The 1966 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding

Mobilizing Asia's resources to meet man's growing needs is often crippled by narrow sectional and traditional loyalties. Such shortsighted insistence upon more immediate and personal advantage frustrates rational solutions to many common problems.

Since it was established nine years ago, the MEKONG COMMITTEE has shown what can be achieved for farmers, fishermen and new industry by international cooperative effort in one of the world's most troubled regions. Created in response to a recommendation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, this COMMITTEE joins Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam in common utilization of the immense potential of the Mekong River. Technical and financial assistance has come from 21 countries outside the basin, 12 United Nations agencies, three foundations and a number of private business organizations. To date, equipment, technical services, grants and loans totalling some US$105 million have been marshalled—about one-third pledged by the four riparian countries.

The hitherto untamed Mekong—one of the world's 10 1argest rivers—rises among the snows high on the Tibetan Plateau and has carved a twisting course, often through rugged mountains, some 4,600 kilometers to the South China Sea. The Lower Mekong Basin, which is the focus of this effort, extends for some 2,500 kilometers from the forests of the Burma border, through Laos, along the dry northeastern frontier of Thailand, through jungles and deltas of Cambodia and Vietnam. It drains an area nearly twice the size of Japan that is inhabited by some 20 million persons.

Extensive studies by teams of scientists and engineers from the riparian and cooperating nations have now produced an overall Basin Plan with both mainstream and tributary projects. These multi-purpose projects will provide irrigation, power, vastly improved navigation, expanded fisheries, control of seasonal floods and many other benefits. Navigation improvements now permit night sailing upriver to Phnom Penh. In November 1965 the King of Thailand inaugurated at Nam Pung one of the two electric power and irrigation projects already completed. Construction is underway on four other tributary projects and one tug and barge building program.

Among projects for the mainstream of the Mekong, three have a "one" priority. At Pa Mong, just above Vientiane, a massive dam between Thailand and Laos will create a reservoir more than 200 miles long, have an installed generating capacity of over one million kilowatts and irrigate roughly one million hectares, or two and one-half million acres. Sambor, in Cambodia, will be the site of a second major power and irrigation dam. A barrage across the Tonle Sap waterway in Cambodia, that each year alternately admits Mekong water to the Great Lake and then drains it, will amplify fisheries and irrigation and hold back silt from delta lands in Vietnam while deepening water in the shipping channel to the sea.

When the Lower Mekong Basin program for the period 1965 to 1975 is completed at an estimated cost of more than three billion dollars, the largest single natural resource of southeast Asia will be substantially under productive control. The fact that, despite turmoil, war and other differences in the region, so much headway has been made represents a triumph of reason and consideration of mutual well-being.

In electing the COMMITTEE FOR COORDINATION OF INVESTIGATIONS OF THE LOWER MEKONG BASIN and COOPERATING ENTITIES to receive the 1966 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes purposeful progress toward harnessing one of Asia's greatest river systems, setting aside divisive national interests in deference to regional opportunities.