[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:14828] The Genius of Wangari Maathai by Anna Lappé and Frances Moore Lappé

[Alfred Kagan]

>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:14828] The Genius of Wangari 
>Maathai by Anna Lappé and Frances
>	Moore Lappé 
>Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 13:26:59 -0400
>Thread-Topic: The Genius of Wangari Maathai by Anna Lappé and Frances
>	Moore Lappé 
>thread-index: AcSy1vTreNi3SUt1SUiQj+LcsKzL5AABSdfg
>From: "Hornbuckle, Del" <dHornbuckle at provisionslibrary.org>
>To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
>Reply-To: srrtac-l at ala.org
>Sender: owner-srrtac-l at ala.org
>
>
>Published on Thursday, October 14, 2004 by the International Herald Tribune 
>
>
>The Genius of Wangari Maathai
>by Anna Lappé and Frances Moore Lappé 
>
>CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts Several prominent 
>Norwegians have questioned the Nobel Committee 
>for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari 
>Maathai. Why honor environmental activism in an 
>era when war, terrorism and nuclear 
>proliferation are even more urgent problems?
>
>What they miss is Dr. Maathai's special genius.
>
>The first time we met Maathai was four years ago 
>in an airy guesthouse beneath towering jacaranda 
>trees on the outskirts of Nairobi. At the time, 
>the Green Belt Movement she had founded nearly 
>25 years earlier was still struggling against 
>the ruthless regime of President Daniel arap Moi.
>
>Maathai planted seven trees on Earth Day in 1977 
>to honor Kenyan women environmental leaders. 
>Then, recognizing that deforestation could only 
>be reversed if village women throughout her 
>country became tree planters themselves, she 
>launched the Green Belt Movement. Government 
>foresters laughed at her idea of enlisting 
>villagers; it took trained foresters to plant 
>trees, they told her.
>
>Because Maathai didn't listen, today Kenya has 
>30 million more trees, all planted by village 
>women.
>
>Maathai's genius is in recognizing the 
>interrelation of local and global problems, and 
>the fact that they can only be addressed when 
>citizens find the voice and courage to act. 
>Maathai saw in the Green Belt Movement both a 
>good in itself, and a way in which women could 
>discover they were not powerless in the face of 
>autocratic husbands, village chiefs and a 
>ruthless president. Through creating their own 
>tree nurseries - at least 6,000 throughout Kenya 
>- and planting trees, women began to control the 
>supply of their own firewood, an enormous power 
>shift that also freed up time for other pursuits.
>
>Then, through popular education, village women - 
>who had watched public forests be used by the 
>Moi regime to grant political favors - began to 
>see forests differently, as something they, as 
>citizens, had a claim to.
>
>Through the Green Belt Movement, village women 
>also came to see that a narrow focus on export 
>commodities, such as coffee, at the expense of 
>environmentally appropriate food crops, was an 
>inheritance of colonialism reinforced by IMF 
>policies.
>
>That, too, they could change.
>
>Through a village food-security campaign, Green 
>Belt members are learning to re-establish 
>indigenous crops using organic methods and to 
>reintroduce kitchen gardens - a skill many had 
>lost in the wake of government-promoted 
>export-oriented agriculture.
>
>Over the years, Maathai and members of the 
>Movement have been jailed and even beaten for 
>their protests of government anti-environment 
>actions. One of the movement's organic-farming 
>educators described to us how he was almost 
>arrested for promoting sustainable agriculture. 
>The government, it turned out, had lucrative 
>contracts with major chemical agriculture 
>companies; the teachers' education posed a 
>serious threat.
>
>Maathai has also become a leader in 
>international debt-relief efforts. By the time 
>we traveled to Kenya in 2000, the Green Belt 
>Movement had grown into a major pro-democracy 
>force.
>
>In 2002, Maathai decided to run for a seat in 
>Parliament. She beat her opponent 50 to 1. 
>Women, we were told, danced in the streets of 
>Nairobi for joy. A few weeks later, when 
>President arap Moi stepped down after holding 
>power for more than two decades, Maathai was 
>appointed deputy minister of the environment.
>
>We last saw Maathai in May this year at a 
>gathering in New York. She said she was helping 
>write a new constitution for Kenya. "We are 
>working on a Bill of Rights, only ours," she 
>said, with her irrepressible grin, "will include 
>rights not only for human beings, but for 
>animals and the environment."
>
>We recalled our time in Kenya where we saw many 
>village women wearing a Green Belt Movement 
>T-shirt. The T-shirt says simply, "As for me, 
>I've made a choice." In selecting Dr. Maathai, 
>perhaps the Nobel Committee wants us to 
>recognize that the real hope for peace, both 
>with each other and with the earth itself, lies 
>in the choices - individual and collective - of 
>empowered citizens.
>
>Bringing this insight to life is Wangari Maathai's genius.


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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