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.

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.

Food sufficiency, environment conservation, local autonomy, social equity—these are urgent, bedrock concerns today. These challenges are addressed by governments, development agencies, multilateral organizations, and other institutions, but we have also seen that the most meaningful, impactful actions often come from the ground, from local communities and the people themselves.

An inspiring example is the story of fifty-one-year-old Eugenio Lemos of Timor-Leste. Lemos lived through the turbulent years of his country’s struggle for independence, that saw the Indonesian invasion and the bitter civil war that marked the country’s emergence as a fully independent nation in 2002. Such difficult beginnings devastated the economy, leaving 40% of the country’s mostly rural population living below the poverty line. For Lemos, born to a family of farmers, it was a tragic time as well. He lost his father and siblings during the war and had to help his mother in farm work at an early age. It would be his life.

He studied agriculture in a local university and took up such activities as starting a group to promote organic farming. In 1999, an Australian permaculture trainer, who was in Timor-Leste to train farmers in sustainable agriculture, introduced Lemos to permaculture, a holistic system for creating and managing sustainable agrosystems. It was not simply about transferring technologies but the cultivation of an ethos of responsible relations to nature and people, expressed in the words “earth care, people care, and fair share.” Lemos saw that many elements of this system were already present in traditional Timorese culture and he resolved that this was something he would devote himself to promoting among his people.

In 2001, Lemos established Permakultura Timor-Lorosa’e (Permatil). It has three main programs. A Youth Training Program that organizes three-day camps for youth seventeen years old or older, involving learning-and-fun activities in water and natural resource management, farming, aquaculture, and agroforestry. (Another camp for kids twelve to sixteen was later added, with simpler activities like gardening and preparing organic food.)

A School Garden Program implemented in public primary schools in which students tend vegetable gardens and learn composting, natural pest control, seed selection, and other skills. There is also a Water and Natural Resource Management Program that promotes “rainwater harvesting” by building ponds, swales, and terraces that store water, recharge aquifers, and regenerate springs.

Since 2008, the youth camp has trained more than 5,000 youth across the country. The School Garden  Program  has  been  established  in  more  than  250 schools and, since 2015, has been integrated in the national  public  school  curriculum.  Permatil’s  Water  and  Natural  Resource Management Program has been introduced in all thirteen administrative districts of Timor-Leste. More than 1,000 water collection ponds have been built and 300 springs revived, benefitting over 400,000 residents or almost a third of the country’s population.

Charismatic, Lemos works with people from all walks of life—they are drawn by his open, humble, down-to-earth manner. Very much in character, he is an activist, a song writer and a singer who uses his songs as a medium to communicate the social issues he cares about. More than just about methods and techniques, Lemos promotes a whole way of looking at nature and people, particularly among the young. Taking time off for a scholarship in 2008-2010, Lemos earned a master’s degree in community development in Australia. What defines him today is that he is proud and respectful of his culture, grounded in local realities, and draws deeply from traditional knowledge what he finds essential to living. He insists, for instance, that what is needed is not simply “food security” or access to food (often commercial and imported) but “food sovereignty,” the country’s capacity to produce its own food, placing the premium on what is local, natural, and nutritious. Still, Lemos is mindful that what he is doing has lessons beyond Timor-Leste. He says, “My message to people—especially leaders of every country—is, think wisely. Don’t think only of how to create benefits for business without thinking about the impact on the environment. As world citizens, everything we do has an impact on others. We have one atmosphere, one water, one air.”

In electing Eugenio Lemos to receive the 2023 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his indomitable spirit in uplifting the lives of local communities, his vision and passion in integrating local and indigenous cultures in his advocacy for the care of the environment and the well-being of people; and for being truly a man of and for his people, and thus for the world as well.

First of all, I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for electing me to receive Asia’s premier prize and highest honor, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

As we all know, man’s impact on our Mother Earth is at a critical crossroads, with many factors severely damaging our natural resources – our agricultural and terrestrial lands, and our marine and aquatic resources. Because of this, the food sovereignty of every country is currently under threat.

