Wangari Maathai Makes Environment, Peace Connection
San Francisco Bay View
December 22, 2004
Wangari Maathai in a reflective moment in the back of a helicopter on her way back to Nairobi, Kenya, October 8, 2004. Photo by Mia Macdonald.
Wangari Maathai won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize and the press sneered. They sneered because Wangari Maathai is a woman and fits none of the Western male supremacist stereotypes of woman.
The press sneered because Wangari Maathai is an independent women’s rights feminist woman. They sneered because she is a Black African Ph.D., professor, member of Parliament, Minister for Environment woman. The press sneered because Wangari Maathai is an environmentalist, biologist, scientist and a human rights worker for peace, justice and democracy who—not unlike our own Fannie Lou Hamer—has endured great suffering while working in the causes of peace and justice and democracy and human rights. In the great, global cause of life on planet Earth.
Wangari Maachai’s great contribution was to make the connection between the life of forests and the life of humankind—to see justice and injustice, war and peace in the connection—and to devote her life to the struggle for life. She planted trees. Millions of them. Led a reforesting movement.
If deforestation—cutting down trees, commercial logging, clear cutting, burning and damaging forests—continues at the rate it’s going, the world’s rain forests will vanish within 100 years, says a NASA report. The majority of the planet’s plant and animal species will die.
“When a forest is cut and burned to establish crop land and pastures,” the Earth Observatory report says, “the carbon that was stored in the tree trunks ... joins with oxygen and is released into the atmosphere.... From 1850 to 1990, deforestation worldwide (including the United States) released 122 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with the current rate being approximately 1.6 billion metric tons per year.”
Burning fossil fuel—coal, oil and gas—releases 6 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “enhances greenhouse effect and could contribute to an increase in global temperatures.”
All life needs trees. “Trees protect the soil against erosion and reduce the risks of landslides and avalanches,” Stephen Hui reminds us in a 1997 article, “Deforestation: Humankind and the global ecological crisis.” Trees help to sustain freshwater supplies, he says, and therefore are an important factor in the availability of one of life’s basic needs. Forests affect the climate and are an important source of oxygen. “Humankind is the cause of deforestation.” And humankind can cure it, he says.
Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize because she put her back to the wheel of reforestation by planting and leading communities in planting millions of trees in Africa. She won it because she used her mind to make the connection between forests and peace, justice and life; between deforestation and war, poverty and death—taking particular toll on women and children of Kenya, of Africa and of the world.
Interviewed on Democracy Now! (heard weekdays at 6:00 and 9:00 a.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM in Northern California), environmental author Terry Tempest Williams said when the prize was announced: “Wangari Maathai was the first of the global leaders to say the health of our communities is the health of the planet. She said that environmental responsibility is social responsibility. She was one of the first global leaders decades ago to say that there is no separation between how we treat the environment and how we treat each other.”
A butterfly flutters its wings on an East African coast, and winds, great storms touch down in North America. Great forests fall to rubber plantations, corporate cattle farms, massive agri-businesses and logging capitalists; flood waters rise, mud slides rush down slopes, waters run through streets, wiping out cities and towns, clapboard houses, trailers of poorer people, mansions of the rich, carbon coughing SUVs of the careless.
In richer countries, taxpayers pay for cities and states declared states of emergency. Taxes fund shelters for people made homeless by storms, for merchants who lose their places of business, for businesses whose payouts exceed projected revenue. In poorer countries—and in sectors of rich countries—no such luck.
As people suffer one after another storm, the effects worsened by deforestation, their debt to developed countries such as the United States rises. To pay down the debt, they sell off their forests, sustaining double loss, often endless poverty. And more hurricanes come.
This is a simplified case of Haiti and corporate rubber (or robber) barons. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and with corporate greed, rising debt, great storms, constant meddling into its governance by foreign governments and civil chaos—not unlike Iraq of late—Haiti has broken down completely.
A BBC report in late September said the storm called Jeanne caused a thousand deaths and left tens of thousands of Haitians without food and water. What’s behind Haiti’s stream of natural disasters? “Environmental destruction and lack of economic development,” says the report. “Haiti is one of the poorest, most densely populated and most deforested countries on Earth.” Lacking peaceful, unconditional human assistance, Haiti is destroyed over and over again. Where is the justice in this?
