Monday, September 26, 2011
Wangari Maathai on Equity and Environmental Justice
Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize, died on Sunday night of cancer. She was 71. A feminist, social activist and an environmental crusader who showed no fear, her Green Belt Movement, founded in 1977, planted tens of millions of trees. She came into the GRITtv studios in September 2009, where she talked about the responsibility of all countries, industrialized and developing, to live within their means. Asked about resource wars, she spoke powerfully about equity and human rights, comparing the society to a forest, she said, "the canopy and the mushrooms both need light." It's powerful stuff. She'll be sorely missed. Maathai was in New York at the time for the UN summit on climate change. There have been promises from the major industrialized nations, including China and the United States, to take action, she said, but they've mostly failed to follow through. She looked ahead to the Copenhagen summit with caution. Caution that proved disastrously well placed. In the last two years, the industrialized nations have slowed, not sped, their progress towards change. Maathai's death, as activists around the world marked "Moving Planet Day, a global mobilization "to move beyond fossil fuels" underscored what she taught, namely that action on climate change will be driven, not from the top, but from below. Plant a tree for Maathai?
Honoring Wangari Maathai
Sad news. Wangari Maathai passed away at a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, as a result of cancer. Here is her obituary, as written by Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist who started out by paying poor women a few shillings to plant trees and went on to become the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, died late on Sunday after battling cancer. She was 71.
Mrs. Maathai, one of the most famous and widely respected women on the continent, wore many hats — environmentalist, feminist, politician, professor, rabble-rouser, human rights advocate and head of the Green Belt Movement she founded. She was as comfortable in the gritty streets of Nairobi’s slums or the muddy hillsides of central Kenya as she was hobnobbing with heads of state. In 2004, she won the Nobel Peace Prize, with the Nobel committee citing “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” It was a moment of immense pride in Kenya and across Africa.
Mrs. Maathai toured the world, speaking out against environmental degradation and poverty — which she pointed out early on were intimately connected — but never lost focus on her native Kenya. She was a thorn in the side of Kenya’s previous president, Daniel Arap Moi, and when he finally stepped down after 24 years in power, she served as a member of parliament and as an assistant minister for a few years. But she soon fell out of favor with Kenya’s new leaders and lost her seat. In 2008, after being pushed out of government, she was tear-gassed by the police during a protest against the excesses of Kenya’s well-entrenched political class.
“Wangari Maathai was known to speak truth to power,” said John Githongo, an anticorruption campaigner in Kenya who was forced into exile for years for his own outspoken views. “She blazed a trail in whatever she did, whether it was in the environment, politics, whatever.”
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in 1940 in Nyeri, Kenya, in the foothills of Mount Kenya. She was a star student and won a scholarship to study biology at Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kan. She went on to obtain a doctorate in veterinary anatomy, becoming the first woman in East or Central Africa to hold such a degree, according to the Nobel Prize Web site. In 1977, she formed the Green Belt Movement, which planted trees across Kenya to fight erosion and to create fuel (i.e., firewood) and jobs for women.
During the 1980s, the Kenyan government labeled the Green Belt Movement “subversive,” and Mrs. Maathai seemed to provoke a special scorn from Mr. Moi by leading the charge against a government plan to build a huge skyscraper in one of central Nairobi’s only parks. The skyscraper proposal was eventually scrapped, though not long afterward, during another protest, Mrs. Maathai was beaten unconscious by the police.
Home life was not easy either. Her husband, Mwangi, divorced her, saying she was too strong-minded for a woman. When she lost her divorce case and criticized the judge, she was thrown in jail. Still, throughout the years she managed to rack up honorary degrees and innumerable awards, including France’s Légion d’Honneur and Japan’s Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.
Her Green Belt Movement has planted over 30 million trees in Africa and helped nearly 900,000 women, the United Nations said.
“Wangari Maathai was a force of nature,” said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nation’s environmental program. He likened her to Africa’s ubiquitous acacia trees, “strong in character and able to survive sometimes the harshest of conditions.”
The Nobel committee hailed her for taking “a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women’s rights in particular” and serving “as inspiration for many in the fight for democratic rights.”
Her battle with ovarian cancer was a surprise to many here in Nairobi. Her organization did not provide details but Kenyan media reported that she had been in the hospital for at least a week and had been suffering during the past year.
She is survived by three children, Waweru, Wanjira and Muta, and a granddaughter, Ruth Wangari, according to a statement from the Green Belt Movement. The organization said, “Her departure is untimely and a very great loss to all of us who knew her, as a mother, relative, co-worker, colleague, role model and heroine or those who admired her determination to make the world a peaceful, healthy and better place for all of us.”
On Monday, condolences flooded in from around the world.
Fellow Nobel winner Al Gore said “Wangari overcame incredible obstacles to devote her life to service — service to her children, to her constituents, to the women, and indeed all the people of Kenya — and to the world as a whole.”
During her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Mrs. Maathai said the inspiration for her work came from growing up in rural Kenya. She reminisced about a stream running next to her home – that same stream has since dried up – and drinking fresh, clear water.
“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other,” she said.
“That time is now.”
Andrew Revkin wrote this in Dot.Earth today:
Maathai is best known for creating the Green Belt Movement, which has planted tens of millions of trees around Kenya, but she also personified a positive strain of environmentalism that stands out in a world where “woe is me” messages dominate. Click on the video clip above for a sample.