For many generations, humans have plundered Mother Earth’s resources in the name of capitalism, and in doing so we have robbed future generations – our own children and children’s children – of water security, of food sovereignty and of a life free of climate change.

The future that they face – a life filled with uncertainty, dangers, threats of displacement and extreme weather events is something I feel extremely concerned about. It is something that we all should be concerned about.

With today’s geopolitics of the current wars between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Palestine worsening the global food production and availability, many millions of people will go hungry and suffer from lack of access to quality, nutritious food and clean drinking water.

But through environmental advocacy, skills training and awareness-raising of ecosystem literacy, permaculture and traditional knowledge, we can build new generations of citizens who have the understanding, capacity, and confidence to effectively tackle climate change and its effects.

Young people of the world are key to achieving sustainable development and restoring the long-term viability of our environment across the globe. It is essential that all young people receive equal access to quality education and training, to social justice and quality health services, to protection from violence and abuse and to opportunities for employment and meaningful participation in society.

So, I ask all of us to make a commitment, to join forces and to act together in stopping the causes of climate change and ecosystem destruction. The time to mobilize everyone especially the youth of the world to rise above the environmental challenges ahead is now.

Permatil (Timor-Leste) and Permatil Global are committed to engaging all youths in the practice of permaculture through the PermaYouth in Action movement. This will grow new environmental leaders and equip youth to share the knowledge and skills with their communities. Knowledge and skills to rehabilitate environments, become water, seed, land and food resilient and implement climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The impact we can create together will not only restore local environments and offer sustainable local livelihoods but will multiply and spread far and wide – increasing the wellbeing of our communities, entire countries, and our planet, now and into the future.

The change begins with all of us. The time to do so is now.

Permaculture. Everyone. Everywhere.

Obrigado barak!

Indonesia is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse countries, and its indigenous peoples (IPs) are estimated at seventy million, or nearly 30% of the country’s population. However, the question of who they are, where they are, and what rights they can claim is contentious in light of state policy that, in the name of national integration and unity avoids facing the realities of ethnic division.

This is the challenge that an IP movement in Indonesia has taken up, and in this movement one person has played a strategic role. ABDON NABABAN, a Toba Batak from Sumatra, began his social advocacy as a student and continued as a non-government organization (NGO) officer after graduation. In 1999, after the fall of the Suharto regime, he was one of the organizers of a congress that launched AMAN (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara, or “Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago,” a mass-based organization that today has over 115 local chapters and 21 regional chapters throughout the country’s thirty-four provinces; collectively, AMAN represents over 17 million members. As AMAN executive secretary and later its secretary-general, NABABAN has led what is now Indonesia’s largest, most influential non-state organization.

When AMAN started, Indonesia’s indigenous peoples—masyarakat adat—were defined by state policy in a way that limited their official recognition to only one million people. AMAN’s major challenge was to represent the actual vast population of masyarakat adat, totaling fifty to seventy million, and thus become a real, autonomous force. AMAN also needed to build its strength as a movement to a level where it could effectively influence state policy. Under NABABAN’s leadership, AMAN’s legal challenge to existing forestry laws finally won in 2012 a landmark constitutional court ruling which decreed that forests in IP territories are not “state forests,” thus returning some fifty-seven million hectares of government-controlled forest land to indigenous communities.

In a related initiative, NABABAN shepherded a massive effort to produce “One Map” of the country’s vast IP territories, after AMAN and supporting NGOs launched the Ancestral Domain Registration Agency in 2010, to create a single data base for verifying land/forest claims on ownership, use, and tenure in view of incomplete, inaccurate and conflicting government data. By 2016, AMAN had submitted to government “indigenous maps” covering 8.23 million hectares. But NABABAN’s arduous crusade continues: the constitutional court ruling and AMAN’s maps still await implementation.

Still AMAN under NABABAN’s dynamic guidance, has raised the bar in declaring that IPs will no longer be placeless and invisible. Equally important, AMAN has built up its membership from 200 communities in 1999 to 2,342 communities in 2017, representing a constituency of seventeen million individuals. It raised its public visibility and worked collaboratively with government in legal reform, conflict settlement, and economic empowerment. In the 2014 election of President Joko Widodo, AMAN delivered 12 million votes for Widodo after he made six commitments to address the IP sector’s needs. While government still has to deliver on these campaign commitments, AMAN has proven that it is a political force that cannot be ignored.

