Wangari Maathai

Chelsea

As a teenager in the 1990s, I watched in awe, from afar, as Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement planted trees in Kenya in an effort to fight environmental degradation and poverty. They planted one tree after another, eventually planting millions—all because of one young woman’s dream.

Born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940, Wangari Maathai knew even as a little girl that she wanted to be a scientist. Pursuing that ambition took her from rural Kenya around the world. In the early 1960s, she moved to Kansas to study biology, then to Pittsburgh for her master’s degree. Decades later, Wangari shared that while her student years were positive, even sheltered, she was deeply aware of the burgeoning civil rights movement in the United States. That experience would help her understand the connection between protecting the environment and advancing civil rights in Kenya.

After Wangari earned her master’s in science from the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to Kenya to further her studies. She completed her PhD in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi in 1971. This was a time when few women in the United States or in much of the world were studying science at a post-college level—in 1966, only about 15 percent of PhDs in biological and agricultural sciences in the U.S. were awarded to women. Wangari was the first woman in eastern and central Africa to earn a doctorate degree in any subject. If she had continued her studies in the United States, she would have been a pioneer here, too. But Wangari always knew she wanted to go home, to teach and to serve.

Later, as a professor and then a department chair at the University of Nairobi—the first woman to hold both positions—Wangari grew increasingly concerned about the deforestation of Kenya. Ninety percent of Kenya’s forests had been cut down since 1950. Wangari initially recruited family and friends to help her plant trees. Then she broadened her recruitment to students, colleagues, and strangers. Her grassroots community-based tree planting efforts became the Green Belt Movement, her fight against environmental degradation and poverty through planting trees. She credited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with helping her understand the links between human rights and environmental protection, and the women she met with crystalizing her mission. “When we started the Green Belt Movement, I was partly responding to needs identified by rural women, namely lack of firewood, clean drinking water, balanced diets, shelter, and income,” she said years later. “Throughout Africa, women are the primary caretakers, holding significant responsibility for tilling the land and feeding their families. As a result, they are the first to become aware of environmental damage as resources become scarce and incapable of sustaining their families.”

Wangari’s work was not without opposition. Periodically, her efforts were met with significant, even violent resistance. In January 1992, she learned that her name was on a list of pro-democracy activists being targeted by the government for assassination. The next month, she joined mothers of political prisoners being held by Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s autocratic leader. Wangari and the others took part in a hunger strike at a local park. The police broke up the demonstration and beat Wangari so brutally that she was knocked unconscious. President Moi denounced her publicly, calling her a “madwoman” and “a threat to the order and security of the country.” Still, she refused to give up on her mission.

Over time, the Green Belt Movement grew to encompass protecting disability rights, minority rights, women’s rights, and democracy, along with an ambition to fight poverty and protect the human rights of everyone in Kenya. Yet Wangari never lost her focus on planting trees. In 2004, Wangari became the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; at the time, she was also an assistant minister for environment and natural resources. She moved between activism, science, teaching, running a nonprofit, and government work. She went wherever she thought she could make the maximum impact on saving Kenya’s environment and advancing the human rights of its people. She took her passion into different areas, to work with different communities, in order to make Kenya more sustainable and respectful of all people.

“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”

—WANGARI MAATHAI

When President Barack Obama nominated my mom as secretary of state in 2009, the New York Times asked experts around the world to share questions they hoped my mom would answer in her confirmation hearing. One of the experts was Wangari. Her questions covered human rights violations in Darfur, the need to protect forests in Africa—particularly in the Congo Basin—and how the United States would respond to African leaders’ growing willingness to partner with China despite that country’s disregard for human rights.

HILLARY

I had met and been impressed by Wangari, so I appreciated her questions; they broadened the scope of what issues the secretary of state should consider important for our country and the world. As I learned early on, ignoring or belittling a problem doesn’t cause it to disappear.

I sat behind my mom during the hearing, so proud of her, and also determined to look calm throughout, in part because I knew my grandmother would be watching at home. (When my mom was a senator, my grandmother would keep C-SPAN on in the background while she was exercising, knitting, eating, even reading, because she never wanted to miss a moment of my mom speaking on the Senate floor, or even, I think, walking by.)

“My mother’s legacy is multifaceted, but the one thing that unites the various elements and life and work is the power of one person to be such a potent agent of change. It doesn’t take a lot of people for real change to happen. At a time when so much seems to be going wrong, it is very easy to get overwhelmed. You don’t need an ‘army’ of people. Each of us can be agents of change.”

—WANJIRA MATHAI, WANGARI MAATHAI’S DAUGHTER

During the hearing, my mom mentioned the importance of trying to stop what she called the human devastation in Darfur, and clearly called out climate change as a security threat. When she visited Kenya later in 2009, during her first year as secretary of state, she met with Wangari and then praised her at a forum at the University of Nairobi. At our family Thanksgiving dinner that year, I remember my mom reflecting that a favorite moment of her trip to Africa was meeting with Wangari.

HILLARY

Wangari was a pioneer and a true visionary. She knew better than anyone that women hold the key to the future. The Green Belt Movement was led by women, first in Africa, then around the world. And, even after she had been persecuted and threatened by leaders in her country, she continued to see government as a tool for positive change. She served in a successor government to the one that had overseen attacks on her life. She was a truly incredible person, and I was honored to call her a friend.

I was always struck by Wangari’s recognition of herself as a role model. She once said in an interview, shortly after she won the Nobel Prize, that young women would come up to her with tears in their eyes to congratulate her, and that she “knew that what they were really saying was, ‘if you can do it, then maybe I too can do it.’ ” At the time of her death in 2011, the Green Belt Movement had planted more than fifty million trees. Today it has planted more than fifty-three million trees across critical watersheds in Kenya, and the total only grows. Her daughter, Wanjira Mathai, continues her work.

Wangari wasn’t afraid to be the first person to take up a worthwhile cause, or the loudest voice advocating for what she believed. But she knew that, as with the forests she planted, the greatest impact she could have would come from being one of many. That’s why I think of Wangari when I learn about her kindred spirits, like G. Devaki Amma in India. Nearly four decades ago, inspired by a love of farming, she planted a single sapling in her backyard—then another, then another. Today she has cultivated her own forest, spread over four and a half acres in Kerala. She is passionate about helping her family and others neutralize their carbon footprint. At eighty-five years old she still walks the land every morning. By planting trees, she and others are making clear that forest health is integral to our health and to women’s rights and human rights.