{"id":4509,"date":"2023-02-28T11:49:57","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T15:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/?p=4509"},"modified":"2024-02-16T11:45:57","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T15:45:57","slug":"wangari-maathai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/02\/28\/wangari-maathai\/","title":{"rendered":"Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Full excerpt of the section on Wangari Maathi (1940-2011) from Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

(all sections contain an introduction and at least one document)<\/p>\n

Introduction by Mary Krane Derr<\/p>\n

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\"Wangari<\/a>

Nobel Committee, CC BY-SA 4.0\u00a0 via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

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Wangari Muta Maathai, globally acclaimed environmentalist, human rights campaigner, feminist, and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, was born in 1940 to a farming couple in a rural area of Nyeri, Central Province, Kenya, near wildlife-rich Mount Kenya. The young Maathai was already sensitive to the start of disturbing changes in the landscape she loved deeply: the replacement of small, eco-friendly farms and forests with commercial monoculture plantations, the drying up of clean, abundant water, soil erosion, the disappearance of familiar plants and animals. Over the past 150 years, possibly 75% of Kenya\u2019s forest cover has been destroyed, first by Anglo colonialists, then wealthy plantation owners and the poor Kenyan farmers they have squeezed out and made desperate for fuel, arable land, food, and water.<\/p>\n

In 1960, Maathai was awarded scholarships to study in the United States. She earned a B.S. and M.S. in biology (Mount Saint Scholastica College, 1964, and University of Pittsburgh, 1966, respectively). Her Ph.D. in anatomy (University of Nairobi, 1971) made her the first East African woman to achieve a doctorate. From 1973 to 1980, she directed the Kenyan Red Cross. In 1976, she was appointed chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy, University of Nairobi. During the late 1970s, as a leader of the National Council of Women of Kenya, she was deeply affected by the laments of rural women over the countryside\u2019s accelerating degradation, which deprived them more and more of healthy diets, farming income, drinking water, firewood, shelter, and kinship with the living world and one another. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement<\/a> (GBM), which has pioneered a home-grown approach to overcoming these threats against poor women and their families, and against the ecosystem at the same time: hiring the women to plant and nurture trees.<\/p>\n

\"Green<\/a><\/p>\n

During the early 1980s, Maathai\u2019s husband left her and their three children, Waweru, Wanjira, and Muta. A judge granted him a divorce on the grounds that she was \u201ctoo educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control.\u201d2 Maathai told the judge that he was incompetent, and he sentenced her to a night in jail. She persisted as leader of the Green Belt Movement despite this and numerous other run-ins with Kenyan authorities, especially the heavy-handed, thoroughly corrupt regime of President Daniel arap Moi. Moi and his associates derided her as a \u201cnational menace\u201d and an \u201cun-African\u201d\u2014because outspoken and unsubmissive\u2014 woman. The nonviolent Maathai endured further arrests as well as death threats and injuries from beatings. Moi has since fallen from power, but the Green Belt women can now celebrate three decades of accomplishment.<\/p>\n

Within Kenya, over 600 GBM community groups have planted over 30 million trees in both rural and urban settings, in the process schooling \u201cordinary\u201d citizens, especially women, in political advocacy skills and inspiring parallel activism in other Two-Thirds World nations. Most recently the GBM has ventured into personal and community empowerment through sexual and reproductive health education in the facts and decision-making skills surrounding abstinence, voluntary family planning, and HIV\/AIDS prevention.<\/p>\n

Maathai continues to serve on GBM\u2019s board, and those of the National Council of Women of Kenya, the United Nations Advisory Board on Disarmament, the Earth Charter Commission, Green Cross International, and the Women and Environment Development Organization, among others. In 2002, Moi\u2019s abdication made free democratic elections possible, and Maathai resigned as GBM leader to run for office. From 2002 to the present, Maathai has served as Member of Parliament for her hometown district, and since 2003 as Kenya\u2019s deputy environment minister.<\/p>\n

