The gravity and scale of Asia’s social problems today are such that they demand large, complex, and long-term programs of assistance and sophisticated technologies of change. And yet, on occasion we are reminded that in a most elemental way, one can begin to change the world through seemingly ordinary acts of empathy and magnanimity.

Let us then celebrate the extraordinary ordinariness of CHEN SHU-JIU. The child of vegetable vendors in the city of Taitung, southeastern Taiwan, CHEN knew personally the familiar miseries of the poor. When her mother fell gravely ill, the thirteen-year old CHEN saw her father desperately asking neighbors for money so her mother could be treated in a hospital. What he managed to scrape together came too late to save her mother’s life. As the eldest daughter, she had to stop schooling to help her father run their small vegetable stall in the market. Five years later, one of her brothers contracted a chronic disease that drained the small family savings. The school she attended started a fund drive to help the family. The aid was not enough to save her brother’s life, but the memory of that kindness stayed with her. She knew poverty and despair, but witnessed kindness as well, simple truths that have guided the rest of her life.

Today, two decades after her father died, CHEN continues to sell vegetables from a stall in the central market in Taitung. What is astounding is that over these years, just from her daily earnings as a vegetable vendor, she has personally given away over seven million Taiwanese dollars (US$320,000) to various charities, particularly for the care and education of children. Recipients of her generosity include a Buddhist monastery, to help it fund a school; a non-profit Christian organization that rescues children-at-risk and provides them with food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and education; a Red Cross Society fund for helping families during disasters and other emergencies; the elementary school where she used to study, to build a fully-equipped library; and an emergency relief fund that enables students to continue their studies if their parents fall sick or are unable to work.

A devout Buddhist, CHEN works seventeen hours a day. She lives frugally, and is content with the simplest of necessities: afraid she might get too comfortable to wake up early for work, she sleeps on the floor; a vegetarian, she eats only two meals a day. Despite the recent recognition international media has given to her personal philanthropy, she remains entirely unselfconscious about what she has accomplished. Indifferent to public honors, she resists having a foundation set up in her name, and refuses to receive donations from others, saying she prefers to give away money that she has earned herself.

When asked about what she has done, CHEN simply says: “Money serves its purpose only when it is used for those who need it.” She is impatient with fuss that keeps her away from selling vegetables; she affirms: “My philosophy in life is simple. If doing something makes you worried, then it must be a wrong thing. If it makes you happy, then you must have done the right thing. I feel happy whenever I could help other people.”

In electing CHEN SHU-JIU to receive the 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes the pure altruism of her giving, which reflects a deep, consistent, quiet compassion, and has transformed the lives of the numerous Taiwanese she has unselfishly helped.

It never once crossed my mind that I would one day be standing here accepting an award from your esteemed foundation. Similarly, I have never really given much thought to what we as individuals can do for the world. All I know is that people should work hard at what they do.

I became a vegetable vendor at a market soon after leaving elementary school, so I’ve been selling vegetables for nearly fifty years now. I rarely take days off and I have hardly ever had the chance to leave Taitung, not to mention go abroad, so my knowledge of the world is quite limited. And while I am good at selling vegetables, this doesn’t qualify me to speak any great truths about the way the world works. I do know, though, that I am receiving this award today because of the donations I make. Yet I have never considered myself a great person-I am just an ordinary person, a humble vegetable vendor. I simply do what I can, to the best of my ability. There is nothing extraordinary about that. In fact, there are lots of well-known people who have donated far more than I have. I suppose, though, that being willing to help can make a difference, no matter how little we can give. And everyone has got something to offer. What makes a difference is whether or not you actually put that into action.

I have always thought that making donations was my personal business, and I never intended to let people find out about it. Helping others gives me a sense of pure satisfaction and makes me feel extremely happy. Now, because of all the media attention, all sorts of people, including those I don’t know, may greet me and sometimes offer me their kind encouragement when I am at the market or out and about. To be honest, I get quite embarrassed by it all, and sometimes I just don’t really know what to say or how to respond. But this doesn’t mean I am not grateful for their support, because I really am. Likewise, I would like to thank everyone at the foundation for presenting me with this award. I wish all of you the best of health and happiness.

