One of the most highly educated and celebrated African women of all time, Prof. Wanagri Maathai is probably best known for founding the Green Belt Movement (GBM) in 1977, which has empowered women to plant over 30 million trees across Kenya.

In 2002, Prof. Maathai took her fight for conservation to the polls, and was elected to the Kenyan parliament, winning 98 percent of the vote. In a phone interview last week, she told me that within her official government role she has taken the opportunity to introduce laws that will help to protect Kenya’s environment.

"It is extremely important for grassroots organisations to be supported by governments because there are many things that grassroots people cannot do… because they don’t have the resources," she said.

"However, at the same time, grassroots organisations can be a response to the needs of the community - a response to a need that is not being addressed by the government. So, quite often it doesn’t always start with cooperation but…as governments embrace grassroots organisations [they] see them as partners rather than as adversaries, and that is, I guess in regions such as where I come from, where governments don’t always welcome grassroots organisations, because they expose what they don’t want to see being exposed."

Prof. Wangari Maathai
at the 2004 Nobel Laureate
concert in Norway, 2004
(pic courtesy of GBM).

Prof. Maathai revealed that she had personally enjoyed her political life because of the opportunities it has presented. "It is so different from having been a person who was constantly lobbying members of parliament to introduce these laws, and now being a member who is literally introducing the laws…just last year we introduced a special law for the protection of forests, and right now we are very busy trying to implement it to see how it works, and that has been very, very satisfying."

In 2004, Prof. Maathai was awarded to Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace, a decision she says reflects the Nobel Committee’s recognition that protection of the environment is an important pillar for peace. "It is true when you think of many of the conflicts we have, they all…are [about] the control of resources," she explained. "It is a matter of who accesses these resources, and who is excluded, and because the resources are limited, if there is not equitable distribution, if there is not responsible and accountable management, sooner or later people will come into a conflict."

She maintains that by protecting the environment you can essentially pre-empt conflicts, but governments need to be motivated and honest. "You need a governance system that respects human rights, that respects other people’s space, that respects the rule of law, because it is only such a system of governance that will be able to manage our resources responsibly and sustainably, and promote equitable distribution, and in so doing invest in peace."

Not one to sit on her (Nobel) Laurels, Maathai is concentrating her efforts in promoting environmental conservation through her new global campaign, Mottainai, a name she adopted from the Japanese language, meaning ‘what a waste’.

Pivotal to this campaign, she said, are the consumption patterns of industrialised nations. "They have the capacity to buy, so they can consume, and they can produce a lot of waste, and they can dump that waste in the countryside, in the rivers, in the atmosphere, and they can even dump it in other countries, where many of the products that they produce are exported."

She also explained that while many corporations from industrialised countries adhere to strict environmental laws at home, they can often become complacent when moving their operations overseas, and added that it is imperative companies don’t relax in the developing world, where environmental laws are sometimes lax and governments are unresponsive to the needs of the people. "At a grassroots level it is very, very important for the people to understand that the same rule or code of conduct that the companies practice here at home should be practiced abroad," she added.

In addition to the issue of waste, she is also speaking out about the lack of attention being paid to what she calls the new enemy: desertification. Speaking to a 400-strong crowd at Tokyo’s Waseda University on 13 February 2006, where she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for her contribution to environmental protection, she explained that much more attention has to be paid to this issue across the globe.

"I was emphasising that this is a great enemy to mankind because we are losing so much top soil…we are losing it into the water, we are losing it into the wind," she explained. "We invest so much in weaponry, in preparation for any physical enemy that may come across the border, and we invest much, much less in efforts to combat desertification. Yet desertification claims that land forever."

One of the most effective ways of preventing desertification is to protect tracks of forest, as well encourage the planting of trees to hold topsoil. It’s possible that this new campaign has brought Prof. Maathai full circle, back to the simple idea of planting a tree, only this time, she is taking it to the world, with GBM now becoming an international organisation.

Professor Wangari Maathai will be visiting the US throughout March 2006, and will be a featured speaker for the Nobel Peace Prize Forum in Iowa, as well as a guest speaker in various colleges across the US and other selected events.