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Nicanor Perlas is a Filipino activist and had just recently announced his intention to run as President of the Philippines in 2010. In 2003, he won the Right Livelihood Award, which is also known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize", for his activism in the Philippines. The substance of his writings and his training approaches are based on nearly 40 years of active engagement in various efforts to create a better world. In 1994, the UN Environmental Program gave him its prestigious Global 500 Award for his high profile work in banning toxic pesticides and advancing sustainable agriculture. In the same year, he received the country’s highest civic award for achievers beyond 40, The Outstanding Filipino (TOFIL) Award for exemplary achievements in sustainable development initiatives. ActivismIn his university days, Perlas was one of the key organizers of a university-wide education reform movement that resulted in changes in university policies. During this time, he founded the first ecological society in the Philippines. After graduation, he co-organized a successful large scale global campaign, the first of its kind during his time, to halt 12 nuclear plants in the Philippines. Perlas subsequently become a technical adviser to the Presidential Commission on the Philippine Nuclear Power Plant, Office of the President of the Philippines, where he was instrumental in stopping the operation of the fully constructed and operational Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, a $2.2 billion project plagued with design, construction, location, and corruption problems.Shortly thereafter, Perlas was appointed member of the national technical panel overseeing the regulation of pesticides use in Philippine agriculture. While in this capacity, he simultaneously mobilized and headed a national effort that resulted in the banning of 32 hazardous pesticide formulations in the Philippines. The ban triggered the creation of a P750 million government program to reduce the use of pesticides in Philippine agriculture. In parallel with these efforts, Perlas pioneered the introduction of large scale commercial organic and biodynamic agriculture in many provinces in the Philippines. All these efforts were the fruition of early advocacies in sustainable agriculture when he was still an agricultural journalist and columnist at the Modern Agriculture and Industry-Asia, where, FROM 1976-1978, he pioneered the first monthly articles on ecological agriculture in the Asian context. Together with TWO colleagues at the International Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture or IASA, he coined the term sustainable agriculture in 1983, a term which has received wide use and currency globally until today. Perlas was the chief negotiator for a network of national networks, which involved 5000 organizations, that successfully stopped the agenda of radical and one-sided liberalization in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation or APEC. He successfully introduced strong sustainable development language in the Leaders and Ministerial Declarations in APEC, and constrained the Individual Action Plan of the Philippines to abide by sustainable development principles. The successful negotiations prevented the premature exposure and economic decline of 3 million Philippine rice farmers to subsidized and artificially cheap rice coming from other countries. Projects and officesPerlas is the co-founder, president and executive director of the Center for Alternative Development Initiatives or CADI, in metro Manila and Iloilo City, where he guides research and policy work and develops initiatives on globalization, threefolding and their impacts on civil society, cultural power and sustainable development.He is also the co-founder and spokesperson of Karangalan which hosted a series of national conferences highlighting important global and national innovations and achievements by Filipinos in many disciplines and fields. Karangalan aims to stimulate the creation of a visionary Philippines. The 1st National Conference and Festival on “Mobilizing Excellence for Creating a Visionary Philippines” was January 21-23, 2005 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, in partnership with over 40 organizations and networks. Perlas was the chief facilitator and co-founder of the ABS-CBN "Forum on the Filipino Future", held on December 16, 2004. He was Chairman, Adviser on Strategy and Integral Sustainable Development and Member, Board of Directors, Lifebank, and Member, Board of Trustees of Lifebank Foundation, both of which help close to 233,000 economically poor families thru microfinance. He has been chairman of several national civil society networks including the Green Forum Philippines, the Philippine Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and the Civil Society Counterpart Council for Sustainable Development. Perlas is also active at the global level. He was Co-Founder and Board Member, Global Leadership Initiative and member, and a Steering Committee member of the Mikhail Gorbachev’s Commission on Globalization. Nicanor Perlas is also a Creative Member, Club of Budapest, recognized as “highly creative innovators for a social and ecological sustainable world and a culture of peace”. Societal Three-FoldingNicanor Perlas is Co-founder the Global Network for Social Three-Folding, Globenet3 or GN3, with more than 17 geographic and functional nodes in over 12 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the United States of America. GN3 advances profound societal transformation towards integral sustainable development on the basis of socially-engaged spirituality and deep substantive inner change.Perlas was Co-founder and spokesperson for Tindog Pilipinas! A national movement for a better Philippines, Professionals for Social Responsibility, and the Philippine Advancement and Renewal thru Threefolding Networking, Research & Service, or PARTNERS, which is the Philippine node for GlobeNet3. Philippine Agenda 21In the mid-1990s he was one of two technical writers of Philippine Agenda 21 or PA21, which is a creative response to the challenges of elite globalization. He was one of the official civil society delegates from the Philippines at the Earth Summit