India is a veritable laboratory of social experiments in poverty alleviation and people empowerment. There are spectacular successes as well as uncounted failures. In what succeeds can often be found the story of one person’s self-sacrificing, innovative, and driven by an extraordinary passion to lift people from poverty and suffering.

One such person is KULANDAI FRANCIS. Born to a poor family in the Salem district of Tamil Nadu, he was the only one of his siblings to go to university. FRANCIS carried with him two indelible memories of his early years: his parents sacrificing their only piece of land so he could attend university, and his mother being cheated by moneylenders out of what little she had. Resolved to live a life of service, he joined the Fathers of the Holy Cross in 1970 and, during his novitiate, found some fulfillment in doing volunteer work among people struck by famine or displaced by war. When he went to live in Natrampalayam, a remote and impoverished part of Krishnagiri district, he had the life-changing experience of sharing in both the people’s miseries and their dreams. He decided to give up being a priest to devote himself wholly to social work.

In 1979, he began the Integrated Village Development Project (IVDP) in Krishnagiri, starting out with small projects: conducting a night school in the light of gas lamps, setting up a first-aid center. Then, with the help of development organizations, he undertook a micro-watershed program that, over twenty-two years, built 331 mostly small check dams benefitting cultivators and their families in sixty villages. And still, FRANCIS was not content. He knew he needed to do something that could be sustained for the long term, even without external assistance.

The breakthrough came with the women’s self-help groups (SHGs) that IVDP began organizing in 1989. These savings-and-credit groups have grown into an all-women movement of 8,231 SHGs with 153,990 members, with total savings of equivalent to US$40 million, a cumulative loan portfolio of equivalent to US$435 million, and a reserve fund of US$8.9 million. What impresses is not just IVDP’s scale. The program has become a financially disciplined, self-reliant, member-owned, and member-managed organization; the group’s solidarity and access to credit have fueled successful village programs in health and sanitation, housing, livelihood, and children’s education, including scholarships, performance-based incentives for students and schools, a primary school for tribal children, and a computer training academy that has, to date, trained some 5,000 children.

FRANCIS has accomplished this using an approach that has broken through the financial limits of traditional microfinance approaches. Organized into clusters and federations, SHGs are directly linked to banks through group accounts, bulk deposits, and loans that have given the SHGs the power to leverage preferential bank treatment. At the same time, the women have won respect by demonstrating that the poor can manage their finances effectively and reliably.

In large part, all this has come to pass because, as FRANCIS believes, “when people want to do something, they can.” Despite his organization’s spectacular growth, FRANCIS continues to inspire by example, living a simple life with the people he is serving. A missionary in the truest sense, he muses, “Real happiness comes when I see people developing, children are improving, and suffering is removed.”

In electing KULANDAI FRANCIS to receive the 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his visionary zeal, his profound faith in community energies, and his sustained programs in pursuing the holistic economic empowerment of thousands of women and their families in rural India.

The response from my heart is thanks for the recognition of IVDP through this award to me. When the award was announced I was unaffected. But a few hours later, a flurry of calls came in from all quarters, lavishing appreciation following media reports of the award. This was followed by interviews with the press and TV channels. Congratulations poured into my e-mail box. People queued up in my office to felicitate me.

I began to understand the meaning of this award to the society around me. Then I slowly woke up to the multitude of appreciation that brought to light the significance of work done in one corner of Tamil Nadu. Thanks to the foundation’s trustees for their gigantic task in scanning across India and locating IVDP’s work for recognition.

The road which I passed through was not one of roses; it was instead full of thorns. It was not easy for me to realize my objective. This honor acknowledges IVDP’s poverty alleviation programs and the sustainable solutions it found to the problems of people who faced drought that forced them to migrate in search of livelihood.

The uniqueness of IVDP is that it is for the people, by the people and of the people, where the lives of SHG members are secured, savings are safe, and loans are available at affordable cost. It is member-focused, member-owned, autonomous and with a built-in system that ensures higher percentage of repayment. Success goes to our women members who proved that the community can be transformed by them through savings and livelihood creation, through mutual cooperation and understanding.