Acknowledged as the single most important person in Indonesia’s IP movement, NABABAN has worked tirelessly for twenty-four years, braving great difficulties and at tremendous cost to himself and his family. Before AMAN, he was not really conscious of what it meant to be an indigenous person until, working in an anti-logging campaign, he realized that the land taken over by a big industrial lumber estate was actually ancestral land that belonged to his grandparents and other Toba Batak families. He has since raised this discovery of IP identity and responsibility to involve millions of others. Speaking with quiet force he says, “It’s about self-identification. You have to make people understand: ‘This is about me. This is about my forest, this is about my land, this is about my water.’”

In electing ABDON NABABAN to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his brave, self-sacrificing advocacy to give voice and face to his country’s IP communities, his principled, relentless, yet pragmatic leadership of the world’s largest IP rights movement, and the far-reaching impact of his work on the lives of millions of Indonesians.

I receive this award with infinite gratitude to the creator of the universe, God almighty, and the ancestors who protect, accompany, and guard me always. I would also like, from the bottom of my heart, to thank all my friends in AMAN. This award is for us.

I dedicate this award to my parents, my wife Devi, and my daughters Meilonia, Mena, and Mayang, who are at home but with me here, too.

Me and my family, we’ve been through a lot. There were even times when I was scared. But, everytime, we overcame. And we grew.

I became an activist in the late ’80s, opposing the all-too-powerful New Order Regime. In the ’90s I realized that I was also a victim. I am one of millions of indigenous peoples in Indonesia. At the time, I—an activist, a victim, an indigenous person—fought an industrial forest company in our ancestral lands. That company, however, was just a front for the real oppressor: authoritarianism and developmentalism. For them, we, the indigenous peoples, were not wanted. We are to be oppressed, to be eradicated, criminalized, impoverished, victimized. Devi, you knew all this, through the years of our frugal life together. You stood by me every time, with trust, hope, and love.

From the very beginning, I have been on assignments given by my people and constituents: to initiate and lead organizations and alliances for the oppressed and for the environment. Because those assignments come with hope and trust, too. My latest assignment is from the indigenous peoples in North Sumatra—that is, to run for governor. This is a province so corrupt and violent.

It took me and my family a long time to finally overcome the fear for our physical, financial, political, and social well-being with this assignment. Again, because of the trust and hope placed upon me, I said, “Yes, I am running for governor of North Sumatra.”

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight is also a night to ask ourselves: where do we come from? What values, what spirit can we offer our society and our earth?

When differing opinions or interests manifest into violent conflicts, when the misuse of religion causes more killings, when developing the economy means destroying the environment, standing here before you, I offer the values and spirit of indigenous peoples to tackle present-day problems of our society and the environment—inequality, crimes, climate change—in a way that is not violent, but humane and sustainable.

And let our countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, lead the world towards peace, where the well-being of people, plants, animals, water, soils, and air prevail.

Corruption is a plague on nations. In rooting out corruption, the work of government in strengthening systems of transparency and accountability is crucial. But ultimately, success still depends on ethical public servants and a vigilant public. In India, forty-year-old government officer SANJIV CHATURVEDI is an inspirational example. Coming from a family of civil servants, CHATURVEDI joined the Indian Forest Service (IFS) because he loves interacting with people in the field and working in government. Posted as a divisional forest officer in Haryana state, Northern India, he quickly came face to face with the corruption infesting government. A young, idealistic officer, he did not turn away from the irregularities that he saw but resolutely worked to correct them.

Boldly, he investigated and exposed cases of malfeasance even when these involved powerful officials in the state. In his six years in the state cadre, he exposed anomalies which included the illegal construction of a canal that threatened the critical Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary; the use of public funds to develop an herbal park on private land owned by a high official; the underpayment of license fees; and the rigging of government auctions. In a foreign-funded afforestation program, CHATURVEDI discovered that 90 percent of the plantations existed only on paper, and that funds had been embezzled through the faked signatures of allegedly participating self-help groups and nonexistent workers. Forty forest officers were suspended as a result of his investigation.

