Planting Trees of Peace: Maathai in the United States

NEW YORK, New York, December 21, 2004 (ENS) - Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai of Kenya is visiting the United States this week, sharing her vision of tree planting as a solution to many of the world's problems. She told ENS that in her home country, the government in which she serves as assistant environment minister has put a ban on deforestation in water catchment areas to correct the excessive clearcutting that took place in the past.

"There is a lot of regeneration taking place," Maathai said. "It is the first part of the work we are now doing. Women are growing trees, we are buying trees from the women and giving them to foresters to plant in these forested catchment areas."

Maathai started the Green Belt tree planting movement for which she is now famous in 1976, while serving in the National Council of Women of Kenya.

Wangari Maathai as a young environmental activist and tree planter. (Photo courtesy Goldman Prize)

The thing to do," she said, "is to empower people. They have something in them. Surely they can plant trees, flowers, collect garbage, turn that garbage into compost, and plant a tree."

Through the Green Belt Movement, Maathai has helped women plant more than 30 million trees on their farms and in school and church compounds across Kenya.

"The deforestation of Kenya began," she explained, "when the British moved in, clearcut indigenous forests and replaced them with monoculture plantations of pines and eucalyptus. Those farms are planted with trees that must be harvested every 30 to 60 years. That's what many people call the current deforestation."

"But what is important," she stressed, "what is going on in Kenya as we speak, is that we must stop using our water catchments for harvest. We must regenerate and conserve the biodiversity."

The indigenous Ogiek people whose traditional lands are in Kenya's Mau Forest, have been suffering encroachment and deforestation of their lands by poachers. "We are in touch with them," Maathai said today. "I have been trying to advocate for the protection of their area. Part of the problem is clearcutting. Their livelihood is biodiversity, monocultures destroy them. We are removing the plantations and restoring the indigenous forest that they depend on."

"Outside of these major forests, people are harvesting trees for production of charcoal that provides energy for them to sell in urban centers," Maathai said. "This is a major business that is difficult to curb, because it is a substitute for electricity."

Dr. Wangari Maathai attends a conference soon after being elected to Parliament. January 2003 (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

"The protection of these forests is connected to our capacity to produce enough electicity from other sources, mainly from hydropower," she said. "But generating hydropower is dependent on our ability to preserve the water catchment areas, and these forests are already broken."

Her solution, as always, is to plant more trees. "It's a catch 22 that we are solving using the Green Belt methods of planting trees," she said.

A junior minister in the government of Kenya, Maathai must now be an activist from inside the decision making process, rather than an activist shouting for change from outside the process. The problems facing her East African country are not easy to solve, she said.

"We are right there in the middle of the planet, changes in the climate are difficult. We have had drought in Kenya, crop failure, agriculture is rain dependent, we have had famine, and we have started appealing for food."

"We have been short of three things in Africa - peace, sustainable resource management, and good government. We have allowed a lot of poverty to spread throughout the region," she said.

To explain the links between the environment and sustainable development, Maathai uses the metaphor of an African stool which has three legs - peace, good governance, and the sustainable management of resources - the basis for development.

Dr. Wangari Maathai receives her Nobel Prize from Ole Danbolt Mjøs, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. (Photo courtesy Nobel Prize)

Her U.S. tour sponsored by the Marion Institute, Maathai spent Monday at United Nations Headquarters in New York where delegates and staff members were celebrating the first ever Day for South-South Cooperation.

As part of the observance of the Day, the UN Development Programme invited her to address UN delegates and staff members as an exemplar of South-South cooperation.

The Green Belt movement has been Maathai's vehicle to foster that cooperation. Her methods of tree planting and empowerment have taken root, and Maathai has now helped groups in 15 African countries undertake afforestation projects and offer environmental and sustainable land use education.

Find out more at: http://www.wangarimaathai.com