I’m happy to place on record the fact that IVDP had changed the outlook of banks towards women in the villages. Inaccessible credit became accessible to the so-called “ineligible” poor women. Creditworthiness in turn groomed them as reliable clients. Now they are regarded as first-rate clients by the banks. Thus, our model is sustained by our women in the process of IVDP’s ongoing activities.

At this juncture, I wish to express my thanks to many-my special thanks-to my parents, the Fathers of the Holy Cross, my life partner and the IVDP team for their constant support and encouragement in sustaining my motivation in my work.

I would like to sum up my IVDP experience by asserting a fact of life, that is “to give toiling people an appropriate opportunity and they will multiply the outputs in several folds.” The requirement at present is not praying lips, but a bona fide helping hands.

I would like to accept this award and the honor and credit that goes with it on behalf of IVDP’s 150,000 women members who are the real pillars behind the organization’s landmark achievements.

My final word of response to this award is….Nandri (thank you) for the recognition to IVDP’s women!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Cambodia emerges from the shadows of a destructive dictatorship, building an empowered citizenry is vital to its future as a progressive and democratic society. Food security, market access, and asset creation are basic concerns in this process of empowerment. In a country where 80 percent of the population is in the rural areas and 66 percent depends on rice farming, it is in the rice farming communities where the most important changes must take place.

Agronomist YANG SAING KOMA is at the center of these changes. The son of a teacher-farmer in Cambodia’s Takeo province, KOMA was old enough to experience the terrible dislocations under the Khmer Rouge regime when his family was forced to leave their province for Phnom Penh. He was fortunate, however, after the regime’s fall, to go on scholarship to Germany where he specialized in agriculture and earned a doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1995. Returning to Cambodia, he worked for foreign development organizations but knew that he had to find a way to be free to pursue his own priorities; he firmly believed that “Cambodians need to take responsibility for their own destiny.”

Championing sustainable agriculture, KOMA founded in 1997 the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC), with a team of seven and the help of a French non-government organization. Its early years were difficult as KOMA struggled to make CEDAC an independent, self-sustaining organization, but his single-minded determination paid off. Today, fifteen years later, CEDAC has become the largest agricultural and rural development NGO in Cambodia.

The linchpin of CEDAC’s success was its introduction of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), an ecologically sustainable approach to rice production. SRI is based on a simple system of plant, water, and soil management, and is suitable to Cambodia’s dominant pattern of smallholder farms. KOMA introduced SRI in 2000 to twenty-eight reluctant farmers; since then, he has painstakingly promoted SRI so that it gradually spread to more than 100,000 rice farmers, registering a 61 percent increase in rice yields, even as it decreased the amount of seeds and chemical fertilizers used while increasing the use of organic fertilizers by 85 percent. In 2005, the Cambodian government officially endorsed SRI as a rice production strategy. Today, CEDAC is supporting 140,000 farmer families in twenty-one provinces. Between 2002 and 2010, Cambodia’s rice production rose from 3.82 million tons to 7.97 million tons, and CEDAC’s work has been credited as the major factor in this increase.

Recognizing the need for rice farmers to share knowledge among themselves, CEDAC established in 2003 the Farmer and Nature Net (FNN), an independent network of 1,402 farmer associations with around 40,000 members in all. Calling this a “mind net,” KOMA organized FNN to promote sustainable agricultural practices, women engagement in agriculture, and marketing and savings cooperatives. Today, the associations under the FNN have been able to mobilize savings of more than US$8 million, with an average monthly increase of 5 percent.

In 2008, KOMA initiated CEDAC Enterprise for Development (CESDE), subsequently renamed Sahakreas CEDAC (SKC), a social enterprise that addresses predatory market conditions by linking farmers directly to the market. By selling only organic products, KOMA explains, “SKC also links the responsible farmer to the responsible consumer.” To date, CESDE runs a chain of thirteen shops that sell only locally produced, organic agricultural products. It is supporting over 5,000 farmers in eight provinces and has already begun to export organic rice.