Under intense pressure from high state officials affected by his campaign, he was deputed to New Delhi as deputy secretary and chief vigilance officer at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, where he continued his anti-corruption campaign, exposing and filing cases involving irregularities in government procurement; contracts awarded to favored service providers; kickbacks in building construction; a scam in which government employees collected the pensions of dead pensioners; and the collusion between government officers and suppliers of fake medicines. Relentless, he did not waver even when cases involved high officials in state and central governments, well-connected businessmen, or members of his own staff. At great personal cost, he was harassed, suspended, demoted, hounded and humiliated with false charges, and put “in the freezer.” All these did not stop him.

CHATURVEDI is not a circumstantial whistleblower, but one genuinely seeking to reform the system from within. He meticulously investigates cases, submits documented reports, and pursues criminal and administrative action to punish the guilty. Actions he has taken have bolstered government revenues, and resulted in the recovery of stolen public funds and the suspension or removal of erring officials. Still, CHATURVEDI is not simply adversarial. He zealously performs his regular duties, carries out meaningful projects, and supports and protects honest employees. Within the sphere of his authority, he has initiated changes in operational systems to ensure transparency and accountability—whether these be better procedures in tracking public complaints or ensuring that wages and benefits of contractual employees actually go to them.

As a junior officer, CHATURVEDI’s reach and powers are limited but his integrity and courage have received wide media attention, though he does not himself seek it. On several occasions India’s president and prime minister have intervened to support and protect him from unjust persecution. While his story remains unfinished, he has already become a role model in the bureaucracy and for a public often overwhelmed by inertia and powerlessness. Amazingly, despite what he has gone through, CHATURVEDI has not yielded to disillusion. “Despite all the challenges, I have great optimism in the country, in our people,” he quietly asserts. “I have never entertained the thought of leaving the service. Never.”

In electing SANJIV CHATURVEDI to receive the 2015 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his exemplary integrity, courage and tenacity in uncompromisingly exposing and painstakingly investigating corruption in public office, and his resolute crafting of program and system improvements to ensure that government honorably serves the people of India.

This award has come at a very crucial juncture for me. It is a victory of our national motto, which is Satyameva Jayate, meaning that ultimately truth prevails. For me, it is not a personal award for me; the credit really goes to all the persons who supported me consistently in my endeavours to bring out a transparent and clean government system.

The concept of the All-India Services, to which I belong, is a very unique feature of our constitution where officers are recruited through the central government but occupy all strategic positions in the state governments. The central government has final powers of control over them. The founding fathers were well aware of the importance of these services and, in the words of Sardar Patel, one of our founding fathers and our first home minister:

“The Union will go—you will not have a united India, if you have not a good all-India service which has the independence to speak out its mind, which has a sense of security that you will stand by your word and that after all there is the Parliament, of which we can be proud where the rights and privileges are secure…. This Constitution is meant to be worked by a ring of service which will keep the country intact.”

Like many other developing countries of Asia, in our country also, corruption is a very serious problem. Corruption is not just about money changing hands. It is linked to basic human dignity and the dreams of our young generation in ensuring a fair recruitment system, the delivery of public services, and issues of illegal mining and deforestation leading to climate change. There is no such effective antidote to this problem as an honest and robust civil service. No amount of individual activism or voluntary action, however genuine, can replace this. I would like to remind those here today what the late President Ramon Magsaysay said, that it is the duty of government to bring dignity to the life of every citizen and that once you are in government service, you cease to belong to all other affiliations and belong exclusively to the people.

During my tenure in the environment, forest and healthcare sectors, I had to face stiff resistance from some of the most powerful elements of the system on a range of issues including illicit felling of trees, poaching of rare species, corruption in afforestation projects, supply of dubious medicines, irregularities in government recruitments, vested interests in the purchase and supply of medical equipment, and the problem of large scale absenteeism of health workers. However I was able to bring these issues to a logical conclusion, as in our country the system of checks and balances established by the constitution is still working, and there are institutions in the form of the judiciary, parliamentary committees and the independent media to provide support.

