Despite India’s remarkable economic boom in recent years, poverty remains urgent and widespread in this vast country. Forty-two percent of India’s population, or roughly four hundred million people, still live below the global poverty line. At the frontlines in addressing this problem is a huge civil society movement of a million non-government organizations, or NGOs. Yet, many of these organizations are small or ineffective. It is in the context of these challenges that DEEP JOSHI evolved his development work. 

JOSHI was raised in a remote village in Uttarakhand in the Himalayas, where until today there are few motor roads. But this marginalization did not prevent him from earning a degree from the National Institute of Technology in Allahabad, a master’s degree in engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a management degree from MIT’s Sloan School. 

Returning to India, he worked as a Ford Foundation program officer and accumulated experience in development work. Encounters in the field inspired him, in particular a visit to the US-trained medical doctors Rajanikant and Mabelle Arole, who were working on rural health in remote West-Central India. Deeply impressed by how the Aroles combined their sophisticated training with strong empathy for the poor, JOSHI concluded that if only more people equipped with both knowledge and empathy decided to work in the villages, India’s rural society would be transformed. 

This idea led him in 1983 to form, together with some colleagues, Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN). A non-profit organization, PRADAN recruits university-educated youth from campuses across the country and grooms them to do grassroots work through a rigorous year-long apprenticeship which combines formal training and guided practice in the field. “Professionalizing” development work is PRADAN’s mission. JOSHI says: “Civil society needs to have both head and heart. If all you have is bleeding hearts, it wouldn’t work. If you only have heads, then you are going to dictate solutions which do not touch the human chord.”

Living and working directly with India’s poorest communities, PRADAN staff empower village groups with technical, project implementation, and networking skills that increase both their income-generating capabilities and their actual family income. Its staff, combining their professional expertise with local knowledge, also train villagers as para-veterinarians, accountants, and technicians who support their fellow-villagers in building and sustaining collective livelihood projects. 

In its twin programs of training development professionals and reducing rural poverty, PRADAN has produced impressive results. It has reached over 170,000 families in over three thousand villages of India’s poorest states. Over a thousand graduates have joined its apprenticeship program. More than three hundred professionals comprise its staff, most of them working in field-based teams across the country. 

PRADAN is not founder-centric. It is a decentralized, collegial body that has developed institutional space for second-generation leaders. JOSHI is himself an exemplar of its strength and character as a professional organization, retiring at the policy-prescribed age despite the wish of his colleagues for him to stay on. Still, he remains deeply committed to PRADAN, now working purely as an Advisor. Modest, deeply respected by colleagues for his integrity and intelligence, he has shaped the professional ethos of the organization. 

JOSHI began by asking himself: Why would engineers and management professionals, with degrees from universities like Harvard and MIT, choose to apply their brainpower to a small village irrigation project? For someone who did exactly that, the pressing question was, what is stopping them? JOSHI desires to show that for people with the finest education, there are few intellectual challenges more worthy than addressing rural poverty. He says: “Development work is considered intellectually inferior to high science, industry, or diplomacy. We want to prove it is both a challenging and a noble choice.”

In electing DEEP JOSHI to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his vision and leadership in bringing professionalism to the NGO movement in India by effectively combining “head” and “heart” in the transformative work of rural development.

It is an honor to be chosen for the Ramon Magsaysay Award, named after a great humanist of our times. 

Among those from my country so honored are saints of our times like Vinoba Bhave, Mother Teresa and Baba Amte; reformers like JP Narayan; artistes like Satyajit Ray; activists like Laxmi Jain and Aruna Roy; social entrepreneurs like Vergese Kurien; scientists like M.S. Swaminathan; community workers like Ela Bhatt — It is humbling to be joining such a galaxy of fellow citizens whose selfless, path-finding work I have always admired, some of whom I have had the privilege to know personally and one of whom, Mabelle Arole, indeed inspired whatever I have made of my life. 

The award is recognition of the hard work and dedication of my colleagues in PRADAN; it celebrates the idea of PRADAN, that education must serve a social purpose, that it must first be used to trigger transformations in communities mired in poverty and hopelessness. I do hope it also reminds us of the vast challenges that lie ahead of us to create a world without want, misery and strife. On a personal note, nothing I have done would be possible without the support of my family, especially my wife Sheela. 

