Wangari Maathai
Pal, Amitabh
THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW by Amitabh Pal Wangari Maathai Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She was a controversial choice since she is known more as an environmentalist and a...
...For her work, she faced persecution...
...Q: Why were you attacked for planting trees...
...We're going to observe the tree until it produces seeds...
...And I have greatly appreciated it...
...Q: What is the significance of the Nobel Committee expanding the definition of peace...
...So, if seeds are going to be bio-engineered, patented, owned, and then the farmer is not even allowed to use his own seeds, that is making the farmer very dependent on companies that we know can sometimes be insensitive...
...Q: You were in the United States in the 1960s, when you got a bachelor's and a master's...
...If they're for fodder, our animals will have fodder...
...Maathai: A lot of people still have enormous admiration for the United States, mostly because of the glamour of power and affluence...
...She sipped tea while she good-naturedly answered my questions...
...She ended with the story of a hummingbird that tries to put out a forest fire...
...Maathai: You don't have to recognize only those who bring warring parties together or those who stop a war or the production of arms...
...While I was in the United States, Kenya became independent from the British, in 1963...
...I'm a member of parliament, and members of parliament in Kenya have been charged with the responsibility of educating people and helping them to protect themselves against AIDS, and to try to see if they can access drugs, which are still very expensive, by the way, for many of the people in the rural areas...
...We need to ensure that we don't take to the farmer something that can be harmful to biodivergence, to the farmer's own seeds...
...Maathai launched the Green Belt Movement in the 1970s and mobilized Kenyan women to plant trees throughout the country...
...Q: Your supposed comments about AIDS being a Western plot against Africa have caused a furor...
...This is what the government did not like because the ruling elite was the beneficiary of these malpractices...
...What were your impressions of this country back then...
...She went on to get a master's in biology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1966 and then did doctoral work in Germany...
...By doing that, we create a lot of enmity, and eventually we have conflict...
...The fact that I am a Nobel Peace Prize-winner [laughs] doesn't make me any wiser in this area...
...When you're in poverty, you're trapped because the poorer you become, the more you degrade the environment, and the more you degrade the environment, the poorer you become...
...When they're ready, we'll harvest them...
...The usual African stool has three legs, and the three legs represent for me peace, democracy, and sustainable, equitable management of resources...
...If they're fruit trees, within five years we will have fruits...
...All this had caused the massive destruction of forests, which could absorb water, which could give us normal rain patterns, and which could sustain the rivers...
...Maathai: I never said what was being reported, and I don't believe in it...
...She was beaten a number of times, including once when the Kenyan police bludgeoned her unconscious...
...I immediately suggested that perhaps what we should do with these women is to plant trees...
...And I thought we were going to enjoy our freedom, we were going to be happy, we were not going to be oppressed anymore...
...She exhorted African leaders to "build fair and just societies," and asked for the release of fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest in Burma...
...Then it became two groups...
...The United States feels it can almost ignore the problems of the world because it is in a very privileged position of being a superpower with very little competition from the rest of the world, and because it still appears like the epitome of success to many people...
...It is filthy...
...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 acceptance speech...
...Poor developing countries are still being persuaded to sell to the developed market raw materials...
...It made me much more aware of the human rights struggle...
...We have to break the cycle, and the way to break the cycle for us is to do something that is doable, is to do something that is cheap, do something that is within our power, our capacity our resources...
...They are surprised sometimes when the United States seems not to care, especially about the environment, and decides not to pay attention to the issues the world is trying to deal with...
...The other thing we have been advocating for is greater fair trade...
...In the past three decades, that movement has helped plant thirty million trees...
...If they're good, we'll germinate them...
...Eventually, it was thousands of groups planting trees to restore the land and improve the quality of life...
...In Kenya I see these things happening all the time: resources become depleted, water becomes finished, wells dry up, and the next thing you hear is that tribesmen are fighting a war...
...As I went home, this influenced me in terms of pursuing or expecting respect for human rights, respect for providing space, for equality...
...It is the most visible campaign...
...Also, we shouldn't take to the farmer a technology that is patented and that will make the farmer dependent on that technology and then say that if you can't pay for this technology then you have a problem...
...So it just fell on me...
...But at that time, it was, of course, very surprising and very, very overwhelming to me...
...I'm very happy that I got the idea...
...But instead of staying behind in the West, she decided to go back home...
...Seven of her colleagues were killed, and her organization was almost banned...
...Q: How did the Green Belt Movement get started and how did you forge the links between environ-mentalism and women's rights...
...It was the government that had allowed the people to go into the forests and to start cultivating food crops...
...Kenya spends about 40 percent of its income in paying the debt...
...So I knew that even if I planted all the trees downstream, the stream itself was being destroyed by the government...
...Maathai: Kenyan women were coming together to discuss the issues that we wanted to take to Mexico for the first United Nations conference on women in 1975...
...Women's issues had not yet come into play It was more the equality of peoples...