in Rio. It was out of this experience, among others, that he helped shape the process and substance of PA21. Having emerged from more than 26 regional and national consultations, PA21 was characterized by the former Philippine president Fidel V. Ramos as the most consultative policy document in post-martial law Philippines. PA21 is still officially the blueprint for sustainable development in the Philippines, although presently marginalized by the current controversial government of the Philippines.He was also the technical writer of SIAD: Framework for the Localization of Philippine Agenda 21, which is now used by a number of local governments and civil society organizations to advance sustainable integrated area development in towns. Speaking and ConsultancyPerlas has been the resource person and keynote speaker in over 70 global conferences and events in over 20 countries, and over 120 national conferences on a range of topics including culture and societal transformation, integral sustainable development, globalization, technology, corporate social responsibility, science and spirituality, societal threefolding, strategic microfinance, direct democracy and others.He has provided consultancy work for several UN agencies, the Philippine Senate, donor agencies and foundations, as well as many other global and national civil society organizations and networks plus businesses striving for ecological and social responsibility. As a technical writer and key formulator of Philippine Agenda 21, as well as co-chair for the Civil Society of the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development, Office of the President of the Philippines, Perlas was invited to attend several UN meetings including the UN General Assembly on Sustainable Development, UNGASS and the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, 6th Session, as Technical Adviser to the Philippine Delegation to the UN. TrainingsPerlas has conducted hundreds of training sessions in the Philippines and abroad on a wide range of topics convergent with his writings. In this context he has innovated and developed a new framework for advancing integral sustainable development through the harmonious weaving together of profound inner change and radical but peaceful societal transformation. He calls this new framework the Lemniscate Process, which integrates the substance of more than two dozen disciplines and fields, all geared towards unlocking human creativity, enthusiasm and commitment for creating a better world.Perlas is a professor at the accredited Doctoral program on Applied Cosmic Anthropology of the Asian Social Institute, where he gives in depth theoretical and practical elaborations of the Lemniscate Process. He also teaches at the Graduate Program of the Southeast Asian Interdisciplinary Development Institute (SAIDI). He is also a board member and a resource person for training programs of the Gamot Cogon Institute or GCI, based in Iloilo, Philippines. WritingsPerlas has written over 500 articles, editorials, monographs and books on a range of topics including globalization, societal threefolding, conscious evolution, civil society, multiple intelligence, creativity, cultural power, philosophy of science and biology, technological singularity, sustainable agriculture, appreciative inquiry, neurophysiology and consciousness, spiritual science, good governance, new politics, associative economics, and the integration of inner change and large-scale societal transformation.He is the publisher and editor-in-chief for TruthForce! A national and global internet-based news and analysis service which reaches thousands of subscribers and readers in over 60 countries. HE WAS Editor-In-Chief, Ikabuhi Newspaper for Micro-Entrepreneurs (34,000 + circulation) His book, Shaping Globalization: Civil Society, Cultural Power, and Threefolding, (more than 12,000 copies sold) has been translated in 9 languages and is being used in dozens of universities and colleges in the Philippines and various parts of the world. OTHER AwardsHis other awards include the William F. Masterson Award, the top award for outstanding Alumni of Xavier University, for his national and global contributions to sustainable agriculture.He also received highest honors upon his graduation from Xavier University (Cagayan de Oro) with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, major in Agronomy and minor in Agricultural Economics. He was the valecdictorian of his graduating class in the College of Agriculture. In Graduate School at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, he was in the Dean’s List for consistent high academic performance. In High School, Nicanor Perlas received many athletic awards, including several gold medals in the 100-meter dash, 400-meter relay, and pole-vault. He was team captain of both the Ateneo de Manila University Soccer and Track and Field Varsity Teams. Upon graduation, he received the Athlete of the Year Award and a Silver Medal for his work in the Math and Science Club. Presidential Candidate in 2010On June 17, 2009, Nicanor Perlas announced his intentions to become one of the candidates for the Philippine Presidential Elections in May 2010. He announced this during a press conference at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City.“There are many Filipinos who have grown tired of elections where there are no real choices. We are tired of always having to choose the lesser evil. This is why I am announcing my intention to run in the 2010 elections,” Perlas told some 50 friends and supporters during the press conference. Perlas, 59, is the latest in the list of personalities projected as alternatives to traditional politicians. In an e-mail to his friends last week, Perlas said he would “work very hard to win” the presidency in 2010. “That is part of my nature and who I am, that I work with total dedication and devotion to any cause that I freely commit myself to,” he said. Perlas said he would give way should he find a “more qualified” candidate. “But so far, from my perspective, no one has appeared who can truly lead this country to a new and better future,” he said. For more information on Nicanor Perlas, see his Official Website at: www.nicanorperlas.com or www.nicanor-perlas.com.
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