The word “professional” used in my citation derives from “profess”, denoting people who had discovered the Truth through years of study and reflection and used their knowledge to aid the salvation of ordinary people. Possession of unique knowledge and its use in public service thus define a professional. We hold them in high regard. They enjoy much authority and respect in society. Only fellow professionals can question or challenge them, not ordinary citizens. The world today almost totally depends on professionals. We let them run our economies, plan our cities, manage our forests and factories, dispense justice, run governments, educate our children, look after our health, plan our future and even fight our wars… Yet, as we look around, the balance sheet does not quite add up. Widespread poverty and misery, strife in many parts of the world, a planet inexorably heating towards peril… Professions and professionals have not quite acquitted themselves… Something has gone horribly wrong…

I am also trained as a professional. As a young man who grew up in a tiny village in the Himalayas I was culturally an alien to the world of professions. What an engineer or a manager normally does did not seem fulfilling. I could not think of an alternative until serendipity brought me to the work of two doctors, Mabelle and Raj Arole, in a poor, drought-prone part of rural Maharashtra in western India. Seeing Mabelle work with poor, illiterate village women was my turning point. The bond she had with those women clearly arose from her deep interest in them as human beings. Yes, she needed her medical knowledge to introduce new health practices and behavior, but it was her empathy that helped her discern what was needed and win the villagers’ trust to get her ideas accepted. 

I learnt from this encounter what professional schools never taught me, that knowledge alone does not make you a professional. Knowledge must have a social purpose and that comes from a concern for others, empathy with others. It comes from the heart, just as knowledge resides in the head. 

It is the mission of PRADAN to bring educated Indians to work with poor people, as much to use their valuable knowledge as to express their concern for others. Over the years we have demonstrated the power of this idea. I believe we have only re-invented the definition of professionalism that has always existed. I am grateful that the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation agrees with us. 

I gratefully accept the award on behalf of my colleagues, all women and men working with poor people, my family and all the people in villages who have so willingly accepted us, taught us. Thank you very much.

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.

Today, thirty-eight million people across the globe are living with the silent scourge of HIV/AIDS; more alarmingly, over twenty-five million have died of the disease in less than three decades. Any serious effort to fight the AIDS epidemic requires that treatment be both accessible and affordable; sadly, this remains an unresolved issue for patients in developing countries, where nine out of ten HIV/AIDS cases can be found. Here, countless lives remain at risk because patent protection laws and the lack of generic alternatives make desperately-needed drugs too expensive. Thai scientist KRISANA KRAISINTU has been working determinedly to address this crisis.

KRISANA sees the huge gap in access to medicines between rich and poor nations as “a crime against humanity, and a holocaust of the poor.” Devoting her life to addressing this problem, she played a pivotal role in Thailand’s success as one of the few countries in the world to have reversed a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic. But not one to rest on her laurels, KRISANA has since brought her expertise and compassion to other parts of the world.

A highly-trained pharmacist, she earned a doctorate in pharmaceutical chemistry from Bath University in England. In 1983, she joined the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO), which manufactures pharmaceutical products to support Thailand’s public health activities. Leading GPO’s newly created Research and Development Institute, she guided the production of numerous generics for a wide range of illnesses, including hypertension and diabetes.

When AIDS became a national epidemic in Thailand, she conducted research on antiretroviral drugs despite the lack of government support, the skepticism of many colleagues, and lawsuits from drug companies. In 1995, after months of solitary toil with toxic materials in a windowless lab, KRISANA successfully formulated the generic version of AZT (zidovudine), which treats HIV generally and reduces the risk of mother-to-child transmission. Introduced into the market at only one-fourth the cost of the branded product, it is the developing world’s first generic antiretroviral (ARV) drug.

Working with NGO advocates lobbying for lower consumer prices, she weathered major legal battles to produce the second generic ARV drug ddI (didanosine); still later she and her team invented a “cocktail” drug known as GPO-VIR, which is eighteen times cheaper than the regimens of multiple pills taken by AIDS patients. GPO currently produces seven types of ARVs, with production sufficient to treat 150,000 patients a year in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

In 2002 KRISANA took her expertise to sub-Saharan Africa, the region hardest-hit by the disease. As she started her work, she was painfully aware that only 1 percent of the four million people in need was receiving ARV therapy. This time, she surmounted another set of formidable obstacles: working in zones of armed conflict, traveling to remote locations, and contending with grossly inadequate facilities. In war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, she set up a pharmaceutical factory that was able to produce generic antiretrovirals after three years. In Tanzania, she helped upgrade an old pharmaceutical plant to produce affordable antimalarial drugs and ARVs. Going further, she brought her expertise to thirteen more African countries, helping them to locally manufacture affordable medicines.

The intrepid KRISANA easily commiserates with victims of disease. She admits, “I know I’m a scientist, but I’m also very sensitive. When I see suffering I feel very sad, and I want to do something.” So she shares her generic formulas for free and trains chemists and technicians, often using her own money in the course of her work. Making health affordable for the poor, she says, is a matter of social justice. “That is why I want to teach people to make medicines, so they can help themselves.”

In electing KRISANA KRAISINTU to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her placing pharmaceutical rigor at the service of patients through her untiring and fearless dedication to producing much-needed generic drugs in Thailand and elsewhere in the world.

It is truly an honour for me to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award, an award that honours the legacy of a distinguished statesman and signifies transforming contributions to human development in Asia.

My journey as a pharmacist in pursuit of increasing access to medicines to those underprivileged and often disadvantaged people in developing nations has been a long one. That journey is filled with adventures, formidable challenges and achievements, disappointments and rewards, sadness and joy, both in my homeland Thailand and in many African countries that I’ve visited and worked in.

I was motivated by a sense of fairness, and a view of AIDS as a social as well as a health problem. I think everybody should get access to treatment. It is a basic human right. The development and manufacture of medicines must be aimed at improving public health and the well-being of the people, thereby contributing to economic growth and prosperity. My life is dedicated to bringing about local pharmaceutical production by formulating and manufacturing affordable generic drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other maladies, to improve people’s health.

Between 1983 and 2002 when I worked for Thailand’s Government Pharmaceutical Organisation, GPO manufactured over one hundred new kinds of drugs that had never been produced before in Thailand. In 1995 Thailand became the first developing country to make available the AZT capsule, and in 2001 a fixed-dose generic combination drug of stavudine, lamivudine and nevirapine, known as GPO-VIR, against HIV/AIDS. As a result of this cost-reduction and high-quality drug, as well as Thai civil society’s tireless advocacy for its broader availability, the Thai government has established a policy of universal coverage for antiretroviral treatment for 150,000 patients infected by HIV/AIDS to date.

For the past seven years, I have worked in fifteen African countries, fourteen of which are least developed countries, spread from West to East Africa-teaching the local people to manufacture generic antimalarial and antiretroviral drugs. I believe that teaching people how to fish is better than giving them fish. It is important to break the cycle of health dependency of less developed countries on the wealthier countries and multinational pharmaceutical companies.

It was passion and compassion that drove me, the belief in what I was doing that sustained me through the toughest of times. My grandmother instilled in me the spirit of perseverance against all odds, and to “never give up” — principles that guide my actions in Africa today where obstacles are the norm.

It is with great hope that humanity still has a heart filled with compassion that goes beyond the color of one’s own skin and one’s own borders; a hope that people will begin to realize that our brothers and sisters are dying in tragic numbers; and a hope that people truly are more important than profits in this business that is life.

The challenges ahead are immense. But my determination-to increase access by the poorest of the poor, wherever they are, to affordable and high-quality medicines-continues to propel me to carry on with my journey. Thank you very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daghang salamat at magandang hapon sa inyong lahat.

China boasts of a staggering eighty-five thousand dams throughout the country, or 46 percent of all such structures in the world. Clearly, hydropower is a key requirement for China’s economic development. Yet dams have led as well to the displacement of over fifteen million Chinese and incalculable damage to the natural environment. A leading figure in the debate on dams and their social impact is YU XIAOGANG.

YU fell in love with nature early on, having been raised in Yunnan, a province of amazing beauty and home to three of the largest rivers in the world: Nu, Yangtze, and Mekong. His interest in the environment was cultivated during a stint in the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, and was further deepened when he attended the Asian Institute of Technology, where he earned a master’s degree in watershed management.

His graduate research on the social impact of China’s Manwan hydroelectric project documented its negative impact on local communities. Dissemination of his findings stirred controversy and led then Premier Zhu Rongji to order the conduct of an investigation; additionally, the Yunnan government was instructed to release funds to mitigate the dam’s adverse effects.

In 2002, YU established the nonprofit organization Green Watershed, which developed an integrated watershed management program in the Lashi Lake area, in Yunnan. Lashi was seriously affected by a dam project that had diverted 40 percent of the lake’s water, flooded farmlands, and devastated the livelihood of people in the dammed area. Using participatory approaches, Green Watershed helped the affected communities organize a multisectoral Watershed Management Committee, and mobilized village associations for irrigation, fishery, and other purposes. The communities undertook other activities as well, including microcredit and training in watershed forest protection and biodiversity conservation.

