News

Today, Wanjira Mathai, Vice Chair of the Green Belt Movement and Project Leader of the Wangari Maathai Institute, joined outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a forum at the State Department highlighting the global impact of public-private partnerships. One initiative the U.S. State Department is supporting is an effort to advance women's clean energy entrepreneurship. 

In her remarks to the assembly, Wanjira Mathai noted that the Green Belt Movement has been engaged with access to and use of clean energy at the grassroots level for many years: 'Today, in part because of the Green Belt Movement’s own work, we understand much more completely the linkage between deforestation and energy access, about how a lack of alternatives to wood fuel for heating or cooking can drive forest destruction and increase communities’ vulnerabilities to the effects of global warming and famine.'

Read the U.S. Department of State's Notice to the Press about the event.

(You can read Wanjira's full presentation here).