...Her brother persuaded their parents to send her to school, something that was far from the norm for girls in Kenya in the 1940s...
...Planting a tree was the best idea that I had...
...Nobody would have bothered me if all I did was to encourage women to plant trees...
...What exactly did you say...
...I was not seeking the Nobel because I knew that the committee doesn't look at the environment, it looks at peace, and I wasn't working on the issue of peace specifically...
...Besides the Nobel, she has been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the Alternative Nobel Prize, and the U.N.'s Africa Prize for Leadership...
...It wasn't something I had given much thought to, but it turned out to be a wonderful idea because it is easy, it is doable, and you could go and tell ordinary women with no education: OK, this is the tree...
...You are put there to humiliate you...
...We need to share our resources more equitably, both globally and nationally, and we can only do that in a democratic space...
...You will have conflict...
...Maathai is full of energy and good cheer and is amazingly nice for someone of her stature...
...I'm not an expert on AIDS...
...But when I encountered violations of human rights by my own people, my experience in the United States gave me the courage to stand up and say this is not right...
...For me, it was a moment to celebrate that finally we were free, as Martin Luther King was crying out at that time...
...She was repeatedly jailed...
...That is why they keep saying: When you borrow, you have to pay...
...government gave her a scholarship to study in the United States...
...She received her bachelor's from Mount St...
...She won a seat to parliament-with an incredible 98 percent of the vote-and was appointed the assistant minister for the environment, natural resources, and wildlife...
...Those of us who lived in Africa were very cut off from the oppression of black people in this country...
...Wearing a bright, multicolored African dress and headscarf, she seemed to still be basking in the afterglow of the Nobel...
...there wasn't adequate clean drinking water...
...When we introduced free primary education in the year 2003, one million children went and registered because they didn't have to pay...
...Maathai: I have been involved in a campaign to cancel those debts, especially during the Global Jubilee 2000 campaign...
...I was contributing toward peace, and that is what the committee recognized: that, indeed, we need to step back and look at a more expanded concept of peace and security...
...She seized the opportunity and was such an exceptional student that the U.S...
...You're trapped...
...Definitely, nobody ever interviewed me...
...Q: What was your reaction when you got the Wangari Maathai: Well, this was a very big surprise...
...So it requires a lot of understanding to realize that everything is not gold and everything is not wonderful in the United States and also to understand that it is not everyone in the United States who subscribes to the philosophy that we see in Washington, D.C...
...We must allow our children to grow, to go to school, instead of carrying guns to shoot each other...
...I started raising my voice and started holding seminars educating the public on how the environment was being destroyed and who was destroying it...
...We were the ones who were being prevented from meeting...
...The metaphor that I have adopted is the metaphor of the African stool...
...I am sorry that people got me completely wrong...
...It is now flowering...
...She completed her doctorate in veterinary anatomy from the University of Nairobi in 1971, becoming the first East African woman to get a Ph.D., and she taught microanatomy at the university...
...We were the ones who were being harassed...
...I am especially mindful of women and the girl child...
...After that, we cannot send them to high school...
...She spoke on poverty in Africa and the need for an aid program for the continent modeled on the Marshall Plan...
...Of course, I'm very grateful for the work that is being done in this area, and, of course, I'm looking forward like everybody else to the day we'll find a solution, but I am as ignorant about that area as anybody...
...They needed a local person to run the day-to-day routines...
...So we are saying, let's have better trade...
...We need to be very cautious as we analyze the science and as we take this technology to the ordinary farmer in the rural areas...
...It is dehumanizing," she told The Washington Post of her experiences in prison...
...We knew they were greedy and corrupt...
...I hope it will encourage them to raise their voices and take more space for leadership...
...Scholastica College (currently Benedictine College) in Atchison, Kansas...
...I spoke with her on a March morning in her hotel room at the Alex Hotel in New York City...
...No one prepares you for this...
...We are trying to provide free primary education...
...It was important for us to address the government and to ask the government to stop destroying the catchment areas upstream...
...So it's a matter of breaking the cycle...
...Amitabh Pal is Managing Editor of The Progressive...
...As long as the world is not prepared to do that, it is really just giving lip service to Africa...
...Wouldn't it be better to allow Kenya to use the money it is servicing the debt with to pay for school fees so that those students can have four more years of education...
...The women were the major force in the movement...
...Her activism brought her into increasing confrontation with the Kenyan authorities, especially when she began to demand good governance and democratic reform...
...That's what we were doing during the colonial times, and it's still what we are doing during these post-colonial times...
...So I don't know why the reporter reported that, and I noticed that even though I kept saying that I didn't say that, the reporter still continued to report what he wanted to report...
...Now, we can only give those children eight years of education...
...Many of those debts never benefited the people...
...You will not realize peace that way...
...But those students are still too young to be thrown into the world completely unprepared with no skills...
...So it was a matter of fighting corruption and fighting greed among the ruling elite...
...For us to enjoy peace, we need to manage our resources more responsibly...
...It is still overwhelming...