These initiatives proved so successful that new, ecologically-friendly, and profitable enterprises flourished in the area. The first of its kind in China, the Lashi project became a model for participatory watershed management, and was cited by government as one of the top ten cases of sustainable development in the country. The Lashi project became the springboard for YU’s advocacy in other dam sites. Green Watershed conducted research and forums and used mass media to promote the cause of people’s participation in the planning and development of dams.

When the local government announced plans to build thirteen new dams on the Nu River, plans that threatened to displace fifty thousand people and negatively impact a UNESCO-designated “World Heritage” nature site, Green Watershed and other environmental NGOs mounted a public debate. The controversy occasioned Premier Wen Jiabao’s decision to put the planned dams on hold, requiring a more scientific study.

Still, it has been an uphill challenge. YU has met with opposition and even harassment in the course of his work, including a ban on travel outside the country. His position, however, is not simply adversarial. In 2008, he initiated Green Banking, a network of eight major environmental NGOs that gives the “Green Banking Innovation Award” to banks and financial institutions that have contributed to environmental protection in their financing and corporate practices.

YU recognizes that large-scale infrastructure projects like dams will go on. He is not against dams per se; however, he and his fellow environmentalists will persist in showing that local communities and ecosystems need not be sacrificed in the process of development. Thus, he advocates that a true social impact assessment, in which the people themselves are actively involved, should be a precondition in all dam building programs. For YU, their initial successes “are only the first steps in the Long March. To realize true sustainable development and build a harmonious society throughout China, we need the full participation of all Chinese citizens.”

In electing YU XIAOGANG to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his fusing social science knowledge with a deep sense of social justice, in assisting dam-affected communities in China to shape the development projects that impact their natural environment and their lives.

It is a great honor for me to be elected as 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee. I would like to thank the Board of Trustees and the people of the Philippines.

I come from southwest China, home to Lijiang, a small ancient city which is both a World Cultural Heritage Site and World Natural Heritage Site. Lijiang also has the Internationally Important Wetlands of Lashi Lake and the Naxi minority group who use pictographs to recount the stories of nature and humankind.

The NGO Green Watershed was originally founded in this region in 2002 to improve local environmental protection. But now half of the organization’s time is spent on community disaster relief programs and disaster prevention education. Why has this change occurred? To explain this refocusing of objectives I will borrow from the Naxi story of nature and humankind. This story was written in religious text and is central to Naxi culture.

In ancient times humankind and nature were two brothers, and the brothers divided and reigned over different parts of the earth. Big Brother oversaw the forests, lakes, wildlife, and the weather. Little Brother looked over the fields, crops, livestock, and the happiness of humankind. The two brothers established an agreement of mutual non-aggression and they existed harmoniously. Hundreds of years passed, the weather was good for growing crops, people were well fed and well clothed, and humankind prospered. However, over time Little Brother’s human descendants forgot the original agreement and began to attack Big Brother’s natural world, destroying pristine lands, causing immense deforestation, damming once-free rivers, and rapidly killing off wildlife. Big Brother called upon the natural world to bring floods, storms, droughts, swarms of insects, and plagues. Little Brother’s humankind lost their happiness and prosperity under the punishment of Big Brother. In the end, Little Brother realized his errors and overcame the greed and destruction, once again reuniting with Big Brother and existing in harmony.

This story comes out of an old agricultural society, and may seem rather distant. However, the two brothers are currently in a time of industrialization, and Little Brother’s vision does not consider the forests, lakes, wildlife, or natural ecosystems. Little Brother’s eyes only have visions of resources and methods that he can use to accumulate personal wealth, thus plundering and polluting the environment at an ever growing intensity. Big Brother may react with opposition to this behavior, bringing more serious and intense natural disasters. China has already become the world’s third highest country suffering from natural disasters.

This confirms Green Watershed’s investment in community-based disaster management. Last year alone, we provided training for over one hundred NGOs and over sixty communities. In the future we will place more resources and efforts to promote community disaster management capacities.

Naxi culture has given us this inspiration: to respect and love nature, and to exercise restraint over greed and vanity. Otherwise, our pride in our GDP will change into GDD, Gross Domestic Disaster.

What I am doing is only “a drop in the bigger water.” I believe the effort will someday become as big as the Pacific Ocean. I highly appreciate that the Board of Trustees has given me this honor. I am very glad to accept it and will continue my efforts to contribute to human society. Thank you.