Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai’s Life as an Activist
In the mid-1970s, as she set out to launch the Green Belt Movement – developing communities by planting trees – Wangari Maathai faced an environmentally strained land, an impoverished population and a government plagued with lack of resources, inexperience, and corruption. But the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and author of The Challenge for Africa pointed out a more basic obstacle. “Traditionally we did not plant trees. God did,” she joked with the packed audience at the UCLA Fowler Museum. Maathai joined Kal Raustiala, director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle …
