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Ebony, March, 2005
ANGARI MAATHAI, the Kenyan environmentalist who started an international movement by planting trees in her backyard garden, is the first Black woman and first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which comes with a monetary award of roughly $1 million. The six previous Black winners are Ralph Bunche, Albert Lutuli, Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan.
During a star-studded concert hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise, Maathai was feted by top celebrities--achieving the rarified air of someone whose work has been recognized by one of the world's highest honors.
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"As the first African woman to receive this prize, I accept it on behalf of the people of Kenya and Africa, and indeed the world," Maathai said in her Nobel lecture. "I am especially mindful of women and the girl child. I hope it will encourage them to raise their voices and take more space for leadership."
Founder of the grassroots-based Green Belt Movement, which has mobilized poor women to plant 30 million trees, Maathai, the assistant minister for Environment and Natural Resources in Kenya, sees a crucial link between the environment and peace.
Over the years, the Movement has exposed a number of people--mostly rural women--from African countries to its community empowerment and conservation approach to improving their quality of life. Maathai has been arrested, beaten and imprisoned for her protests against corruption, and in the struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation.
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has challenged the world to broaden the understanding of peace," Maathai told the audience in Oslo, Norway. "There can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space."
Prior to founding the Greenbelt Movement in 1977, Maathai was active in the National Council of Women of Kenya, where she first introduced the idea of using ordinary people to renew Kenya's natural resources by planting trees.
Maathai has achieved many firsts in her life. She was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, in 1971 at the University of Nairobi, where she studied anatomy. She also was the first woman in the region to become chairwoman of the department of veterinary anatomy, and associate professor in the department of veterinary anatomy--both at the University of Nairobi.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Maathai was educated in the United States, receiving a master's degree in biological sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor's degree in biology from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kan. Maathai has said that United States demonstrations against the Vietnam War and her experiences in America during the 1960s shaped her views and life. Matthai, who is divorced, has three children.
"You may not know what's happening to you or what's affecting you [while maturing]," Maathai told an interviewer. "But when I came back to Africa [after living in America], I was not the 20-year-old who had left."
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