by Peter Mann
What does WHY's work against hunger and poverty have to do with the environment? Everything. "If we can't share resources, we can't have peace" — These words from Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai to a recent UN meeting were not empty talk. The Green Belt Movement Wangari, founded in Kenya, faced deforestation — and in its wake drought, poverty and conflict. In response, Green Belt women planted more than 30 million trees, developed agroforestry to create work and livelihoods, planted fruit trees for food security, and used the wood from the forests for housing and energy. They shared resources through building peace with the environment and thereby became a more self-reliant community.
Wangari Maathai is an environmentalist yet she received the Nobel Prize for Peace. She is convinced that this is no accident. At UN discussions on sustainable development, she said: "The Nobel Prize was showing that environment, development, and peace belong together, that they are central to the way we manage our affairs — sustainably, accountably, and equitably. Without the environment there is no peace, no democratic space... The rights of the poor, the marginalized, of women, children, even of other species depend on the sustainable management of our resources."
It has been a long journey for her and the movement she founded. As Wangari said in 1992 at a political forum during the climax of political multi-partyism in Kenya: "We have come a long way from ignorance to deep insight, from fear to courage and from the streets to Parliament. We moved from self to others, from 'my issue' to 'our issues,' from home to communities, from national level to global. Now we embrace the concepts of our common home and future."
It has been a collective journey as Wangari confirmed at the mini-Beijing Women's Conference, Nairobi, 1995, Wangari: "In the world there is a new collective force of people mobilizing around the issue of peace but linking it to the need to protect the environment. But we must assert our collective vision and responsibility to shape that peace not only for our country but also for the whole of Africa."
It is a journey shaped by the experience of a woman planting trees as a way of combating the increasing deforestation and cash-crop farming she was witnessing all around her. "As I did that, I got to understand more and more about linkages between the environment and women, women and energy, women and food, women and poverty, women and water — it gave me a view of how central to our life the environment is," said Maathai in a January 2003 interview.
As we celebrate Earth Day 2005 on April 22, we can rededicate ourselves to saving our environment, building peace, and promoting sustainable development — which will also mean ending hunger and poverty.
Peter Mann is director of WHY's International program. Quotes from Wangari Maathai can be found at the Green Belt Movement North America website.
