Wangari Maathai’s diligence and conscientiousness solved various issues such as human rights,
environmental degradation, good governance and peace. Explain how all these are inter
connected.
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Answer:
Wangari Maathai's devotion to the cause of saving the forests of Kenya led to death threats, whippings and beatings, but in 2004 her work was rewarded when she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance speech Maathai, who has died at the age of 71 after a long struggle with ovarian cancer, said that the inspiration for her life's work came from her childhood experiences in rural Kenya, where she witnessed forests being cleared and replaced by commercial plantations, which destroyed biodiversity and the capacity of forests to conserve water.
Maathai called forest clearance a "suicidal mission," explaining that "to interfere with them is to interfere with the rain system, the water system and therefore agriculture, not to mention the other industries dependent on hydro-electricity."
In 1977 Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement with the aim of planting trees to prevent environmental and social conditions deteriorating and damaging the lives of the impoverished people, especially women, in rural Kenya. Her movement expanded in the 1980s and 1990s to embrace wider campaigns for social, economic and political change, setting her on a collision course with the government of the then-president, Daniel arap Moi.
At least three times during her activist years she was physically attacked, including being clubbed unconscious by police during a hunger strike in 1992. Arap Moi called her "a mad woman" who was a threat to the security of Kenya.
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in 1940 in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri in the Central Highlands of Kenya. At that time few Kenyan girls were educated, but at the instigation of her elder brother Nderitu, Maathai was sent to school, where she was taught mainly by Catholic nuns. She graduated from Loreto High School in 1959, and the following year she was part of the so-called "Kennedy Airlift", a scholarship scheme run by the US government and the Kennedy family.
She studied at Mount St Scholastica (now Benedictine College) in Atchison, Kansas, doing a degree in biological sciences and gaining a master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh. She returned to a newly independent Kenya, joining the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Nairobi and receiving a PhD in 1971
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