The majority of the population of our country is in age group of fifteen to thirty-five years, and there is a strong urge to eradicate corruption and to bring a transparent and equitable system. This popular support was reflected in the anti-corruption movement of 2011, and in recent elections. I sincerely hope that the pressure built by this young generation will help to eradicate the problem of corruption.

I once again express my deep gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for honoring me with such a prestigious award. This will give me further strength to fight the evil of corruption, and will act as a huge morale booster for all honest and sincere civil servants. I accept this award with a huge sense of responsibility, and promise to try my best to live up to the standards set by the luminary community of Magsaysay awardees.

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!

The pillaging of Indonesia’s forests has been called one of the biggest environmental crimes in recent history. It is estimated that in the 1980s and 1990s, Indonesia lost 1.5 million hectares of forest each year due to rampant, illegal logging. Large-scale forest destruction resulted in serious loss of biodiversity, displacement of indigenous populations, and disasters like landslides and floods. Its impact went much further: deforestation made Indonesia the third largest contributor to greenhouse gases in the world. A problem of such epic proportions demands the response of governments, international bodies, and the broad population. But the response can also begin with the actions of individuals.

AMBROSIUS RUWINDRIJARTO, born in Central Java to a father who was a teacher-farmer and a mother who until now practices organic farming, grew up to enjoy and value his natural environment. As a student in Bogor Agricultural University, his passion for forest trekking and mountaineering led him and five schoolmates to bond with forest dwellers, and organize Telapak for small projects in wildlife protection and village self-help. But things turned much more serious and complex when the group started to confront the issue of illegal logging.

In 1999, partnering with the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which specializes in the investigation of environmental crimes, Telapak began undercover investigations of Indonesia’s logging concessions. Tracking the timber trade from source to market, the Telapak-EIA investigations uncovered the illicit, transnational operations of timber bosses, brokers, and smugglers, in cases involving billions of dollars and the trade in endangered hardwood species. This was dangerous work, as RUWI would personally experience when he and an EIA representative were forcibly detained in the premises of a timber company in central Kalimantan, physically assaulted, threatened with death, and pursued by a mob even after they had found refuge in a local police station. They were flown to safety under armed escort only after local and foreign authorities intervened. But this did not stop Telapak and EIA.

Their exposes on the how and who’s who in illegal logging and smuggling sparked public indignation and heightened pressures on Indonesia and other governments to tighten and enforce regulations on timber production and trade. Telapak went on to participate in framing laws and regulations on forest management and timber legality verification, and was part of negotiations for an Indonesia-EU treaty on the handling of the illegal timber trade. RUWI and his co-founders in Telapak did not only oppose and expose; they also proposed principled but pragmatic solutions. Telapak promoted sustainable, community-based logging and has created community logging cooperatives that legally and sustainably manage forests in more than 200,000 hectares of forest land, using an approach that does not only conserve forest wealth but also benefits the local communities instead of a few well-connected concessionaires and unscrupulous traders.

This approach echoes what RUWI developed from his four-year immersion in two coastal communities in Bali. Working directly with the fishers and villagers, RUWI and his Telapak colleagues led the destructive fishing reform by creating viable programs which reconciled conservation, coral reef restoration, and economic improvement. These villages have now become the model for other fishing villages in community-managed marine resource management.

After more than ten years, Telapak has grown into a 247-member organization engaged in social forestry, marine conservation, and indigenous people’s rights. It has initiated community logging cooperatives and social enterprises engaged in the ecologically-friendly production and marketing of forestry, fishery, and agricultural products. Its programs have had an impact in many of the thirty-three provinces of Indonesia.

This expansion owes in large part to RUWI’s leadership as Telapak’s executive director, and then its president. Pragmatic, hands-on, and action-oriented, he has infused the organization with his zeal and optimism. Even in the dark days of the anti-logging campaign, he would insist, “We are trying to find a hope, some light. We have to work hard to make it happen.”

In electing AMBROSIUS RUWINDRIJARTO to receive the 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his sustained advocacy for community-based natural resource management in Indonesia, leading bold campaigns to stop illegal forest exploitation, as well as fresh social enterprise initiatives that engage the forest communities as their full partners.