...While growing up, Maathai got a lucky break...
...When we open our markets, the manufactured goods come to us and we buy them with the little money we have...
...Maathai: Poverty is both a cause and a symptom of environmental degradation...
...The other problem we were facing was that a lot of our leaders in the government, especially in the 1980s, privatized a lot of these common goods...
...Little did I know what lay ahead...
...Maathai: Planting trees, per se, would not have been a problem...
...But we branched into many other activities in an effort to deal with the root causes of environmental degradation...
...Q: You're in favor of debt forgiveness...
...To continue to punish the ordinary people in the villages who never benefited is very, very inhuman and very unfair...
...They would literally cut sections of the forest and privatize them, or they would take open spaces in the cities and urban centers and privatize them...
...From the very beginning, that's what I was telling the women, that we cannot solve all the problems that we face: We are poor, we don't have water, we don't have energy, we don't have food, we don't have income, we're not able to send our children to school...
...Her fortunes switched in December 2002, when the reigning regime of Daniel arap Moi was defeated in elections...
...And how it was important for us to hold our leaders accountable for the better management of resources...
...The government had approved the clear-cutting of forests that were catchment areas for water and encouraged the cultivating of exotic plantations...
...You are put in areas where people will mock you-guards and even prisoners...
...I saw the connection between land degradation and lack of water, so I continued with the program of tree planting...
...She was a controversial choice since she is known more as an environmentalist and a tree planter than as a peace activist...
...Q: What are your views of the United States and the Bush Administration's foreign policy...
...It is crowded...
...But I started seeing the linkages between the problems that we were dealing with and the root causes...
...The following day, she gave a talk at the Cooper Union...
...She currently serves on the board of several international organizations, including the U.N...
...And one of those root causes was misgovernance...
...But it's been a wonderful statement...
...So the tree planting campaign has always been in the forefront...
...That will not provide the answer for poverty or for hunger...
...We were the ones who were the victims of the destruction that was going on...
...Yet we are being persuaded to open up our markets in the name of free trade...
...Maathai: I was the director of the local chapter of the Red Cross when a group of Northern NGOs decided to establish an Environment Liaison Center in Nairobi in 1973...
...We, therefore, eventually adopted a campaign for our rights, to assert ourselves and to demand better treatment from the government...
...I started with a small group...
...Maathai: I was in a very small college in Atchison, Kansas, and this actually gave me an opportunity to look at what was happening in the U.S...
...There are too many problems we face...
...Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament and the Jane Goodall Institute...
...We'll plant them in our gardens...
...The tree for me became a wonderful way of breaking that cycle...
...I guess I was a likely candidate because I was already dealing with local issues...
...And so their reaction was to intimidate, arrest, harass, in the hope that I would give up, or the people with whom I was working would give up, and the movement would die...
...People, especially in Africa, must invest in peace, must invest in preventing conflict...
...Many women in rural areas said they were concerned about firewood, which was the main source of energy...
...When mocked by other animals, the hummingbird replies, "I'm doing what I can...
...But many people don't know that, especially citizens of the countries that are owed that money...
...We'll dry them, we'll put them in the soil...
...We are not able to sell our goods, we are not able to add value to our goods, and when we sell the raw materials, we get very little money...
...Q: How do you respond to people who say fighting poverty takes precedence over protecting the environment...
...Maathai also criticized "the extreme global inequities and prevailing consumption patterns" and called on corporations and global institutions to "appreciate that ensuring economic justice, equity, and ecological integrity are of greater value than profits at any cost...
...So I knew that a major culprit of environmental destruction was the government...
...Nobody ever told me I was going to get it...
...If we don't have space to discuss, to dialogue, to listen to each other, to respect each other's opinions, we're going to use our power to control our resources at the expense of those who don't have them...
...Environmental protection has become yet another path to peace...
...She received death threats, and was forced into hiding in the early 1990s...
...They were concerned about nutritious food, and they were concerned about poverty, especially among women...
...We'll nurture them...
...Q: How did you first get interested in environ-mentalism...
...This year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has evidently broadened its definition of peace still further," the chair of the committee, Ole Danbolt Mj?s, said during the award ceremony in December...
...I am not convinced because while I think that genetically modified seeds can be good, they can also be a disaster for the environment...
...Q: What's your view of biotechnology...
...Those debts were solicited through very corrupt deals...
...They are hungry because they can't pay for it...
...Cancel the debts and open your markets, because that's the only way we can begin to move forward...
...They were concerned about water...
...You cannot have security by putting borders around yourself...
...Today, people are hungry, even though there is a lot of food all over the world...
...You cannot be secure by using your power to control resources and deciding that you can't share them with the rest of the world...
...Once I joined, I began to be aware of many environmental issues that I, like many other people, were taking for granted...
...Maathai: People who push for genetically modified seeds in Africa argue that it is good for Africa, that it will eliminate hunger...
...You can't say you'll start to deal with just one...
Vol. 69 • May 2005 • No. 5
