In 1971 Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to earn a PhD. Six years later she founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots environmental organization responsible for transforming the lives of women throughout her native Kenya. She was elected to Parliament in 2003 and soon after was named assistant minister for environment and natural resources. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Maathai had inauspicious beginnings. The daughter of a peasant farmer, she earned scholarships to pursue her education and eventually attend college in the United States. Following completion of her master’s degree, Maathai returned to Kenya with a passion to help her country. Especially after visiting scenic areas of the United States, she thought, “My country should also be beautiful.” Yet she found the harsh effects of clearcut logging — including soil erosion and river pollution — when returning to the places of her childhood.

In talking with Kenyan women, Maathai learned the human toll exacted by this loss of biodiversity — the hours women spent searching for firewood, the growing malnutrition due to a lack of nutritious native foods and the stark need for income. Undaunted, she set to work founding the Green Belt Movement, an organization novel in its holistic effort to integrate environment, democracy and peace. It was this big-picture approach that caught the notice of the Nobel Committee.

Reforestation Brings Renewal

Essentially the Green Belt Movement hires women to reforest Kenya. In the beginning the goal was to plant one tree for every person in Kenya — 15 million at that time. The goal was mocked. So sure the women would fail, Kenya’s conservator of forests promised them all the free trees they needed. He was forced to retract the offer in less than a year. Thus far, the movement has planted more than 30 million trees, and today lush tree cover shades areas where years earlier there was only desert.

The reforestation has created tangible improvements in women’s lives. The trees provide women the wood for fuel and fencing, they produce nutritious food, and they afford women an opportunity to earn their own money. “For every seedling that survives,” Maathai explains, “they get a small compensation, which is both an income for them and an incentive to continue doing this work.” The women’s success has also brought them the respect of the men, who appreciate how the trees increase the property value of their land.

While the Green Belt Movementwas not designed for the benefit of women only, it has been strongly shaped by women’s daily experience. “For the women, the land is the base that sustains their livelihood,” Maathai says. “You hear very few women talk about climate change or the loss of biodiversity, but they will talk about the loss of seeds. They will talk about loss of medicinal plants if the forests are clearcut. Women seem to be the ones who are very close to nature whichever way you look at it.”

A Doorway to Community

The women’s involvement is just one facet of the Green Belt Movement’s decidedly holistic approach. “We use the trees as an entry point,” says Maathai, “but once we are in the community, we try to react or address all the issues that affect the livelihood of those people.”