The legacy of Dr. Wangari Maathai

This New York Times story describes the remarkable life of 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, who passed away yesterday, leaving a legacy of peace and women’s empowerment through her tree-planting movement in Kenya.

Several Friends of Trees staff members attended Dr. Maathai’s World Affairs Council of Oregon speech in Portland in 2006. The following is a story about her speech from our May 2006 newsletter, Tree Connections:

What do trees have to do with peace? To Kenya’s Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, the answer is clear.

Dr. Maathai, whose Green Belt Movement planted more than three million trees in Kenya during three decades, spoke in Portland on March 16 as part of the Oregon Council of World Affairs Speaker Series. She described corruption in Kenyan government, including exorbitant fees placed on coffee growers and rampant tree cutting and disregard for the land, which led to economic disparity and social unrest in Kenya.

In 1974, as she prepared to represent Kenya at the United Nation’s International Women’s Conference in Mexico, Maathai asked women from the countryside to tell her their greatest needs. They said: clean water, wood for energy, and income to support their families.

Maathai thought, “Why don’t we plant trees?” Growing trees would provide income, and planting them would create clean streams and, as the trees grew, wood for fuel. But the government at the time, afraid that empowering women would reduce its ability to exploit the country’s natural resources and make money, said the women couldn’t organize without a license.

“Since we were doing an innocent thing called tree planting,” Maathai said, “we thought we’d meet anyway.”

The arrest of many Kenyan women for planting trees inspired international intervention on the part of Amnesty International and others, leading to changes in Kenyan policies and law. According to Maathai, there’s still work to be done, but the changes already implemented have greatly improved the lives of many Kenyans. In trying to change the systems, she said, it’s important to “be determined, be patient, and be persistent.”

Through the Green Belt Movement’s education programs, “farmers and citizens have been advocating for change,” Maathai said. “They actually plant more than trees. They plant ideas.”

Maathai said she was pleased that the Nobel Peace Committee challenged people across the world to bring the environmental movement to the center stage. She encouraged everyone to do something, however small, to help.

–TR