Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai is a very astonishing woman, who has lived both a long and full life. She has seen the world, sought knowledge, and come back to her homeland to make a difference in the plight of women and the ecosystem. For her amazing efforts she won a Nobel Peace prize. She was most recognized for founding the Green Belt movement in Africa, which was an organization designed to empower African women be planting trees. Maathai has great respect for nature, and believes it’s very important to find a balance between human and natural resources. She also has the privilege of being the first women in her country to earn a PhD. It is interesting to see how her religious faith and upbringing has had a dramatic impact on the path her life has taken.…

shelter, clothing and are even dying of hunger. Wangari Mathai had a vision. She was focused on restoring our environment and was willing to lend a hand to clean up the damages climate change had caused in her community. With the help of her vison and the Green belt Movement she founded, Kenya began to prosper. Crowds were cheering. Kenyans were celebrating. On December 12, 1963 Kenya gained its independence from the British and formed their own state. (History of Kenya) The first…

According to Wangari Maathai, “The environment and the economy are really both two sides of the same coin. If we cannot sustain the environment, we cannot sustain ourselves.” As I began to do more research on the environment and why it is greatly diminishing, is because our economy is considerably expanding in value. Who would have ever thought that a woman from Kenya would encourage so many women rural areas to prevent deforestation and restore the their main source of fuel for cooking,…

Nature and women intertwine dramatically. They both nourish and reproduce offspring. Even though they are both loving and nourishing, they are abused and misused daily. Typically, nature and women are victims of charismatic men. As humans, we often don’t appreciate the ones who care the most for us. In this analytical essay, I will discuss the intersectionality between three ambitious and empowering women. These women are Winona LaDuke, Wangari Maathai, and Akilah Jaramogi. These women are…

and cultivation. Therefore, women’s victimization enabled them to organize themselves in small groups to work together with the Chipko workers and Garthwal to gather support to stop deforestation. Women were able to see their connection between there environment and lifestyle but men were not because they were concern was with traditional economic development of India not with creating a substantive economy. These women were not considered feminists but acknowledged that their way of living was…

one idea, and one voice to start something big, to be the change one wants to see in the world, and to improve the world for future generations. As Wangari Maathai once said, “I will be a hummingbird; I will do the best I can”. The folktale of the hummingbird goes: there was a fire devouring the forest and while all the other animals sat watching, the hummingbird took one drop of water and put it on the fire back and forth as fast as it could. When the other animals told the hummingbird that his…

are at odds, a capitalist society seek to subdue and eradicate the obstacle impeding its capitalistic; however, Wangari Maathai’s environmentalist campaign against the Kenyan government demonstrates that commons can, in fact, be incorporated into capitalism. The contradiction arises in that Gidwani oversimplifies the issue of wastelands into purely economics and fails to see its sociopolitical and cultural roots. Whenever the cost of opposing something exceeds the benefits, capitalism redraws…

country goes completely from green to drought caused by industrializing, it loses its rescores due to deforestation, where communities depend on the resources for living, which then leads to poverty and violence. Wangari Maathai, in her memoir, “Unbowed” was telling the effects of deforestation and its horrible chain reaction in Kenya through her teary eyes. She was born in Kenya in 1940, where the colonization and industrialization of Britain caused violence and corruption, which impacted her…

In “Foresters without Diplomas”, Wangari Maathai empowers native Kenyan women to take a stance and overcome the devastating effects of deforestation in their native country. Despite this simplistic idea, many foresters believed that these women needed to have a diploma to create their own nurseries and plant trees on the landscape. However, Maathai disagrees with their claim and states that a diploma isn’t needed to plant trees. In 2008, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Fish and Wildlife…

“Be the change you wish to see in this world.”-Gandhi. Everyone is capable of helping the world, but it’s up to them to decide whether or not they want to make a difference. The people in Kenya decide to make a change in order to protect their animals and environment. Richard Turere comes up with a solution to not only protect the lions in his village but also the livestock. Wangari Maathai creates the Green Belt Movement an organization who plants tree to help improve people's lives. Kenya bans…