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

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

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

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

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

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

Maligayan pagbati sa Pilipinas na… walang plastik!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Vedas and other sacred texts, India’s ancient sages conveyed a view of the cosmos so complex and compelling that it survives vibrantly today. Enriched but never overtaken by newer religions over the centuries and by its encounters with the clamoring “isms” of our own time, Hindu civilization pervades the life of modern India. From deep within it, PANDURANG SHASTRI ATHAVALE is drawing strength for his country’s spiritual renewal and material uplift.

Born to a family of Brahmin religious scholars in Maharashtra, ATHAVALE mastered Sanskrit as a youth and absorbed the wisdom of the Hindu classics. In Japan to attend a world religions conference in 1954, he asserted confidently the salience of Vedic teachings and way of life. Someone asked: In your country, is there a single community that lives by these ideals? Disturbed by this question, ATHAVALE returned home and pondered frankly the grim realities of contemporary Indian life.

Having founded a school combining India’s sacred knowledge with Western learning, he began meeting regularly with a group of earnest young truth seekers—entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, lawyers. He led them to cultivate self-awareness (swadhyaya) and to devote a portion of their free time to acts of devotion and gratitude to God. Taking up the call in 1958, ATHAVALE’s middle-class disciples ventured into rural villages to propagate swadhyaya and to advance their teacher’s belief that barriers of caste, gender, and religion must be transcended in order to recognize the true equality of all people.

In the ensuing decades, ATHAVALE’s volunteers swelled to hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Today, ATHAVALE or Dada (elder brother), as he is popularly known, guides a huge spiritual movement that courses through thousands of villages and touches millions of urban and rural Indians. Although emphatically spiritual, the swadhyaya movement has brought striking social and material benefits to its adherents.

In hundreds of villages, swadhyaya devotees have abandoned drunkenness, gambling, wife-beating, and petty crime to devote themselves to community betterment. Fisherfolk, chanting Sanskrit hymns, ply “boat temples” whose daily catch is reserved for the local hungry. Villagers plant multi-hectare “tree temples” to restore degraded land and to make their habitats green again. Farmers cultivate the common fields of “God’s farm” to grow food to share with needy neighbors. Swadhyaya-imbued villages are clean, tidy, and prosperous. Children faithfully attend school. Villagers of all castes, men and women, worship side by side. Untouchability is not recognized. Moreover, communal strife is rare in swadhyaya communities and, in some places, Muslims, Hindus, and Christians share the same place of worship.

Even so, ATHAVALE often reminds people that swadhyaya has nothing to do with politics and is not undertaken to solve the problems of the world. “We are merely planting a bouquet of flowers,” he says, “of love, compassion, selflessness, and peace.”

A small organization of volunteers gives some coordination to ATHAVALE’s vast “family” and guides the work of swadhyaya schools. But it is largely through teaching that ATHAVALE leads the movement. His pithy, conversational sermons hold multitudes in rapt attention and circulate widely in print and on cassette.

In them, ATHAVALE teaches that “God resides in everyone” and that achieving “spiritual oneness” will bring with it solutions for worldly problems. Calling upon the oldest of Hindu teachings, but alluding to Western thinkers as well, seventy-five-year-old ATHAVALE exhorts his listeners to liberate themselves from preconceived ideas and “baseless beliefs.” “The basic revolution,” he asserts, “should be of the human mind.”

In electing PANDURANG SHASTRI ATHAVALE to receive the 1996 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his tapping the ancient wellsprings of Hindu civilization to inspire spiritual renewal and social transformation in modern India.

I accept most gratefully the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. I am honored because this award carried the name and the spirit of a truly great Asian of the twentieth century. The late Ramon Magsaysay was a step ahead of others and he lived for his ideas. He tried to cultivate a sense of self-respect and self-esteem in the people of his republic.

I too have been trying to live and work for similar objectives. However, my philosophy is based on the principles of the indwelling God and devotion to Him. Human beings can feel close to each other if we accept the idea of “the indwelling God generating and operating everyone’s body.” Consciousness of the nearness of God helps in developing self-respect in individuals and overcoming human pains and problems. I consider devotion to God a “social force.” The expression of gratitude to God by way of offering one’s time and efficiency can result in collective activities, which in turn create community resources and their just distribution for the common good. However, we, Swadhyayees, undertake these activities to reorient individual perspective towards life and collective existence that builds self-esteem and confidence. Without this, one can neither achieve individual development nor ensure a healthy community life.

In conferring the award on me, you have appreciated the importance and relevance of my philosophy in the modern times and the selfless work carried on by Swadhyayees the world over.

Once again, I express my gratefulness to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, personally and on behalf of the millions Swadhyayees around the world.