Wangari Muta Maathai (1940 - 2011) was a Kenyan biologist, environmental activist, and politician who founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977. [1] The movement mobilised rural women to plant trees, eventually accounting for tens of millions of seedlings across Kenya, and connected reforestation with women's livelihoods, civic rights, and opposition to land seizures. [2] In 2004 she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and she served as an assistant minister in the Kenyan government.
Early life and education
Maathai was born on 1 April 1940 in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri in the central highlands of colonial Kenya, into a Kikuyu farming family. [1] She attended a primary school run by missionaries and then Loreto High School in Limuru, one of the few secondary schools then open to Kenyan girls.
She was selected for a scholarship programme that brought East African students to the United States, studying biology at Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas and taking a master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 1966. [3] After further research in Germany at the universities of Giessen and Munich, she completed a doctorate in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi in 1971, becoming the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a PhD. She went on to chair the university's department of veterinary anatomy and to hold an associate professorship, again as the first woman at that institution to do so.
The Green Belt Movement
Working with the National Council of Women of Kenya, Maathai began organising tree planting as a response to deforestation, soil erosion, and the shortage of firewood and clean water reported by rural women. [2] The Green Belt Movement, established in 1977, paid small stipends to women who raised seedlings and established nurseries, spreading across the country and later to other African states through a pan-African training network.
The work became explicitly political as forests and public land were allocated to private interests. Maathai led the campaign that blocked a proposed tower in Nairobi's Uhuru Park in the late 1980s and opposed the allocation of the Karura Forest; she was arrested on several occasions, and she and fellow protesters were assaulted during demonstrations. [1] Her activism placed her in prolonged conflict with the government of President Daniel arap Moi.
Politics and later work
Following the elections of 2002 that ended Moi's long rule, Maathai was elected to parliament for the Tetu constituency with an overwhelming majority and was appointed Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources, serving until 2005. [3]
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace, framing environmental protection as a foundation of political stability. [4] She was later named a United Nations Messenger of Peace and co-chaired the Congo Basin Forest Fund. Her books include the memoir Unbowed, The Challenge for Africa, and Replenishing the Earth.
Death and legacy
Maathai died of cancer in Nairobi on 25 September 2011. [1] In keeping with her environmental convictions she asked not to be buried in a wooden coffin.
The Green Belt Movement continues to operate, and the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies was established at the University of Nairobi. [2] Her insistence that ecological degradation, poverty, and the denial of political rights are a single connected problem has become a standard framing in international environmental policy. [4]