Iraq and Afghanistan suffer a similar fate of plunder, devastation and debt. An article published last year by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said that since the start of the war in Afghanistan, forests have been depleted by a third because people had to have firewood for cooking and heating. “War, illegal hunting, deforestation and drought combined with grinding poverty,” Rahimullah Samander writes, “have had a disastrous effect on Afghanistan’s wildlife, pushing some species to the verge of extinction.”
A protest was held recently in Washington calling for the reduction or cancellation of debt owed by poor countries to powerful countries, but there has been no serious movement in this direction, there was no discussion during the presidential campaign of debt relief or reforestation of lands destroyed by corporate plunder or holdups of poor nations, and the sneering press has asked no questions about environmental destruction and devastated lives. Where is the peace and justice in this? No peace. No justice. No future for families and children. Only war and death.
Wangari Maathai is an environmentalist peacemaker, an advocate for justice. She holds three degrees in science, including a doctorate. She was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctoral degree. She has also received honorary doctoral degrees, including one from Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Western New York.
She was born in Nyeri, Kenya, and to celebrate winning the peace prize, she planted a tree on nearby Mount Kenya. She leads the world in the struggle for environmental conservation, democracy and human rights. Since the 1970s she has planted trees and led communities and movements in planting more than 20 million trees in Africa.
Terry Tempest Williams concluded her interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now! by saying that Wangari Maathai is a woman “who has risked everything for the environment,” that her whole life has been “a gesture of deep bows to women and children in the earth.” The Nobel committee’s recognition of Maathai as peacemaker, Williams said, gives new meaning to peace.
In announcing the Nobel committee’s decision to award the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai, some of what the head of the Norwegian Nobel committee said (reprinted at Democracy Now.org) was that Wangari Maathai “has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women’s rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally.... Maathai combines science, social commitment, and active politics. More than simply protecting the existing environment, her strategy is to secure and strengthen the very basis for ecologically sustainable development.”
While the press may sneer in its lazy, self-important ignorance, this woman’s life stands as a beacon beckoning others’ emulation. She stands high above any headlining leader any one of us could name today. Now we know her name. And because she is the winner of the peace prize, we are raised again to the urgency of environmental protection and conservation, peace and justice.
This woman is important among world leaders because, unlike many contemporary leaders, she looks at what is happening today and sees its continued consequences way down the road. She sees the interlocking nature and impact of scientific, human and natural variables on human life all over the world. And she uses her entire human powers to address and correct the problems. She is a human being who has earned the Nobel Peace Prize. How we treat our environment is a matter of life and death. We ought to thank Wangari Muta Maathai for dedicating her life to saving ours.
The press sneered because Wangari Maathai is an independent women’s rights feminist woman. They sneered because she is a Black African Ph.D., professor, member of Parliament, Minister for Environment woman. The press sneered because Wangari Maathai is an environmentalist, biologist, scientist and a human rights worker for peace, justice and democracy who—not unlike our own Fannie Lou Hamer—has endured great suffering while working in the causes of peace and justice and democracy and human rights. In the great, global cause of life on planet Earth.
Wangari Maachai’s great contribution was to make the connection between the life of forests and the life of humankind—to see justice and injustice, war and peace in the connection—and to devote her life to the struggle for life. She planted trees. Millions of them. Led a reforesting movement.
If deforestation—cutting down trees, commercial logging, clear cutting, burning and damaging forests—continues at the rate it’s going, the world’s rain forests will vanish within 100 years, says a NASA report. The majority of the planet’s plant and animal species will die.
“When a forest is cut and burned to establish crop land and pastures,” the Earth Observatory report says, “the carbon that was stored in the tree trunks ... joins with oxygen and is released into the atmosphere.... From 1850 to 1990, deforestation worldwide (including the United States) released 122 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with the current rate being approximately 1.6 billion metric tons per year.”
Burning fossil fuel—coal, oil and gas—releases 6 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “enhances greenhouse effect and could contribute to an increase in global temperatures.”
All life needs trees. “Trees protect the soil against erosion and reduce the risks of landslides and avalanches,” Stephen Hui reminds us in a 1997 article, “Deforestation: Humankind and the global ecological crisis.” Trees help to sustain freshwater supplies, he says, and therefore are an important factor in the availability of one of life’s basic needs. Forests affect the climate and are an important source of oxygen. “Humankind is the cause of deforestation.” And humankind can cure it, he says.
Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize because she put her back to the wheel of reforestation by planting and leading communities in planting millions of trees in Africa. She won it because she used her mind to make the connection between forests and peace, justice and life; between deforestation and war, poverty and death—taking particular toll on women and children of Kenya, of Africa and of the world.