Radu Sigheti/Reuters Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, center, in Nairobi in 2004.Her work centered on improving the lives of women, building a sustainable relationship between people and the land and education. Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her efforts. I encourage you to read the defense of her prize, which was criticized by some, from Anna Lappé and Frances Moore Lappé of the Small Planet Institute. Here’s a snippet:
Mrs. Maathai, one of the most famous and widely respected women on the continent, wore many hats — environmentalist, feminist, politician, professor, rabble-rouser, human rights advocate and head of the Green Belt Movement she founded. She was as comfortable in the gritty streets of Nairobi’s slums or the muddy hillsides of central Kenya as she was hobnobbing with heads of state. In 2004, she won the Nobel Peace Prize, with the Nobel committee citing “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” It was a moment of immense pride in Kenya and across Africa.
Mrs. Maathai toured the world, speaking out against environmental degradation and poverty — which she pointed out early on were intimately connected — but never lost focus on her native Kenya. She was a thorn in the side of Kenya’s previous president, Daniel Arap Moi, and when he finally stepped down after 24 years in power, she served as a member of parliament and as an assistant minister for a few years. But she soon fell out of favor with Kenya’s new leaders and lost her seat. In 2008, after being pushed out of government, she was tear-gassed by the police during a protest against the excesses of Kenya’s well-entrenched political class.
“Wangari Maathai was known to speak truth to power,” said John Githongo, an anticorruption campaigner in Kenya who was forced into exile for years for his own outspoken views. “She blazed a trail in whatever she did, whether it was in the environment, politics, whatever.”
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in 1940 in Nyeri, Kenya, in the foothills of Mount Kenya. She was a star student and won a scholarship to study biology at Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kan. She went on to obtain a doctorate in veterinary anatomy, becoming the first woman in East or Central Africa to hold such a degree, according to the Nobel Prize Web site. In 1977, she formed the Green Belt Movement, which planted trees across Kenya to fight erosion and to create fuel (i.e., firewood) and jobs for women.
During the 1980s, the Kenyan government labeled the Green Belt Movement “subversive,” and Mrs. Maathai seemed to provoke a special scorn from Mr. Moi by leading the charge against a government plan to build a huge skyscraper in one of central Nairobi’s only parks. The skyscraper proposal was eventually scrapped, though not long afterward, during another protest, Mrs. Maathai was beaten unconscious by the police.
Home life was not easy either. Her husband, Mwangi, divorced her, saying she was too strong-minded for a woman. When she lost her divorce case and criticized the judge, she was thrown in jail. Still, throughout the years she managed to rack up honorary degrees and innumerable awards, including France’s Légion d’Honneur and Japan’s Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.
Her Green Belt Movement has planted over 30 million trees in Africa and helped nearly 900,000 women, the United Nations said.
“Wangari Maathai was a force of nature,” said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nation’s environmental program. He likened her to Africa’s ubiquitous acacia trees, “strong in character and able to survive sometimes the harshest of conditions.”
The Nobel committee hailed her for taking “a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women’s rights in particular” and serving “as inspiration for many in the fight for democratic rights.”
Her battle with ovarian cancer was a surprise to many here in Nairobi. Her organization did not provide details but Kenyan media reported that she had been in the hospital for at least a week and had been suffering during the past year.
She is survived by three children, Waweru, Wanjira and Muta, and a granddaughter, Ruth Wangari, according to a statement from the Green Belt Movement. The organization said, “Her departure is untimely and a very great loss to all of us who knew her, as a mother, relative, co-worker, colleague, role model and heroine or those who admired her determination to make the world a peaceful, healthy and better place for all of us.”
On Monday, condolences flooded in from around the world.
Fellow Nobel winner Al Gore said “Wangari overcame incredible obstacles to devote her life to service — service to her children, to her constituents, to the women, and indeed all the people of Kenya — and to the world as a whole.”
During her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Mrs. Maathai said the inspiration for her work came from growing up in rural Kenya. She reminisced about a stream running next to her home – that same stream has since dried up – and drinking fresh, clear water.
“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other,” she said.
“That time is now.”
Andrew Revkin wrote this in Dot.Earth today:
Maathai is best known for creating the Green Belt Movement, which has planted tens of millions of trees around Kenya, but she also personified a positive strain of environmentalism that stands out in a world where “woe is me” messages dominate. Click on the video clip above for a sample.
Radu Sigheti/Reuters Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, center, in Nairobi in 2004.Maathai’s genius is in recognizing the interrelation of local and global problems, and the fact that they can only be addressed when citizens find the voice and courage to act. Maathai saw in the Green Belt Movement both a good in itself, and a way in which women could discover they were not powerless in the face of autocratic husbands, village chiefs and a ruthless president. Through creating their own tree nurseries – at least 6,000 throughout Kenya – and planting trees, women began to control the supply of their own firewood, an enormous power shift that also freed up time for other pursuits.[The writer Terry Tempest Williams sent this note by e-mail:
Then, through popular education, village women – who had watched public forests be used by the Moi regime to grant political favors – began to see forests differently, as something they, as citizens, had a claim to.
I met her when I was 28 years old in Kenya, she changed my life. She showed me what a powerful woman's voice not only sounded like, but felt like. And she taught me as we traveled through villages what interdependency is all about -- environmental issues are social issues are issues of social justice.]Maathai was not averse to speaking truth to power. John Vidal of The Guardian today recalls comments Maathai made on her first visit to England, in 1988:
Her fierce denunciation of the rich north, that day, was shocking: “The top of the pyramid is blinded by insatiable appetites backed by scientific knowledge, industrial advancement, the need to acquire, accumulate and over-consume. The rights of those at the bottom are violated every day by those at the top.”The Web site of her organization encourages well wishers to post thoughts on her Facebook page. They are welcome here, as well, of course.
Friday, September 16, 2011
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