retained within women and men. Originally, the subject of poetry was the grandeur of nature and I tried to tune my bowstring for a world of people whose souls interacted with the grandeur of nature. However, my bowstring didn’t vibrate, and listening to the wee small voice of my heart, I know now why: the song of those in death was more beautiful than the song sung by the living. Only a small part of this has been put into words.

I have heard that Japanese enterprises have begun their invasion of this country but I pray from the bottom of my heart that your land will never be inflicted with a disaster like that in Minamata.

I ask only that I be allowed to use this Award money for the sake of those still left alive. I offer my deepest thanks.