The list of Maathai\u2019s honors grows ever longer: the Goldman Environmental Prize (1991), the United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Hall of Fame (1991), the UN Africa Leadership Prize (1991), the Jane Addams Leadership Award (1993), the Golden Ark Award (1994), the Kenyan Community Abroad\u2019s Excellence Award (2001), the Republic of Kenya\u2019s Eldership of the Burning Spear (2003), the Conservation Scientist Award (2004), the Petra Kelly Environmental Prize (2004), and the J. Sterling Morton Award of the National [U.S.] Arbor Day Foundation (2004), to name only some. In late 2004, Maathai was granted the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first African woman ever to achieve a Nobel of any kind. On hearing the news, Maathai planted a Nandi flame tree at the foot of Mount Kenya. She asked admirers around the world to celebrate this honoring of the GBM women and to \u201csecure the future for our children\u201d by planting trees also.<\/p>\n

Maathai often says: \u201cWhat we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves.\u201d These words express her wisdom\u2014drawn from both modern scientific and ancestral knowledge\u2014about many issues, including abortion and its relationship to female disempowerment. The article below comes to us from Lifesitenews (www.lifesite.net), affiliated with Canada\u2019s Campaign Life Coalition.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAbortion Is Wrong,\u201d Says Nobel Peace Prize Winner<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Lifesitenews (e-mail release, December 7, 2004)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OSLO, NORWAY\u2014Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mrs. Wangari Maathai, said \u201cabortion is wrong\u201d in a conversation with Norway\u2019s Dagen <\/em>newspaper reporter Jostein Sandsmark Tuesday. Professor Maathai is Kenya\u2019s deputy minister of the environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I am trying to avoid condemning the victim,\u201d she said, referring to the pregnant mother who seeks an abortion. She sees both mother and child as casualties: \u201cBoth are victims. There is no reason why anybody who has been conceived, shouldn\u2019t be given the opportunity to be born and to live a happy life. The fact that a life like that is terminated, is wrong,\u201d said Maathai.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we allow abortion, we are punishing the women\u2014who must abort their children because their men have run away\u2014and we are punishing the children whose life is terminated,\u201d she continued. \u201cBut it is because we are not willing to put the men where they should be, and that is taking up the responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want us to step back a little bit and say: Why is this woman and this child threatened? Why is this woman threatening to terminate this life? What do we need to do as a society? What are we not doing right now as a society? A part of that answer lies in this House,\u201d Maathai said, pointing at the Kenyan Parliament building. While abortion is still illegal in Kenya, Maathai suggests going further\u2014 that the 1960s law making fathers financially responsible for any children they conceive be re-instated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat law was removed by men in this Parliament,\u201d she emphasized. \u201cNow I think we are too lenient on men. We have almost given them a license to father children and not worry about them. That is part of the reason why women abort, because they do not want to be burdened with children whose fathers do not want to become responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maathai will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Oslo Friday for her involvement in fighting for the environment, human rights and women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

———————————————–<\/p>\n

For more of our posts on environmentalism, see:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Stewardship and the Consistent Life Ethic<\/a><\/p>\n

Climate Change and the Consistent Life Ethic: An Opportunity to Connect Issues<\/a><\/p>\n

Lethal from the Start: Uranium Mining\u2019s Danger to the Most Vulnerable<\/a><\/p>\n

Threats to the Unborn Beyond Abortion<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Mary<\/a>

Mary Krane Derr<\/p><\/div>\n

For more of our posts from Mary Krane Derr (d. 2012) see:<\/em><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Cady Stanton<\/a> (another excerpt from the same book)<\/p>\n

Progressive Prolifers at the Progressive Magazine 100th Anniversary Celebration<\/a><\/p>\n

Ancient Roots of the Consistent Life Ethic: Greece<\/a><\/p>\n

Women\u2019s History Month: Jane Addams<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Full excerpt of the section on Wangari Maathi (1940-2011) from Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today. (all sections contain an introduction and at least one document) Introduction by Mary Krane Derr     Wangari Muta Maathai, globally acclaimed environmentalist, human rights campaigner, feminist, and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, was born in 1940 to a farming… <\/p>\n