Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was a Nobel Peace Prize winning activist and founder of the Green Belt Movement, which to date has planted over 51 million trees in Kenya. She authored four books: The Green Belt Movement; Unbowed: A Memoir; The Challenge for Africa; and Replenishing the Earth. She was the subject of the documentary Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai.
Maathai was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree and to become an associate professor. She was chairman of the National Council of Women of Kenya, where she introduced the idea of community-based tree planting. This idea grew into a grassroots organization, the Green Belt Movement, whose focus is poverty reduction and environmental conservation through tree planting.
Wangari Maathai was internationally acknowledged for her struggle for democracy, human rights, and environmental conservation, and served on the board of many organizations. She addressed the UN on a number of occasions and spoke on behalf of women at the Earth Summit.
In 2006, she founded the Nobel Women’s Initiative with her sister laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Betty Williams, and Mairead Corrigan.
In recognition of her deep commitment to the environment, the UN Secretary-General named Wangari Maathai a UN Messenger of Peace in 2009, with a focus on the environment and climate change.
In 2010, she was appointed to the Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group: a panel of political leaders and activists working towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
In partnership with the University of Nairobi, she founded the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies (WMI), which brings together academic research—in land use, forestry, agriculture, resource-based conflicts, and peace studies—with the Green Belt Movement.
Wangari Maathai died in 2011 at the age of 71 after a battle with ovarian cancer. Memorial ceremonies were held in Kenya, New York, San Francisco, and London.
Wangari Maathai
Tribute Film
Film by the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF)
Commissioned by UNEP, ICRAF and CIFOR on behalf of the CPF.
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Support Wangari Maathai’s legacy and the Green Belt Movement to continue its core work of engaging women in planting trees, protecting critical forests & watersheds, and empowering communities.
Your support helps to conserve soil and ensure food security, to sustain rural communities’ livelihoods, and build resilience to climate change.
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Here, you will find simple earth-based and nature-oriented practices, prompts and rituals inspired by Wangari Maathai, that will help you connect with nature and trees.
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In solitary practice, begin by sitting or standing erect, and breathing deeply and rhythmically. As you breathe and as your spine straightens, imagine that your spine is the trunk of a tree. And from its base, roots extend deep into the center of the Earth. And you can draw up power from the Earth, with each breath. Feel the energy rising like sap rising through a tree trunk. Feel the power rise up your spine, feel yourself becoming more alive with each breath.
From the crown of your head, you have branches that sweep up and back down to touch the Earth. Feel the power burst from the crown of your head, and feel it sweep through the branches until it touches the Earth again, making a circle, returning to its source.
If you do this exercise in a group: Breathing deeply, feel your branches intertwining, and the power weaving through them, and dancing among them, like the wind.
Meditation from The Spiral Dance, by Starhawk
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“We see trees as the hosts of our spirits and the source of our livelihood. Planting trees is a celebration.”—Boro Baski
Trees hold immense powers, including the power to make all our lives better and healthier. If a tree has power, a forest has even more. Continue reading below about the wonderful superpowers of trees.
While trees are resilient, they are not invincible—and they need our help. To help plant and protect trees, you can either learn to plant trees yourself, using this step-by-step guide if you have a garden and enough space, or you can support organizations that work to plant trees and protect and restore forests, such as The Nature Conservancy, One Tree Planted, Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement, International Tree Foundation, Trees for the Future and Trees for Life.
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So, what are the superpowers of trees?
Trees absorb the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, helping slow the gas’s buildup in our atmosphere. Trees are looking out for us so we have to look out for them!
Trees boost our mental health while raising our physical health: time in nature—like a walk among the trees in a city park—correlates with a drop in anxiety and depression. Also, because we move around more when we have access to trees and parks, nature can encourage us to move around and exercise, helping lower rates of obesity.
Trees clean the air so we can breathe more easily. Trees remove the kind of air pollution that is most dangerous to our lungs: particulate matter. This pollution arises from the burning of fossil fuels, and can reach dangerous concentrations in the largest cities as well as in neighborhoods near highways and factories. Tree’s leaves will filter this dangerous pollution, but only if they’re planted near the people who need them; most of the filtration occurs within 100 feet of a tree. More trees in cities, especially in lower-income neighborhoods close to highways and factories, can reduce ailments like asthma and heart disease that cause 5% of deaths worldwide.
Trees give a home to the wildlife we love. Even a single tree can provide vital habitat for countless species. An intact forest can do even more, creating a home for some of the most diverse and resilient webs of life on the planet. Old-growth forests, the forests that we need to protect most urgently, create habitat at the ground level, at the top of their tree canopies, and everywhere in between. All of these different types of habitat in a single area allow so many diverse species to thrive.
Trees cool down your life, and could even save it. Temperatures are rising and heatwaves are getting longer due to climate change. A tree’s shade acts like a natural air conditioning and can even keep down the energy costs of our actual air conditioning systems, which are increasingly working overtime.
Trees filter your water, making your drinking supply cleaner and more reliable. Trees remove pollutants and sediments from rainfall and then slowly release the water back into waterways and underground aquifers. Thanks to trees, this naturally cleaner water is easier and cheaper to treat before it ends up in your tap.
Learn here about even more benefits of trees, including reducing violence in cities, preventing soil erosion, and their social and communal benefits.
“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”—Rabindranath Tagore
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Learn more about Wangari Maathai and her philosophy around environmentalism through these documentaries, books, speeches and articles.
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✎ Book
‘Unbowed: A Memoir’
by Wangari Maathai -
✎ Book
‘Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World’
by Wangari Maathai -
✎ Book
‘The Greet Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience’
by Wangari Maathai -
✎ Book
‘The Challenge for Africa’
by Wangari Maathai -
☆ Documentary
'Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai'
by Lisa Merton & Alan Dater -
❈ Key Speeches
Speeches & Articles
by Wangari Maathai -
✷ Illustrated book
Dr. Wangari Maathai Plants a Forest
by Rebel Girls -
✷ Illustrated book
Planting Peace: The Story of Wangari Maathai
by Gwendolyn Hooks -
✷ Illustrated book
Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees
by Franck Prévot -
✦ Article
Planting Trees as Resistance and Empowerment: The Remarkable Story of Wangari Maathai
by Maria Popova -
☆ Youtube Video
Tree planter, Nobel Prize laureate, Revolutionary: Professor Wangari Maathai
by Ecosia