Yu Xiaogang
Description
2009 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee from China. Yu Xiaogang is a leading figure in the debate on dams and their social impact. China boasts of a staggering eighty-five thousand dams or 46 percent of all such structures in the world. Clearly, hydropower is vital for China’s economic development. But dams have led as well to over fifteen million Chinese being displaced, and a natural environment gravely damaged. Yu pursued an early interest in the environment by specializing in watershed management at the Asian Institute of Technology. His research on the Manwan hydroelectric project documented the dam’s negative impact on local communities, sparking a controversy that led government to order an investigation.
In 2002, Yu established the nonprofit organization Green Watershed, which developed an integrated watershed management program in Yunnan’s Lashi Lake area. Yu and his Green Watershed helped the affected communities to successfully organize themselves, undertake alternative livelihood and microcredit projects, and learn biodiversity conservation and watershed forest protection. The first of its kind in the country, the successful Lashi project became a model for watershed management in China.
Bringing his advocacy to a wider arena, Yu worked vigorously for meaningful people’s participation in other dam sites. When the government announced plans to build thirteen new dams—plans that threatened to displace fifty thousand people and damage a UNESCO-designated “World Heritage” nature site—Green Watershed and other NGOs mounted a public debate. Still, it has been an uphill challenge. Yu recognizes that dams will continue to be built. On their part, he and his fellow environmentalists will likewise continue to show that local communities and ecosystems need not be sacrificed in the process of development.
Yu Xiaogang has used his 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 environment and their lives
Citation of Yu Xiaogang as Magsaysay Awardee for 2009
In electing Yu Xiaogang to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his fusing the knowledge and tools of social science with a deep sense of social justice, in assisting dam-affected communities in China to shape the…
The Green Watershed
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Focus: Sharing Nature's Bounty
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Liquid Revolution
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Chinese Environmentalists Fight Great Wall of Officialdom
China: Another Damned Gorge
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Rough Climes for Green Activists
When earlier this spring, two of China's environmental advocates [referring to Ma Jun and Yu Xiaogang] were feted internationally with prominent awards and cited by Time magazine as among the most influential people in the world, it marked the coming…
Yu Xiaogang Wins the Goldman Environmental Prize
"We face so many environmental problems that these successes are only the first steps in the Long March. To realize true sustainable development throughout China, we need the full participation of all Chinese citizens."