GBM Blog

Last summer, GBM shared the story of two kindergarten teachers and the kind hearts of their students with the blog entry, “Big Trees Come From Small Seeds.” At that time, we were writing metaphorically about the power of Professor Maathai and the Green Belt Movement to inspire these small seeds, these young schoolchildren learning about peace. Now, we are honored to announce that the story is also literally true. As Jane Schumer, one-half of the amazing peace team at Daniel Warren School in Mamaroneck, New York, writes, “I am proud to tell you that the dream that Connie Levin and I had in building a Wangari Tree Nursery at our school is now a reality.”

Presented as the future of combustible energy, biofuels have been gaining a growing interest and enthusiasm over the past few years. This is due firstly to the oscillation of oil prices and secondly to concerns about climate changes. In fact biofuels are often described as an effective alternative to petroleum in order to avoid its disastrous effects for the environment and for human health. They are biodegradable, offer energy security and produce cleaner and lower emissions in comparison to classical fossil fuels. As a result an increasing number of investments have been made in this sector.

From May 28 to June 5, the Nobel Women’s Initiative led a delegation to the first ever Review Conference of the International Criminal Court. The delegation, led by Nobel Laureates Wangari Maathai and Shirin Ebadi, called for a global end to impunity and a strengthening of laws that punish perpetrators of crimes against women.

Last week I joined Wangari and the team in Oslo to attend the launch of the REDD+ Partnership Agreement. This new initiative for forests (2010-2012) came out of the Fast Start funding discussions also known as the Paris-Oslo process.