This response is dedicated to all fellow members of society and friends for their sustained advocacy against ecological and humanity crimes, and their initiatives and leadership for a better world.

For EIA, Telapak and Samdhana, my organizations.

As with everything in life, there are two sides of our work that is recognized by you all tonight, oppose-expose-bad news, while also propose-create-produce-rejoice-good news.

On one side, we have good news that we now have working models of Indigenous Peoples and forest peoples who organize themselves into cooperatives that manage the forests and their livelihoods sustainably and financially profitably. They are the Koperasi Hutan Jaya Lestari in Southeast Sulawesi, Koperasi Wana Lestari Menoreh in Jogjakarta, and Koperasi Giri Mukti Wana Tirta in Lampung, to name the few pioneers. We have Les and Serangan coastal communities who are pioneers in quitting cyanide fishing and coral mining and became sustainable fishers and coral reef advocates.

But we are living in a world where Indigenous Peoples and their forests are in ever greater threat of destruction. Even as I am standing here before you people call me and report that their forest is being wiped out. A friend of mine, an Indigenous Peoples leader recently phoned me and said that he and his family have been living many days and nights in the forest, keeping guard of it. They will protect that forest, whatever it takes, with their machetes, sumpit, and self. Ain’t he reminded us of a great president? This might be just what President Ramon Magsaysay will do were he there in East Kalimantan?

This Muara Tae is the living example of all that is wrong and unjust with our environment, the pillaging of Indonesia’s forests, the biggest environmental crimes in the recent history of the world.

For me, the Ramon Magsaysay Award is not about my top performance and achievement. Rather we are being at the low, but as Ms. Abella said, I am an emergent leader, and we will be emerging upwards…onwards.

It is then with joy and confidence that I asked my colleagues at the Wana Lestari Menoreh Cooperative in Jogjalarta to manage the prize of this Award by developing and running a social investment facility. The funds will be put in a cooperative and dedicated to social security of many of our local leaders/activists and be used as a revolving fund for start-ups and emerging community/social enterprises.

For the people of Muara Tae and other Indigenous Peoples and forest peoples in Indonesia and Asia, this Award is a recognition and public statement that in fighting for their right to live and make decisions over their life, they are not alone.

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.

Over the centuries, as primeval nature yielded to a vast human habitat in China, the Chinese came to see themselves not as creatures of nature but as its masters. Environmentalist TANG XIYANG believes that this mentality lies behind the predatory assault on China’s environment today. In China, he says, under the pressure of rapid industrialization and the material yearnings of 1.4 billion people, “nature has been badly damaged.” Healing it is his passion. 

Born in 1930, TANG XIYANG emerged from a youth amid war and revolution as a hopeful believer in the new China. He attended Beijing Normal University in the heady inaugural years of the People’s Republic and, in 1952, joined The Beijing Daily as a reporter. In 1957, however, he was denounced as a Rightist. During the next twenty years, he was made to toil in a rock quarry, sweep the streets, and write confession after confession. In the Cultural Revolution, his wife was murdered by raging teenagers, and TANG himself was torn from his two young daughters to labor in the countryside. There, paradoxically, he found himself “surrounded by flowing waters, . . . singing birds, and rustling leaves.” His despair lifted and, he says, “Nature saved me.” 

Exonerated in 1980, TANG became editor of Great Nature Magazine and began exploring China’s nature reserves. In Yunnan, he met fellow nature-lover Marcia Bliss Marks, an American who became his wife and partner. As they explored China together, TANG wrote prolifically about the richness and variety of China’s wildlife and animal habitats. Later, the pair toured fifty national parks and wildlife refuges in Europe, North America, and Asia. TANG’s book about their trip, A Green World Tour, introduced its readers to nature preservation as a global movement and became the bible for China’s young environmentalists. TANG challenged them to become “great travelers, explorers, scientists, and vanguards for nature conservation.” 

