Three Chinese environmental activists have won “the Asia Nobel Prize,” the Ramon Magsaysay award, this year.
On Huo Daishan’s work, from BBC News:
Huo Daishan, from China’s Henan province, was honoured for braving official harassment to document the massive amounts of pollution in China’s third largest river.
He told the BBC Chinese Service that he felt compelled to act.
“We are children of the Huai river, and we don’t want to see it continue to be polluted this way, especially when the pollutants are creating ecological problems and affecting our quality of life.”
He said he had created eight monitoring stations along an 800km stretch of river.
“We are on guard 24/7…. People call us the Defenders of the Huai River, we are now the eyes and ears of the government environmental protection agencies,” he told the BBC.
Ministry of Environmental Protection official Pan Yue and village chief Fu Qiping, from the Associated Press:
Two other Chinese from two ends of the state bureaucracy — Pan Yue, vice minister at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and Fu Qiping, a village chief in Zheijiang province — also received awards for their “bold, constructive work in seizing and creating opportunities to address China’s environmental crisis.”
