This is a post dedicated to Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist, Dr. Wangari Maathai. I hope you enjoy learning about her. There are some resources at the bottom of this post where you can continue to learn more.
We humans are every bit a part of nature as our fellow fauna, but we often think and behave as though we are not. As we walk the earth, our actions have impacts and it’s up to us to make sure most of those impacts are positive.
In the Humans section of Tellurian Treasures, I celebrate those who embody the characteristics of what I would call a true ‘earthling’. These are the people who nurture and respect their connection to the natural world. They are careful to tread lightly on the earth, while developing their knowledge of the intricacies of nature. They then share this knowledge with others, creating a valuable legacy that we can all live by and look up to.
Who was Dr. Wangari Maathai?
Dr. Wangari Maathai is well known for her social, political and environmental activism and for founding the Green Belt Movement in 1977. The Green Belt Movement is a grassroots environmental organisation that focuses on reforestation, environmental conservation and women’s rights. Under the patronage of The National Council of Women of Kenya in response to the needs of rural Kenyan women, the Green Belt Movement was born. The organisation has planted over 50 million trees across Kenya since 1977.
In rural Kenya, women were struggling with drought and an unstable food supply. The Green Belt Movement encouraged women to work together and with the land to alleviate their problems. They did this by planting trees to provide food, increase soil stability, collect rainwater and produce firewood, with a small money incentive for their hard work.
It wasn’t long after Wangari began this work, that she saw the deeper issues behind the everyday struggles of these poor rural communities. The degradation of their environment and food insecurity issues were down to disempowerment, deprivation, and a loss of traditional values that had previously enabled these communities to be self sustaining. They were once able to protect their environment and work selflessly together for mutual benefit.
The Green Belt Movement set in motion seminars to encourage individuals to explore the political, economical and environmental reasons behind their circumstances. This led to a collective understanding that they had been placing their trust in leaders who had been sabotaging their lives for years, by not working for the common good and by improperly exploiting natural resources.
As a result, the Green belt Movement began to advocate for a stronger sense of democracy and hold national leaders accountable for their actions and impacts. The movement fought against the large-scale acquisition of forests and land for agriculture.
In recent years the movement has extended its global reach to campaign against climate change, raising awareness of the importance of the rainforests in the Congo. The movement has also partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme in its Billion Tree Campaign.
Some of Dr. Wangari Maathai’s other inspiring achievements include the fact she was the first African woman to win a Nobel Prize. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her ‘contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace’. She also won two other awards; the Right Livelihood Award in 1984 and the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize in 2006.
She was also the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy. In the mid 60s, She studied in the United States, as a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlift, earning a Bachelor’s Degree from Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas, followed by a Master’s Degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi in Kenya.
Dr. Wangari Maathai was also an elected member of the Parliament of Kenya, serving for a time as assistant minister for environment and natural resources. She was also an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council.
Wangari sadly passed away from ovarian cancer in 2011, but she leaves behind a legacy that will surely inspire many for years to come.
You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.
Dr. Wangari Maathai
Find out more about Dr. Wangari Maathai
Visit the Green Belt Movement website to learn more about Wangari and the work of the movement. The Green Belt Movement also accepts donations.
Books:
by Dr. Wangari Maathai
This is a book I am currently reading at the moment and I’d highly recommend it.
Description from Hive.co.uk: ‘it is so easy, in our modern world, to feel disconnected from the physical earth. Despite dire warnings and escalating concern over the state of our planet, many people feel out of touch with the natural world. Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai has spent decades working with the Green Belt Movement to help women in rural Kenya plant—and sustain—millions of trees. With their hands in the dirt, these women often find themselves empowered and “at home” in a way they never did before. Maathai wants to impart that feeling to everyone, and believes that the key lies in traditional spiritual values: love for the environment, self-betterment, gratitude and respect, and a commitment to service. While educated in the Christian tradition, Maathai draws inspiration from many faiths, celebrating the Jewish mandate tikkun olam (“repair the world”) and renewing the Japanese term mottainai (“don’t waste”). Through rededication to these values, she believes, we might finally bring about healing for ourselves and the earth.‘
by Dr. Wangari Maathai
Description from hive.co.uk: ‘Born in a rural Kenyan village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most African girls then were uneducated. In her remarkable and inspiring autobiography, she tells of her studies with Catholic missionaries, earning bachelors and master’s degrees in the United States, and becoming the first woman both to earn a PhD and to head a university department in Kenya. She tells of her numerous run-ins with the brutal government of Daniel arap Moi and of the political and personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa, and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. Maathai’s extraordinary courage and determination helped transform Kenya’s government into the democracy in which she now serves as Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources and as a Member of Parliament. Eventually her achievement was internationally recognized in the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in recognition of her ‘contribution to sustainable development, human rights, and peace’. In Unbowed, we are in the presence of a hugely charismatic yet humble woman whose remarkable story carries with it an inspiring message of hope. Hers is an extraordinary story, spanning different worlds and changing times, and revealing what the courage, determination, tenacity and humour of one good woman can achieve; how as small a thing as planting a seedling and watering it can made all the difference in the world.‘
View more books by Wangari Maathai on Hive.co.uk.
Thank you for reading. Have a beautiful day.
~ Faine
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