Mekong River defender Niwat Roykaew is the first Thai to receive the Leader on the Frontlines Award from the Asia Foundation, a nonprofit international development organisation based in San Francisco.
Mr Niwat, 64, is also known as "Kru Thi". He is the chair of the Chiang Khong Conservation Group and director of Mekong School's Institute of Local Knowledge.
He led and mobilised communities, and succeeded in halting destructive blasting and damming projects that threatened the river and its communities, according to the foundation.
The foundation's 2023 Chang-Lin Tien Distinguished Leadership Award was presented to Mr Niwat in San Francisco last Thursday in recognition of his tireless community advocacy efforts to protect the ecosystem of the Mekong River and community livelihoods, it said.
He is the sixth recipient since the award was initiated. "I am delighted that the effort to protect the Mekong River has been spread globally. This reward is not for me but it is a bliss for the civil society sector that has been working in natural resource protection for a long time," he said after receiving the award.
"I'd like to use this opportunity to spread information and encourage people to be interested in environmental resource protection as this practice does not only belong to one country."
The award was initiated to honour the achievements of the late Chang-Lin Tien, former chair of the Asia Foundation's Board of Trustees and former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.