World Savvy Monitor

“The movement started as a tree planting campaign, but it is a little more than just the planting of trees.  It’s planting of ideas, it’s giving them reasons why they should protect their environmental rights, and giving them reasons why they should protect their women’s rights.”

- Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, is a noted environmental and human rights activist who founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya in 1976.  She was born in a rural area of Kenya, growing up among rolling hills and forests.  She received her bachelors and masters degrees in the United States, and later earned her Ph.D. in Germany – she is the first woman in East or Central Africa to obtain a doctorate.  After returning to Kenya and becoming a professor at the University of Nairobi, she was shocked to note the amount of deforestation across Kenya’s landscape.  She saw that women were impacted the most, walking farther and farther to find firewood, lacking enough clean drinking water for their families, and struggling to grow crops in eroded and nutrient-poor soil.  She founded the Green Belt Movement to plant trees to protect the soil and restore the forests.  She enlisted women to plant these trees, as a means of providing income to women, but also because she wanted to encourage them to see planting trees as just the first step in making positive change for the environment, their families, and their communities.  The Green Belt Movement organized workshops on civic education; it encouraged the women to look for the cultural, political, and economic policies and practices that were the root causes of environmental problems, and to take action to address those root causes.  

As the movement began to grow and more women became involved, they came into direct conflict with Kenya’s corrupt government.  Maathai led the fight against a project to build a skyscraper in Uhuru Park, a popular park in central Nairobi; she led a hunger strike for the release of political prisoners jailed by the government; she also advocated for democratic reforms to be brought to Kenya.  Finally, a new leader was elected in 2002, and Wangari Maathai was elected to Parliament and as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources.  In 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and continues to work with the Green Belt Movement and to advocate internationally for environmental and human rights.  Since its founding, the Green Belt Movement has planted over 40 million trees in Kenya.

Watch the documentary, Taking Root, or read her autobiography, Unbowed, to find out more about the life and struggle of Wangari Maathai. 

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