Wangari Maathai
Wangari Muta Maathai ( born April 1, 1940, Nyeri District, in the section Tetu in the village Ihithe; † 25 September 2011 in Nairobi ) was a Kenyan professor, scholar, politician and Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection since 2002.
In 2004, the environmental activist who saw in purposeful promotion of African women's policy, the best prevention against water and other environmental damage, the first African woman Nobel Peace Prize was awarded.
Life
Wangari Maathai came from a family south of Nairobi, whose father was polygamous. Your talent was on some mission sisters, and she received a solid education at a known convent school in Kenya. Subsequently, she received a scholarship to study biology in the United States ( Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas) and studied at the Universities of Pittsburgh, Giessen and Munich later. In 1971, she earned the first woman from Kenya doctorate at the University of Nairobi. In the same year she became the first Professor of Veterinary Anatomy and later dean of her department at the University of Nairobi.
In 1977, she called the reforestation project "Green Belt Movement " (engl. Green Belt Movement) into being. Over the years therefrom was a Pan-African movement, which is now active in 13 countries, founded about 600 nurseries and newly planted to 1993, 30 million trees to protect against erosion. Because of this pioneering role, she received the nickname " Mama Miti " ( Kiswahili for " Mother of Trees ").
Wangari had three children: Waweru, and Muta Wanjira. 1980 could be her spouse divorced from science - on the grounds that she was " too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control ".
Wangari became the central figure of identification of the women's movement in Kenya. She was from 1976 to 1987 in Kenya's National Women's Council ( National Council of Women in Kenya ) is active, serving as its director 1981-87 as President. The board she served on until the end.
In the 1990s, Maathai, whose commitment to environmental protection and women's rights brought them over and over again in opposition to the then President Daniel arap Moi, was repeatedly imprisoned and abused. Among other things, Amnesty International continued repeatedly for them. To this end, she said:
"I can not count the many times that you have saved my life and made our work possible. "
After Wangari Maathai was a candidate in 1997 unsuccessfully for parliament and the presidency, she was " ( NARC ) National Rainbow Coalition " elected in December 2002, which was founded by several opposition parties into electoral alliance Kenyan Parliament. The NARC took over from the government of Daniel arap Moi, and the newly elected President Mwai Kibaki appointed Maathai as Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection. Maathai, who founded the " Mazingira Green Party of Kenya ," thus created as the first Green Party politician in Africa leap into a government.
In April 2004, she was awarded the international Petra Kelly Prize of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Maathai was a member of the Club of Rome.
While Maathai's commitment to environmental protection and rights was generally accepted, they looked for various statements about AIDS in the criticism. In August 2004 they should according to a report by the Kenyan Standard newspaper have claimed that AIDS is a control tool against Africans, developed by an evil scientist. In December 2004, she has, however, in a statement, which can be found on the website of the Green Belt Movement, clarified:
"It is critical for me to state THEREFORE did I neither say nor believe what did the virus developed by white people or white powers in order to destroy the African people. Search views are wicked and destructive. "
"That's why it's crucial for me to determine that I neither say nor believe in it, that the virus of people with white skin color or of white racists in connection with the destruction of the Africans was created. Such views are wicked and destructive. "
Wangari Maathai was involved in the topic global warming and climate justice and has lectured at several conferences on the subject, among other things, organized by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability - A Nobel Cause in Potsdam in 2007, or the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009.
Since 2009, Wangari Maathai was an honorary member of the World Future Council.
On September 25, 2011 Wangari Muta Maathai died surrounded by her family from the effects of cancer.
Nobel prize
After she was in 1984 awarded the Right Livelihood Award (known as the Alternative Nobel Prize ) for her work in which she founded in 1977 movement Green Belt Movement, she was awarded in 2004 and the Nobel Peace Prize for her commitment to " sustainable development, peace and democracy " as it says in the Declaration of the Committee in Oslo, and continued: " it has taken a holistic access to sustainable development, democracy, human rights, particularly women's rights includes. "
Thus, the prize went for the first time an African woman and the second time after 1991/1992 in two consecutive years, again to a woman. With the price she was honored after the founding of the Nobel Committee for their courageous resistance against the former Kenyan regime and as a founder of the Green Belt Movement.
For the history of the Nobel Peace Prize, the special appreciation of environmental protection was a qualitative innovation, which has been welcomed by environmental politicians of all parties. When the prize was awarded on 10 December 2004, the head of the Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjøs stressed "Peace on earth depends on our ability to preserve a vibrant environment."