KENYA: Green Belt Movement, established by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai who died after a long struggle with cancer, pledges to continue her work

Record ID: 360905

  • Title: KENYA: Green Belt Movement, established by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai who died after a long struggle with cancer, pledges to continue her work
  • Date: 27th September 2011
  • Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
  • Embargoed: 12th October 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Environment,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA31CBAYU4BF1R0HONNKFRSI6KQ
  • Story Text: Members of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmentalist, Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement, vowed to continue with the late activist's work on Monday (September 26) a day after the 71-year-old's death.
    Green Belt Movement confirmed that, Maathai, died at a Nairobi hospital where she was undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer.
    "We are here, representing the Green Belt Movement, just to confirm to you that this has happened. You may have seen the statement on the Green Belt Movement's website. It is really to thank all of you for coming and to find out exactly what has happened and hearing from the Green Belt Movement itself," said Njeri Gakonyo, member of the Board of Directors of Green Belt Movement.
    The Green Belt Movement was started in 1977 in Kenya as an environmental organisation with a focus on community mobilization and empowerment for improvement of livelihoods in rural areas.
    Wangari Maathai, who was also a veterinary anatomy professor, rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s and 1990s.
    She branded the clearances a political ploy that caused irreversible environmental damage.
    The courts blocked her suits and Green Belt lawyers complained that their cases were dismissed on technical grounds or their files were mysteriously lost.
    Maathai's Green Belt Movement, comprised mainly of women, says it has planted 30 million trees across Africa to combat creeping deforestation that often deepens poverty.
    In 2007, at a major U.N. climate meeting in Kenya, Mathaai launched the "Billion Tree" campaign which aimed to roll back deforestation that is a top contributor to carbon emissions blamed for global warming.
    The Green Belt Movement promised to continue with Maathai's vision.
    "This organization is fully functional and able to continue with this important work and the mission of making sure that we, as human beings, have to take care of the environment that feeds us, that clothes us and that looks after us in so many ways. So the professor's (Maathai's) work will continue and we really want to reassure you that we, at the Green Belt Movement are committed to this," Gakonyo said Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was honoured in 2004 for aiding democracy and seeking to save the continent's shrinking forests.
    The award marked a new environmental theme in interpreting the 1895 will of Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite who founded the prestigious prize.
    Until Maathai's win, the prize had often gone to people seeking to end armed conflicts.
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