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| Connection: Wangari Maathai spoke to students at a private school in Dedham, Mass., last month. Mark Thomson |
Wangari Maathai: 'Rich nations have a responsibility'
In an interview, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from Kenya talks about the obligations of first- and third-worlders in climate change.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the May 7, 2008 edition
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In 1977, Kenyan Activist Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement. The nonprofit's mission: to halt deforestation, soil erosion, and desertification by planting trees. Ms. Maathai, who holds degrees in biological sciences and anatomy and is a former member of Kenya's parliament, became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.
To date, the Green Belt Movement has planted more than 30 million trees. Maathai has also campaigned for the Congo Forest Basin Fund, a multicountry effort to preserve Africa's largest tropical rain forest, to which the British government has pledged £50 million ($99 million). Last year, the UN's Billion Tree Campaign, which Maathai headed, attracted 1 billion pledges to plant trees worldwide. And now, after interethnic violence around the 2007 elections in Kenya, Maathai is working to foster peace and reconciliation between Kenya's ethnic groups.
Maathai has also attracted controversy: In 2004, a journalist quoted her as saying that HIV/AIDS was designed by "evil-minded scientists" to control black people. Maathai says she was quoted out of context and disavows such views.
A Monitor reporter caught up with her in New York City. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.
What are you working on now?
Wangari Maathai: I'm a bit preoccupied with the postelection crisis in Kenya. The main challenge ahead is the resettlement of some half a million people who were displaced from their farms. There is an urgent need to have them resettled so that they can do their farming. They are already late for this year's planting, so I anticipate that we are going to have a very serious food shortage in Kenya.
I established an initiative we call Peace Tent. It's an effort to promote peace among the communities that were fighting each other in Kenya. There was a lot of destruction, the land was abandoned, and people were cutting trees on other people's farms. There was almost a "grab-mania" – people going into the farms that were abandoned and trying to loot whatever they could find, including trees. So there is need for people to go back so that they can also protect their land.
How can rich countries help poor ones adapt to climate change?
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