Interviewed on Democracy Now! (heard weekdays at 6:00 and 9:00 a.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM in Northern California), environmental author Terry Tempest Williams said when the prize was announced: “Wangari Maathai was the first of the global leaders to say the health of our communities is the health of the planet. She said that environmental responsibility is social responsibility. She was one of the first global leaders decades ago to say that there is no separation between how we treat the environment and how we treat each other.”
A butterfly flutters its wings on an East African coast, and winds, great storms touch down in North America. Great forests fall to rubber plantations, corporate cattle farms, massive agri-businesses and logging capitalists; flood waters rise, mud slides rush down slopes, waters run through streets, wiping out cities and towns, clapboard houses, trailers of poorer people, mansions of the rich, carbon coughing SUVs of the careless.
In richer countries, taxpayers pay for cities and states declared states of emergency. Taxes fund shelters for people made homeless by storms, for merchants who lose their places of business, for businesses whose payouts exceed projected revenue. In poorer countries—and in sectors of rich countries—no such luck.
As people suffer one after another storm, the effects worsened by deforestation, their debt to developed countries such as the United States rises. To pay down the debt, they sell off their forests, sustaining double loss, often endless poverty. And more hurricanes come.
This is a simplified case of Haiti and corporate rubber (or robber) barons. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and with corporate greed, rising debt, great storms, constant meddling into its governance by foreign governments and civil chaos—not unlike Iraq of late—Haiti has broken down completely.
A BBC report in late September said the storm called Jeanne caused a thousand deaths and left tens of thousands of Haitians without food and water. What’s behind Haiti’s stream of natural disasters? “Environmental destruction and lack of economic development,” says the report. “Haiti is one of the poorest, most densely populated and most deforested countries on Earth.” Lacking peaceful, unconditional human assistance, Haiti is destroyed over and over again. Where is the justice in this?
Iraq and Afghanistan suffer a similar fate of plunder, devastation and debt. An article published last year by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said that since the start of the war in Afghanistan, forests have been depleted by a third because people had to have firewood for cooking and heating. “War, illegal hunting, deforestation and drought combined with grinding poverty,” Rahimullah Samander writes, “have had a disastrous effect on Afghanistan’s wildlife, pushing some species to the verge of extinction.”
A protest was held recently in Washington calling for the reduction or cancellation of debt owed by poor countries to powerful countries, but there has been no serious movement in this direction, there was no discussion during the presidential campaign of debt relief or reforestation of lands destroyed by corporate plunder or holdups of poor nations, and the sneering press has asked no questions about environmental destruction and devastated lives. Where is the peace and justice in this? No peace. No justice. No future for families and children. Only war and death.
Wangari Maathai is an environmentalist peacemaker, an advocate for justice. She holds three degrees in science, including a doctorate. She was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctoral degree. She has also received honorary doctoral degrees, including one from Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Western New York.
She was born in Nyeri, Kenya, and to celebrate winning the peace prize, she planted a tree on nearby Mount Kenya. She leads the world in the struggle for environmental conservation, democracy and human rights. Since the 1970s she has planted trees and led communities and movements in planting more than 20 million trees in Africa.
Terry Tempest Williams concluded her interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now! by saying that Wangari Maathai is a woman “who has risked everything for the environment,” that her whole life has been “a gesture of deep bows to women and children in the earth.” The Nobel committee’s recognition of Maathai as peacemaker, Williams said, gives new meaning to peace.
In announcing the Nobel committee’s decision to award the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai, some of what the head of the Norwegian Nobel committee said (reprinted at Democracy Now.org) was that Wangari Maathai “has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women’s rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally.... Maathai combines science, social commitment, and active politics. More than simply protecting the existing environment, her strategy is to secure and strengthen the very basis for ecologically sustainable development.”
While the press may sneer in its lazy, self-important ignorance, this woman’s life stands as a beacon beckoning others’ emulation. She stands high above any headlining leader any one of us could name today. Now we know her name. And because she is the winner of the peace prize, we are raised again to the urgency of environmental protection and conservation, peace and justice.
This woman is important among world leaders because, unlike many contemporary leaders, she looks at what is happening today and sees its continued consequences way down the road. She sees the interlocking nature and impact of scientific, human and natural variables on human life all over the world. And she uses her entire human powers to address and correct the problems. She is a human being who has earned the Nobel Peace Prize. How we treat our environment is a matter of life and death. We ought to thank Wangari Muta Maathai for dedicating her life to saving ours.