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neighbors, and within our own homes and families. Hope radiates outward from the center of our concerns. Hope dares us to stare the miraculous in the eye and have the courage not to look away. —David Kupfer is a freelance writer, environmental consultant, and organic grower. An Interview with Wangari Maathai, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Amitabh Pal may 2005 q: What is the signiWcance of the Nobel Committee expanding the deWnition of peace? wangari maathai: The metaphor that I have adopted is the metaphor of the African stool. The usual African stool has three legs, and the three legs represent for me peace, democracy, and sustainable, equitable management of resources. q: How did the Green Belt Movement get started and how did you forge the links between environmentalism and women’s rights? maathai: Many women in rural areas said they were concerned about Wrewood, which was the main source of energy. They were concerned about water; there wasn’t adequate clean drinking water. They were concerned about nutritious food, and they were concerned about poverty, especially among women. I immediately suggested that perhaps what we should do with these women is to plant trees. I saw the connection between land degradation and lack of water, so I continued with the program of tree planting. I started with a small group. Then it became two groups. Eventually, it was thousands of groups planting trees to restore the land and improve the quality of life. q: Why were you attacked for planting trees? maathai: Planting trees, per se, would not have been a problem. Nobody would have bothered me if all I did was to encourage women to plant trees. But I started seeing the linkages between the problems that we were dealing with and the root causes. And one of those root causes was misgovernance. The government had approved the clear-cutting of forests that were catchment areas for water and encouraged the cultivating of exotic plantations. It was the government that had allowed the people to go into the forests and to start cultivating food crops. 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. So I knew that even if I planted all the trees downstream, the stream itself was being destroyed by the government. It was important for us to address the government and to ask the government to stop destroying the catchment areas upstream. 166 part 7 defending the environment 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. So I started raising my voice and educating the public on how the environment was being destroyed and who was destroying it. And how it was important for us to hold our leaders accountable for the better management of resources. This is what the government did not like because the ruling elite was the beneWciary of these malpractices. 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. We knew they were greedy and corrupt. So it was a matter of Wghting corruption and Wghting greed among the ruling elite. The women were the major force in the movement. We were the ones who were being harassed. We were the ones who were being prevented from meeting. We were the ones who were the victims of the destruction that was going on. We, therefore , eventually adopted a campaign for our rights. So the tree planting campaign has always been in the forefront. It is the most visible campaign. But we branched into many other activities in an e¤ort to deal with the root causes of environmental degradation. q: How do you respond to people who say Wghting poverty takes precedence over protecting the environment? maathai: Poverty is both a cause and a symptom of environmental degradation. You can’t say you’ll start to deal with just one. You’re trapped. 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. So it’s a matter of breaking the cycle. From the very beginning, that’s what I was telling the women, that we cannot solve all...

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