By Chris Englund
Wangari Maathai was the first African woman and the first environmentalist from anywhere to win the Nobel Peace Prize . She was born in a Kenyan farming village , where her grandmother instilled in her the traditional village values of care for trees and the environment . The fig tree , said grandmother , was a gift from God .
Maathai earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in biology in the USA and her doctorate at the University of Nairobi , Kenya . There at the university as a professor and department head she championed the rights of women employees for equal pay and benefits. As a biologist in the course of her field trips thru the countryside , Maathai came to realize the roots of many of Kenya's problems lay in environmental degradation , particularly the loss of much of its forests to clear cutting for lumber and cash crop plantations . The resulting soil erosion , droughts and rural poverty caused much suffering among village women whose families were malnourished .
Wangari Maathai's solution was to create the Green Belt Movement in 1977 . She organized teams of urban and rural women to go into the remaining forests , collect seeds from trees , take them home and grow them to seedlings which they planted in the deforested countryside . Over 50 million trees were planted by this grass roots movement which also paid the tree planters for their work . Maathai understood that the health of the people , the environment and the economy were interwoven and inseparable . Her women's movements were active politically in fighting government corruption and authoritarianism . She served terms in the Kenyan Parliament and the Ministry of Environment .
The Norwegian Nobel Committee , in choosing Wangari Maathai for the 2004 Peace Prize , stated that she " combined science , social commitment , and activist politics . She has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy , human rights and women's rights in particular . "
In her own words - " Only thru an equitable distribution of resources and their sustainable use will we be able to sustain the peace . "
Wangari Maathai's environmental work thru the Green Belt Movement inspired today's Trillion Tree Campaign to fight global climate change . A trillion sounds like a big number . When you divide it by 8 billion people it works out to 125 trees for each of us . If you would like to be part of Wangari Maathai's legacy of Planting for the Planet contact me for banana, cassava , mango and palm tree starters .