University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: February 8, 2007

By ANN WHITCHER-GENTZKE
Contributing Editor

Trees, with their intrinsic beauty and power to restore the earth, were the dominating motif for Friday's lecture by Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement. Maathai, a member of the Kenyan Parliament and assistant minister for the environment, was the keynoter for the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration, part of the university's Distinguished Speakers Series.

Trees were the dominant motif for Friday’s lecture by Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai. Maathai was the keynote speaker for the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration, part of UB’s Distinguished Speakers Series.
PHOTO: ENID BLOCH

Before an attentive audience in the Center for the Arts Mainstage, Maathai described the roots of her vast tree-planting initiatives, in which some 30 million trees have been planted since the movement began in 1977. The effort started in Kenya and eventually spread to other African nations, building networks of rural women to restore indigenous forests. Maathai talked movingly about the power of environmentalism to bring about peace, improve public health, and empower poor Africans who live on a continent blessed with abundant natural resources, often so opposite to their own condition.

In meetings with poor women of the Kenyan countryside—many of whom could barely read or write—Maathai learned of their pressing needs for "firewood, nutritious food, clean drinking water and income." To help these women and their families, Maathai seized on trees as both a metaphor for her quest and the literal means for bringing assistance to her country. "I don't know why I picked on a tree," she said with a smile. "But in hindsight, it was a wonderful symbol and easy to explain."

When Maathai first approached Kenya's chief forester—asking for 15 million trees for the estimated 15 million Kenyans at the time—he agreed at first. But the women Maathai organized were soon collecting too many seedlings; forestry officials were set to demand payment. So Maathai and the other women decided to teach themselves. Soon, the movement expanded, as women began to spread their knowledge, teaching each other how to plant and cultivate.

Gradually, they were able to apply skills acquired from the familiar activity of planting food crops to the monumental, and previously foreign, task of tree-planting. "We became self-empowered," Maathai said. "We became independent of foresters—we could now produce our own seedlings. In a very short time, we literally had thousands of trees being managed by women."

And while previous tree-planting programs failed because of neglect (people would plant, then leave), Maathai worked to give these women an incentive to remain nearby by compensating them for successfully nurturing their seedlings. She began a fund-raising campaign, first bringing in seed money from corporations, including Mobil Oil, and eventually securing the first major grant of $100,000 from what became the United Nations Fund for Women. "This was more money than we had ever seen in our lives and that helped us propagate our idea," she said.

In community seminars, the participating women were encouraged to identify and sort out common problems frequently blamed on the government. "They began to realize that many of the problems were of their own making," Maathai explained. In the process, they learned there was much they could do for themselves. For instance, she said, "If you're not planting trees, if you're not making trenches to retain water and protect your soil—that has nothing to do with the government."

On the other hand, Maathai pointed out, "People need to know that governments don't have a right to common resources, such as water, forests, soil—they belong to all of us. The management of these resources is given over to the government; the government becomes the custodian of those resources. But if they do it poorly or are corrupt, we will participate actively in the next election-we will cast our votes and [all such leaders] will be voted out."

Recounting the Greenbelt Movement's current drive to plant a billion trees, Maathai said she does get overwhelmed at times, but cannot rest on her environmental efforts. She closed with a story told to her in Japan: An area of the forest catches fire; the animals flee and watch from the periphery, powerless to intervene. But a tiny hummingbird decides otherwise and declares, "I'm going to do something about this fire."

The activist hummingbird flies to a nearby stream, bringing a single drop of water to quell the fire, making repeated trips and passing elephants and other animals far better equipped for the task. But the hummingbird will not be discouraged, and says simply, "I'm doing the best I can."

"That, to me, is what all of us are called to do," Maathai said, likening the hummingbird's determined flight to our human responsibility to preserve and protect the world's natural resources.