All this has been accomplished through a “bottom-up” approach that does not impose a pre-set formula but allows farmers to discover by themselves a better way of doing things. “The challenge,” KOMA says, “lies in building people. We have to believe in ourselves, we have to believe in our ideas.” Asked what this means for Cambodia, he avers: “Everything is interrelated. A simple thing can have a lot of influence on the system. If more people grow, society will grow.”

In electing YANG SAING KOMA to receive the 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his creative fusion of practical science and collective will, that has inspired and enabled vast numbers of farmers in Cambodia to become more empowered and productive contributors to their country’s economic growth.

First, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting me to be one of the 2012 awardees. It is a great honor for me, for CEDAC, our cooperating farmers, as well as for our national and international partners who have worked with us for the empowerment of small farmers. I consider this award as recognition of our collective achievements in working for the improvement of the livelihood of small farmers during these past fifteen years.

In August 1997 I set up CEDAC as a small NGO with seven people and initial support from a French NGO called GRET. We are now the leading Cambodian NGO which works for the improvement of the livelihood of more than 100,000 farmer families. The progress in livelihood has been especially due to increasing rice production and income using the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and developing cooperation among farmers in collectively saving for mutual help.

SRI is an innovative approach in sustainable rice intensification which focuses on improving the farmer’s practices in seed, plant, soil and water management. It was developed in Madagascar by the priest Henri de Laulanie in the 1980s. I introduced SRI to Cambodian farmers in 2000, with only twenty-eight experimenting farmers. Now, SRI is considered by our national government and other partners as an important solution to poverty among small rice farmers. There are now around 200,000 SRI farmers in Cambodia.

So far, there is a generally accepted belief that rice farmers can only increase rice yields by relying on the use of external inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, and high-yielding varieties. This has contributed to creating an attitude of dependency and has developed into a vicious cycle of poverty among rice farmers. With SRI we are able to prove that farmers can increase their rice productivity from 50 to 150 percent by using less or no external inputs, especially imported fertilizers, pesticides and external seeds. This is possible as farmers understand more about the huge natural potential of rice plants to produce higher yields; they have also developed the creative capacity to tap the natural potential of rice plants by gradually developing their knowledge, skills and practices in effective use of existing local resources, such as local varieties, local soil and local water resources.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award is not only a recognition for our past achievements. It is also an important encouragement for me and my colleagues to reinforce and expand our assistance to small farmers. For the next ten years, we will focus on assisting subsistence rice farmers in Cambodia to become commercial organic farm entrepreneurs, producing healthy food to feed society. We will also support them in working together to invest in cooperative rice mills run by the gasifier system. I consider this work as an important contribution to ensure long-term food, income and energy security for our rice farmers

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 the Philippines, forty percent of the labor force is employed in agriculture. Yet, food insecurity continues to haunt the land, and the farmers who produce food are not only among the country’s poorest, they are also its mostly-invisible citizens. With the tools of science and a great reserve of social empathy, one remarkable individual has devoted his life to addressing these problems.

The roots of his devotion run deep. ROMULO DAVIDE was born in the mountain barrio of Colawin in Argao, Cebu province, to school teachers who raised him and his six siblings in the values of hard work, education, and community service. DAVIDE has practiced these values all his life: doing farm work as a child, working as a student laborer to help pay his way through college, scrimping to pursue his dream of getting the highest education. Growing up in a poor farming village, in a province where the common lament was that little could be harvested from small, over-cultivated, soil-exhausted farms, he drew inspiration from what his father often said, “There are no barren soils, only barren minds.” It was thus that he decided to be an agricultural scientist.

Today, with a doctorate and advanced training in the United States and Ireland, he is one of the country’s top scientists, hailed as the “Father of Plant Nematology” for his many years of teaching and groundbreaking research on nematode pests that infest, debilitate, and destroy agricultural crops. His discovery of nematode-trapping fungi (P. lilacinus and P. oxalicum) led to the development of BIOCON, the first Philippine biological control product that can be used against nematode pests attacking vegetables, banana, potato, citrus, pineapple, rice, and other crops, thus making available a practical substitute for highly toxic and expensive chemical nematicides. Without thought of personal gain, he has seen one of his discoveries commercially marketed to fight banana nematode infestation in the Philippines, Latin America, and other parts of the world.

