The experience of discrimination at the Department of Zoology led Maathai to look for opportunities elsewhere. This was a joint program between the University of Giessen and University College, Nairobi. But years later Unbowed: A Memoir . As a result of the movements activism, similar initiatives were begun in other African countries, including Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe. Children like Maathai, who were born near a missionary settlement, and whose parents allowed them to venture into the new teachings by Christian missionaries, had early access to Western education. << /Pages 45 0 R /Type /Catalog >> A. She affirmed earth and water, air and the waning fire of the sun combine to form the essential elements of life and reveal to me my kinship with the soil.63. I am sure that this honour will now usher in a new beginning with new sensibilities to match. Wangari Maathai held her Nobel Lecture December 10, 2004, in the Oslo City Hall, Norway. 61. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Future research could explore further the tensions that marriages of educated elites encountered, while still embedded in their ethnic traditions. endobj This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wangari-Maathai, The Nobel Prize - Biography of Wangari Maathai, Wangari Muta Maathai - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Wangari Maathai - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). 17. She was the first woman to be awarded a PhD in veterinary sciences and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Modern farming methods were introduced to small-scale farmers through the provision of extension services and credit facilities. Political activist and environmentalist Wangari Maathai was trained to be a leader. Maathai was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. The World Conference on Women held in Mexico (1975) and subsequent ones in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995) set the stage for fundamental changes in gender policies, relations, and for womens participation in development and leadership.49, International discourse on the environment and climate change also advanced after the Stockholm conference through a series of initiatives culminating in the United Nations Conference on Environmental Development (UNCED), Earth Summit (1992), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Johannesburg, South Africa (2002).50 Such discourse broadened debates on development, giving critical attention to issues surrounding the environment and climate change. Dr. Samuel Kobia, Annetta Miller, Harold Miller, Ms . With hindsight this move was misguided and diversionary. She saw how missionaries perpetuated false dichotomies between Christian values and aspects of African cultures.21 This revelation was to shape and indeed strengthen Maathais appreciation of her Gikuyu cultural background and heritage, enabling her to interact and learn from ordinary people in her advocacy for sustainable environmental practices and the empowerment of women. Wangari Maathai. 32. In the later stages of her life, as she worked for the restoration of the environment, she often recalled this period nostalgically as a source of inspiration and renewal.7 Field work provided hands-on experience with nature and nurtured a strong attachment to plants, animals, and rivers in the immediate environment. Two years into their marriage, she attained her PhD, which accelerated her career in academia. Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was the founder of the Green Belt Movement and the Wangari Maathai Institute. Dr. Wangar Muta Maathai. 50, Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, 1987; and Njuguna, Ngethe and Karuti, Kanyinga, The Politics of Development Space: The State and NGOs in the Delivery of Basic Services in Kenya, Working Paper, Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, 1992. She was given a scholarship for PhD studies and research in Kenya and Germany. Daniel Branch, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 19632012 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 249251; and Karuti Kanyinga and Duncan Okello, eds., Tensions and Reversals in Democratic Transitions: The Kenya 2007 General Elections (Nairobi, Kenya: Society for International Development and Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, 2010), 169. She was indeed an African environmental icon as testified by her appointment to the prestigious position of goodwill ambassador for the Congo Basin rainforest ecosystem. Prof. Hofmann had a mission to fulfill at the emerging University College, Nairobi: to establish a Department of Veterinary Anatomy in the School of Veterinary Medicine. Forest cover was also decimated as large-scale farms were subdivided and select forest reserves were hived off for settlement purposes. She was recognized at once for doing no harm and for not upsetting the status quo. [i] She was born in Nyeri, part of the rural region of Kenya on the 1st of April 1940. When conflict engulfed central Kenya and some men went into the forest to fight and others detained, it was women who took care of their families: providing food, building houses, and in some cases educating children.52 When Maathai came home during the school holidays, this was the reality that confronted her. Maathais parents were among the first people to interact with and gain some education from the missionaries (athomi or asomi). However, no healing of the scars inflicted on you, I am convinced, can equal the soothing of the Nobel Peace Prize you have now won. In the midst of her demanding career as an environmental and political activist, Maathai enjoyed motherhood and was very protective of her children. To the school calendar. This source is a well-written and detailed autobiography from the topic, Wangari Maathai. Maathais election to parliament was almost an anticlimax. Wangari Maathai, The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience (New York: Lantern Books, 2003); and Maathai, The Challenge for Africa. 31. When she was globally recognized with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, she became an instant national icon.59 Duncan Ndegwa, an outstanding public servant from Nyeri County, brought out this ironic situation in his congratulatory letter to Maathai when he wrote: Lest you forget, and far away from any vestiges of dignity, we have seen you being shoved aside if not totally ignored by the government, labeled feminine chauvinist and treated like a common criminal all for being principled and living for a cause. Maathai's atypical and yet symbolic biography draws on two primary texts: Wangari Maathai's (2006), Unbowed: A Memoir . 25. She creatively defied this by changing her last name to Maathai, by adding an a to her ex-husbands surname. << /Linearized 1 /L 82815 /H [ 810 195 ] /O 26 /E 63939 /N 11 /T 82414 >> Wangari Maathai obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount . 2. The socioeconomic impact of policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on the environment and poverty in Africa should be noted at a time when the thinking within UN circles was questioning the prevailing development orthodoxy. Upon her return to Kenya in 1966, she dropped her Christian names and retained her African names, Wangari Muta. Maathai was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica College (now Benedictine College; B.S. Maathais academic studies at Mount St. Scholastica College prepared her for entry into graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh in 1964, where she completed a masters degree in biology before returning to Kenya early1966. She was presented by Professor Ole Danbolt Mjs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Maathai is still remembered for her determined and persistent efforts to safeguard Uhuru Park and the Karura Forest for future generations, for her solidarity with mothers of political detainees, as well as her relentless efforts for peace and to end election-related violence in the Rift Valley region and in the country since 1992 when multiparty politics were allowed. As a national school, Loreto High School provided Maathai with the opportunity to interact with girls from other ethnic groups in Kenya. Maathais exposure to other Kenyan ethnic communities broadened when she moved onto a settlers farm in the Nakuru area where her father was employed. 25 0 obj 59. Maathais marriage produced three children, Waweru, Wanjira, and Muta, two boys and a girl. This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Wangari Maathai, and supports the standard of individuals' achievements and contributions to environmental preservation. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. Maathai was a pragmatic rather than a dogmatic figure, with no rigid ideological stance in her engagement with the environment and the politics of Kenya. 56. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. In honor and admiration of the mother and father of Jesus, she took the forenames Mary Josephine, and became popularly known among her colleagues in high school and college as Mary Jo. The daughter of a peasant farmer and the third . Her family was of Kikuyu origin, and her father was polygamous. The impact of these policies was felt mostly in the 60s and 70s as landless poor were settled, necessitating the cutting of trees on small-scale farms and reducing forest cover in districts like Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, Trans Nzoia, Nyandarua, Laikipia, and Kirinyaga. Under colonialism, indigenous Kenyan cultures were besieged. The accompanying population explosion also meant more people needed to be fed, educated, and their various needs provided for. It also diffused opportunities for deepening an understanding of environment challenges in the country. Her interactions with other womenher mother, teachers, and grassroots womenalso had a great impact on her work and commitment. The death of Wangari Muta Maathai on September 25, 2011, left a rich heritage that continues to inspire men and women, old and young, and indeed the entire world as it grapples with the challenges of sustainable development goals and climate change. In 1960, she benefited from what in Kenya was called the Tom Mboya Airlift to the United States, for education in preparation for independence. It thus became a critical constituency for experimenting with new ideas. Maathai seems to have been aware of these tensions as she juggled the roles of mother, politicians wife, and university teacher, as well as affirming herself as an African womanin manner of dressing, hospitality at home, and speaking local languages to meet the expectations of her husbands constituents.28 Hence her marriage might have become a theater of contestations of different perceptions of womanhood in independent Kenya. In discussing her childhood in her autobiography, Maathai paints a picture of an idyllic life set in a pristine and lush rural environment. Mathaai was named Wangari at birth after her fathers mother, as was Gikuyu tradition. Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, African History. The prevailing cultural attitudes toward Western education and especially education for girls were hostile. 2003), detailed the history of the organization. The influence of the nuns began in this school and continued all the way to university. She was narrowly defeated in the race for the top position, but was consoled by being appointed vice-chairperson, elected by an overwhelming majority. Her position at the university also opened opportunities to venture into other fields of service and leadership for which she was to become well known in addition to her academic pursuits. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Accounts from friends indicate that both parents were devoted to the well-being and education of their children. I stand before you and the world humbled by this recognition and uplifted by the honour of being the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate. The Third Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 19, 2005; Sustained Development, Democracy, and Peace in Africa, Gwangju, South Korea, June 16, 2006; and the Keynote Address at the Second World Congress of Agroforestry, Nairobi, Kenya, August 24, 2009. The resulting dislocation and labor migration initiated an environmental transformation that was accelerated in subsequent decades. 41. The separation between the NCWK and the GBM that occurred in 1987 as a result of political pressure from the Moi regime, proved another milestone in the development of the identity and stature of Maathai as an environmental activist. Leaders of the Green Belt Movement established the Pan African Green Belt Network in 1986 in order to educate world leaders about conservation and environmental improvement. The survival of the GBM under these circumstances may be attributed to the international stature that Maathai had acquired as an environmental warrior, and the existence of supporter networks and admirers scattered all over the world. Upon entry into St. Cecilias Intermediate Primary School, she embraced Roman Catholic teachings, especially the Legion of Mary. By then she had acquired world fame which transcended her position as a member of parliament and as an assistant minister of the environment and natural resourcesa position she was appointed to in January 2003. Wangari Maathai was able to achieve a large degree of educational and professional successes despite her rural beginnings in a fiercely patriarchal society and within a male . Maathai is internationally renowned for her unrelenting efforts in advocating democracy, environmental conservation and human rights. On Sunday, Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, died. That the GBM withstood and survived harassment from the government of Kenya and its security apparatuses was a testimony to the strength and capacity of these networks. Despite the complexities and diversions that characterized her career, Wangari Maathai did succeed in the promotion and execution of important ideas and projects whose time had come.41 Eventually in 2002, on her third attempt, she was elected as a member of the Kenyan parliament and as a member of the National Rainbow Coalition which emerged out of the ashes of the dying authoritarian rule of Moi and KANU. Maathai interacted on a daily basis with women who were decision-makers and leaders. In the last three decades it has become the cosmopolitan and partially urbanized County of Nyeri. In 2007, the region would explode into postelection violence, something which she had foreseen and tried hard to mitigate by cultivating a culture of peace for almost two decades. A decision to send Maathai to school was made by her mother at the instigation of Nderitu, an elder brother. Thus, the NCWK provided an appropriate platform to develop and experiment with innovative ideas such as the GBM. 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