Nobel Laureate Warns Planet at Risk
Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai Says Human Activity Is Threatening Environment

by Inger Sethov

Saying the planet is at risk from human activity, Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai urged democratic reforms and an end to corporate greed when she collected the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai, Kenya's deputy environment minister and the first African woman to win the Peace Prize, said sweeping changes were needed to restore a "world of beauty and wonder" by overcoming challenges ranging from AIDS to climate instability.

"Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated," Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement, a campaign to plant 30 million trees across Africa to slow deforestation, said in an acceptance speech at the ceremony in Oslo, Norway. "Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system," Maathai, 64, told an audience of about 1,000 people including Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja.

"I call on leaders, especially in Africa, to expand democratic space and build fair and just societies," she said. "Further, industry and global institutions must appreciate that ensuring economic justice, gender equity and ecological integrity are of greater value than profits at any cost," she said. "And grassroots citizens' movements should be encouraged."

Maathai collected a gold Nobel medal and a diploma to a standing ovation from the guests. She will separately receive a cheque for 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.48 million). She will use the cash to expand her Green Belt Movement around the world.

Heal Earth's Wounds and Heal Our Own

"We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own," she said. Her tree-planting movement, led mostly by women, aims to produce firewood, building materials and also to slow desertification. It also works for women's rights, democracy and peace.

Maathai said a stream where she used to see frogs and tadpoles as a child 50 years ago had dried up. "The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder," she said.

Maathai also said the environment was a barometer of a nation's health. Some critics have said environmentalism has too little to do with peace to warrant the Nobel accolade. "The state of any country's environment is a reflection of the kind of governance in place, and without good governance there can be no peace," she said. She said the world is facing a "litany of woes" including corruption, violence against women and children and diseases like AIDS or malaria.

A Woman of Courage and Determination fighting for those most easily marginalized

Wangari Maathai has been praised for her courage and determination. A pioneering academic, her role as an environmental campaigner began after she planted some trees in her back garden. This inspired her in 1977 to form an organization-primarily of women-known as the Green Belt Movement aiming to curtail the devastating effects of deforestation and desertification. Her initial desire was simple, to help people produce sustainable wood for fuel use as well as combat soil erosion. Speaking on the BBC, she said her tree planting campaign was not at all popular when it first began. "It took me a lot of days and nights to convince people that women could improve their environment without much technology or without much financial resources."

The Green Belt Movement went on to campaign on education, nutrition, family planning and other issues important to women.

Political Role

Mrs Maathai has been arrested several times for campaigning against deforestation and for women's rights. In the late 1980s, she became a prominent opponent of a skyscraper planned for the middle of the Kenyan capital's main park-Uhuru Park. She was vilified by President Daniel Arap Moi's government but succeeded in thwarting the plans. More recently, she evolved into a leading campaigner on social matters. Once was beaten unconscious by heavy handed police. On an other occasion she led a demonstration of naked women. She was the first woman in Kenya to dare to run for political office. In 1997, she ran for president against Mr Moi but made little impact. But in elections in 2002, she was elected as MP with 98% of the votes as part of an opposition coalition which swept to power after Mr Moi stepped down. She was appointed as a deputy environment minister in 2003.

Her former husband, whom she divorced in the 1980s, was said to have remarked that she was "too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control."

Source: Reuters news service, December 10, 2004.