Wangari Maathai held her Nobel Lecture December 10, 2004, in the Oslo City Hall, Norway. 55. It is imperative to appreciate how engagement with the GBM widened Maathais horizons and capacity to confront authoritarianism, interrogate democratic governance, gender inequality, conflicts and peace, and engage with broader concerns of sustainable development and climate change. Wangari Maathai. 47. 5. in biology, 1964) and at the University of Pittsburgh (M.S., 1966). It is important to acknowledge that those relationships gave her work legitimacy, visibility, and recognition, and thereby ensured funding for the GBM and provided Maathai a measure of personal protection from the authoritarian regime. With hindsight this move was misguided and diversionary. As a young girl growing up in Kenya, Wangari was surrounded by trees. Wanyiri Kihoro, Never Say Die: The Chronicle of a Political Prisoner (Nairobi, Kenya: East African Education Publishers, 1998). Maathais mother, her brother Nderitu, and another member of the family made this critical decision, which would open the doors for Maathai to quality education in Kenya and eventually in the United States, thus introducing her to international networks which were to shape her future. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. 17. [i] She was born in Nyeri, part of the rural region of Kenya on the 1st of April 1940. ed. Children like Maathai, who were born near a missionary settlement, and whose parents allowed them to venture into the new teachings by Christian missionaries, had early access to Western education. It thus became a critical constituency for experimenting with new ideas. Wangari Maathai obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount . Primary Sources. Wangari Maathai, Noble Lecture, during the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, December 10, 2004; Maathai, Unbowed; and Maathai, Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World (New York: Doubleday, 2010). She also had close relationships with other African regional institutionsfor instance, the African Development Bank (AfDB). Wangari Maathai is a young woman who saw deforestation turn the lush lands of Kenya into a barren desert. Unbowed: A Memoir . She had a bucolic childhood spent in the rural Kenyan countryside and was sent to St. Cecilia Intermediary, a mission school, for her primary education. She was indeed an African environmental icon as testified by her appointment to the prestigious position of goodwill ambassador for the Congo Basin rainforest ecosystem. In some circles, her move in the direction of elective politics was seen as opportunistic.40 Fortunately, this did not ruin the GBM, a tragedy that often befalls institutions from which prominent leaders emerge. At the same time, Maathais life was greatly influenced by the splendor and simplicity of rural Gikuyu community life, values which subsequently engaged with Western education and religion, with ethnic and gender biases, and with state power and international development thinking. Wangari Maathai, in full Wangari Muta Maathai, (born April 1, 1940, Nyeri, Kenyadied September 25, 2011, Nairobi), Kenyan politician and environmental activist who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace, becoming the first Black African woman to win a Nobel Prize. In 1977, Maathai founded a grassroots organization, the Green Belt Movement, focused on reforestation to promote sustainability and establish financial income for women in the region. Leaders of the Green Belt Movement established the Pan African Green Belt Network in 1986 in order to educate world leaders about conservation and environmental improvement. Her concerns resonated with the needs and pains of ordinary mothers. Early Life Instead the state officials preferred to create divisions among the GBM leadership rather than banish it. 24. 29. A number of factors and circumstances seem to have contributed to the emergence, rise, and success of the GBM as a development actor. On Sunday, Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, died. Characteristically, Maathai turned this misfortune into an opportunity which in the final analysis worked for the good of the GBM and her work with the NCWK. Despite the complexities and diversions that characterized her career, Wangari Maathai did succeed in the promotion and execution of important ideas and projects whose time had come.41 Eventually in 2002, on her third attempt, she was elected as a member of the Kenyan parliament and as a member of the National Rainbow Coalition which emerged out of the ashes of the dying authoritarian rule of Moi and KANU. % Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, Early States and State Formation in Africa, Historical Preservation and Cultural Heritage, Formal Education in Kenya and the United States, The Place of Wangari Maathai in Kenya, Africa, and the World, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.480, United Nations Conference on Human Environment, World Conference of the International Womens Year, United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development, Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace, World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace, United Nations Conference on Environmental Development (UNCED), Earth Summit, World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace, World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Wangari Maathai: Key Speeches and Articles, Women, Gender, and Sexuality in East Africa. In 1997 and 2002, Maathai ventured into electoral politics once more. Often their phone calls, faxes, lettersor, later, e-mailsor simply their presence made the difference at a crucial moment. Her husband insisted on her adopting his surname. But years later She became the first woman in East and Central Africa to acquire such an academic degree.24 With her academic career assured in the new University of Nairobi, she became the chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy in 1976, and thereafter an associate professorthe first indigenous woman to acquire the rank. An interview with Joshua S. Muiru, November 2019. Updates? Dr. Samuel Kobia, Annetta Miller, Harold Miller, Ms . Richard Jolly, Underestimated Influence: UN Contributions to Development Ideas, Leadership, Influence and Impact, in International Development: Ideas, Experience, and Prospects, ed. Upon entry into St. Cecilias Intermediate Primary School, she embraced Roman Catholic teachings, especially the Legion of Mary. Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, African History. 61. A church allied to President Moi withdrew from the NCCK in similar circumstances.34 Thereafter Maendeleo ya Wanawake was integrated within the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), until the overwhelming defeat of the party in the general elections of 2002.35, Secondly, in 1982 for the first time, Maathai ventured into electoral politics. Wangari Maathai, the most prominent environmental activist in Africa, was the 2004 recipient of the Alfred Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai was born in a small rural village known as Ihithe in the Tetu division in what was then the Nyeri District. The daughter of a peasant farmer and the third . The socioeconomic impact of policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on the environment and poverty in Africa should be noted at a time when the thinking within UN circles was questioning the prevailing development orthodoxy. When cash crops were introduced, again it was men who were registered in the cooperatives and received payments after deliveries of tea and coffee. In 1979, when she vied for the position of chairperson, she encountered ethnic and political intrigues, and personal innuendos, citing her as a divorced and educated woman. Maathai was an elected member of the Parliament of Kenya and between January 2003 and November 2005 served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki. She became Wangari Mathai. Her family was of Kikuyu origin, and her father was polygamous. The Third Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 19, 2005; Sustained Development, Democracy, and Peace in Africa, Gwangju, South Korea, June 16, 2006; and the Keynote Address at the Second World Congress of Agroforestry, Nairobi, Kenya, August 24, 2009. The early Gikuyu patterns of rural settlements are described by Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu (New York: Vintage Books, 1965); Duncan Ndegwa, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles: My Story, 2nd ed. The Ndegwa Report of 1971 legitimized such practices.46 These practices tended to concentrate wealth and power among few elites, predominantly from one ethnic group. Describing her experience at St. Cecilias Intermediate Primary School, Maathai writes: I really enjoyed learning and had a knack for being an attentive listener and very focused in the classroom, while being extremely playful outside of it.10 However, colonial education also exposed her to contradictions and challenges with regard to African cultures and in particular with regard to her mother tongue.11 In her school, speaking in her mother tongue was a punishable offense. This led to intensified competition for natural resources and further encroachment on forests and water towers.43. The continued existence of the Karura Forest in the outskirts of Nairobi city is another hallmark of her courage. This left the NCWK in a precarious financial situation and effected the severing of relationships with many grassroots organizations. Her family had established the precedent of educating girls, just as an older uncle had done.6 Together with her mother, Maathai left a settlers farm in Nakuru, where her father was working, to return to Ihithe village in the Nyeri districtone of the rural areas designated for Africans, termed native reserves,so that she could attend school. Within this paradigm, racism is viewed as the primary impact factor, or in the language of Wangari Maathai, racism is a "root cause." The study draws on the African philosophical framework of Maat as a lens through which to view Maathai's philosophy, and which provides conceptual grounding for understanding that philosophy. Wangari Maathai Lesson Plan: Individual's Contributions Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8 *Click to open and customize your own copy of the Wangari Maathai Lesson Plan . Ecologist Wangari Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her years of work with women to reverse African deforestation. Later Years and Death. The GBM is thus credited with developing a culture of planting trees during important family, community, and national events. Alan Fowler, Striking a Balance: Guide to Enhancing the Effectiveness of Non-Governmental Organizations in International Development (London: Earthscan Publications, 1997). In Gikuyu, they were known as Athomi. Ndegwa, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles, 6264, refers to the divisions this category of people brought into in the society. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. << /Filter /FlateDecode /S 128 /Length 115 >> Her books and speeches were often enriched by illustrations from her cultural background despite the onslaught it had undergone during the exposure to missionary education and religion. In 2007, the region would explode into postelection violence, something which she had foreseen and tried hard to mitigate by cultivating a culture of peace for almost two decades. The death of Wangari Muta Maathai on September 25, 2011, left a rich heritage that continues to inspire men and women, old and young, and indeed the entire world as it grapples with the challenges of sustainable development goals and climate change. At college in the United States, she found it confusing to be referred as Miss Wangari. The contending social forces of the colonial period persisted in postcolonial Kenya, impinging on the concept of modern marriage and incipient African womanhood. By mobilizing women to plant and care for trees, Maathai changed the thinking and practices of conserving the environment at a time when dominant global thinking on the environment and womens role in society was grappling for transformation. Her impact and influence had extended well beyond her constituency in Tetu, Kenya, and far beyond Africa. Each of these fields of her engagement merit detailed analysis as was done with the GBM. To see her customs denigrated at this stage of her personal development was devastating.12 Despite that negative experience, Maathai remained proud of her culture and valued indigenous knowledge and related stories. Development Bank ( AfDB ), 6264, refers to the divisions this category of people brought in! 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