Ramon Magsaysay Awardee Angel Chua Alcala’s Speech (1992)

There are wonderful surprises that come our way, at one time or another, in our life. And to me
this prestigious award is the greatest and most wonderful surprise of all.
I wish to thank the officers of the Magsaysay Award Foundation, particularly those who even
began to think of me as deserving of this award to honor the great Philippine president Ramon
Magsaysay. I also thank my numerous colleagues, friends, admirers, fellow ecologists, and
conservationists for their kind words of congratulations. In my many years of painstaking
research—of going deep into our forests and undertaking marine life conservation—a prestigious
award of this kind was way beyond my wildest dreams.
I also wish to thank my wife Naomi and our children, whose loving support and understanding
allowed me to be away from home for lengths of time pursuing my love of field research,
spearheading conservation projects, and attending gatherings of scholars around the world.
I hope that the recognition of my life’s work by the foundation serves to boost the morale of
many of my fellow biologists and researchers, as well as dedicated teachers who work in relative
obscurity.
On this occasion, I think of the great Silliman motto: Via, Veritas, Vita, particularly the word
Veritas. I like to think that I’ve been given this award because of my passionate search for
biological Truth. Indeed, I think I’ve done this search for Truth the way the great biologist
Thomas Huxley described serious study:
Sit down before a fact like a little child. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion.
Follow humbly wherever and whatever depths nature leads. Otherwise you shall learn nothing.
But I also like to think that while I have learned truth in abundance, I have also made it my
preoccupation to do the truth, to pursue its practice, to apply what I have learned, particularly in
the areas of environmental enrichment and conservation of our nation’s natural wealth.
Indeed, I am highly honored that I am awarded for trying to know and do the truth. At the same
time, however, I wish to confess, on behalf of all sincere environmentalists and conservationists,
that our endeavors have not been sufficient to stem the tide of human error that has caused such
tragedies as Ormoc, the deterioration of our marine life, the denudation of our forest reserves,
and the annihilation of what we possess in abundance. In short, the alarming and wanton
destruction of our natural resources.
So on this occasion of honor and celebration, allow me to express a warning and a challenge to
all of us, Filipinos and Asians: that unless we move fast to put a stop to the rape of our natural
resources, we will remain poor, destitute, pitiful, and even become worse off. If the
environmental destruction continues without letup, it will be our children and our children’s
children who will reap the tragic consequences.
My friends, we now find ourselves at the crossroads between poverty and prosperity. Our future
is only as good as what we make of the present.