In 1996, the year Marcia died, TANG invited 21 university students to spend their summer holidays in Yunnan, where local officials planned to harvest logs on a one hundred-square-mile swath of old-growth forest, the unique habitat of the golden monkey. The research and publicity arising from TANG’s Green Camp helped pressure the government to change course. Buoyed by this success, TANG began organizing Green Camps every year, dispatching a fresh team of students to a different site each summer from Tibet’s primeval forests to the beaches of Hainan. Graduates of TANG’s Green Camps have now organized spin-off camps all over China and can be found today among the staff members of China’s environmental NGOs. Meanwhile, TANG himself lectures tirelessly throughout the mainland-delivering 130 lectures in 17 cities in 2005 alone. 

He tells audiences that nature follows its own law. If the natural law is violated, “nature will seek revenge.” This is why preserving the habitats of brown-eared pheasants and redcrowned cranes and golden monkeys is inescapably linked to preserving a healthy habitat for humans. 

Society also follows certain laws, he says. China has paid a heavy price for its errant legacy of “feudalism, autocracy, and violence.” TANG has concluded that democracy is better. Indeed, without democracy, he says, “there can be no everlasting green hills and clear waters.” 

Finally, TANG stresses that preserving nature is not China’s problem alone. It requires global cooperation. “China needs to know the world,” he says, “and the world needs to know China.” 

TANG’s friends marvel at his workload. At seventy-seven, he remains passionately engaged. Still, although he never lets up, he has learned to get to the point quickly. His latest book, summarizing his views, is called Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. 

In electing TANG XIYANG to receive the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the board of trustees recognizes his guiding China to meet its mounting environmental crisis by heeding the lessons of its global neighbors and the timeless wisdom of nature itself.

On the 1st of August, while the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation announced that I am the awardee for Peace and International Understanding, I was in the beautiful Changbai Mountain Reserve with some members of the Green Camp for College Students. Green Camp was launched in 1996 by Marcia B. Marks, my deceased wife, and me. This is our twelfth year. Forty students from thirty-six universities as well as four teachers from Taiwan were invited. This important and delightful news cheered everyone. In the forest, under the moonlight and amidst joyous singing, they stood in a circle and hugged me one by one, some wishing me good health, some saying: “Teacher Tang, I shall do my best!”

Therefore, I feel that this honor is not for me alone. It is also for China’s younger generation who are pursuing nature conservation. It is also for people who are working selflessly on environmental issues. Indeed, they have done much more and much better than I. 

China is a unique country. It has a vast population and it still lacks awareness of environmental protection. Eighteen years ago when I was visiting Europe and America, I said: “Without democracy, there can be no everlasting green hills and clear waters.” I believe everyone can understand what I mean. Environmental protection is a monumental task. We cannot rely solely on the power of the government, on the economy or legislation. It is imperative that everyone is concerned and involved in ensuring that our environment stays green forever, and our planet remains sustainable. Thus, I am doing my utmost to write books and articles, to ensure the Green Camp’s mission is successful every year, and to travel all over China to give lectures and raise awareness about green culture. 

I am Chinese and Marcia was American; it was love of nature that brought us together. We traveled China together and visited fifty national parks and wildlife reserves in Europe, North America, and Asia. Also, together we wrote the book A Green World Tour. This book looks at the world from China’s perspective; at the same time, it looks at China from the whole world’s perspective. It seeks to share international experiences in environmental protection, and promote understanding and friendship among the world’s peoples. It had a profound impact on the development of environmental protection in China. Some people say Marcia and I were a beautiful union of east-west culture. Marcia used to say these simple yet profound words: “All those who love nature are good people.” Just think about it: if everyone loves nature, pursues the beauty and spirit of nature, then, we will be able to find our rightful place in this great, mysterious, beautiful and living world of nature. Man and nature will be in harmony. How can there still be indifference, selfishness, jealousy, deception, hate, terror and war amongst men? 

Today, as I am standing here to receive this award, I first would like to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for its support and encouragement. Special thanks to Mother Nature and my wife Marcia; they helped me rise from difficulties and confusion to become a dedicated nature conservationist. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family for supporting my cause, my friends, my colleagues and the readers of my books, whom I have never met but have been a source of profound encouragement to me. China’s road to conservation of nature and environment is long and tortuous but I will continue my work resolutely. Thank you!