But DAVIDE is more than just a groundbreaking laboratory scientist. Throughout his career, he has immersed himself in field extension work, as director of the National Crop Protection Center (1989-92) and in numerous extension programs of the University of the Philippines-Los Baños College of Agriculture.

In 1994, named “Outstanding Agricultural Scientist” by the Department of Agriculture, he used his award money to launch in Colawin the “Corn-based Farmer-Scientists Training Program” (FSTP). An innovative and multi-faceted program, FSTP aimed, through actual field experience and interaction with experts, to turn farmers into “farmer-scientists” who would be able to do experiments, discover effective techniques, manage the market, and increase production. Starting with seventy-four farmers in Colawin, and enlisting the support of government and academe, FSTP expanded to cover thirty-five Cebu towns and six other provinces by 2007. It proved its success when farmers were able to increase corn yields six to twelve times over, and adopted intercropping systems and animal production technologies that further increased their incomes. Recognizing this success, the national government adopted the FSTP in 2008 for countrywide implementation, with the Department of Agriculture and UP Los Baños as lead implementors and DAVIDE as program leader. Today, FSTP is being implemented in twenty provinces across the country.

Clear-minded about his goals, DAVIDE has all these years refused to be discouraged by erratic funding, bureaucratic inertia, or political interference, saying that one must learn “to walk straight even on a crooked path.” At seventy-eight, he continues to be driven by the dream that, indeed, the land can be made fertile if minds are challenged to become fertile as well.

In electing ROMULO DAVIDE to receive the 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his steadfast passion in placing the power and discipline of science in the hands of Filipino farmers, who have consequently multiplied their yields, created productive farming communities, and rediscovered the dignity of their labor.

It is indeed a distinct honor and pleasure for me to attend this ceremony to humbly accept this prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award.

I share this honor with all the men and women, including my wife Clara, who work so hard with me in our programs to uplift the living conditions of our farmers, especially those in the upland communities who are still poor and hungry. . May this be our “footprints in the sands of time” and hope that the spirit and ideals of President Magsaysay guide and inspire us to continue this noble task with vigor and strength.

Looking back to my family’s humble beginnings, I could hardly believe that today I am here with you to receive this award.

Working closely with my students and research assistants, I developed the BIOCON for the biological control of nematode pests that attack the roots of many economic crops. For our banana exports alone the cost of imported chemicals to control nematode damage on roots was estimated at 200 million pesos a year, while BIOCON, now registered and patented as BIOACT, can effectively control nematodes at much lower costs. BIOACT, now manufactured in Germany with markets in Europe and other countries, is harmless to man and animals compared to highly toxic chemical nematicides.

FSTP was conceptualized to correct failures in government projects for countryside development where trained farmers remain poor since they can not adopt technologies introduced to them due to absence of funds. There is also a big gap between our R&D and extension activities. FSTP combines RD and E in one package to make farmers both farmer-scientists and extension workers.

FSTP was started in Argao in 1994 when Cebu was considered among the poorest provinces. Since then we have trained more than 30, 000 Filipino farmers, and Argaowanons are grateful that from a 5th class town before FSTP, Argao has become a 1st class town since 2006. FSTP is now being implemented as a National Program starting in 2008. With Department of Agriculture support funds, FSTP’s nationwide coverage can now reach out to our poorest farmers. Thus we have now Mangyan farmer-scientists in the mountains of Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro, and the Blaan indigenous people in the mountains of Alabel, Sarangani Province in Mindanao.

As successfully demonstrated by FSTP, small farmers can be empowered with scientific farming knowledge to produce corn for food with a surplus for sale, along with production of vegetables, fruits and livestock, increasing farmers’ income by more than 100 percent and benefiting not only their families but also their communities.

We hope more government agencies, charitable companies and friends will join us in making poor farmers improve their living conditions and produce more food for all of us Filipinos. There are stumbling blocks along the way but we must endeavor and learn to walk straight even on a crooked path. Truly, farmers are the heroes of our lands. Let us therefore recognize them with honor and dignity and support them to achieve their long desired abundant productivity and live in peace and prosperity.