Published on Wednesday, December 15, 2004 by the Seattle Post-IntelligencerBonnie Erbe
What a bone-deep, marrow-warming thrill to see Wangari Muta Maathai accept her Nobel Peace Prize. It wasn't just the symbolic import of watching a piceous-skinned woman accept the West's most prestigious award for peace-making to the beat of African drums in the background. No affirmative-action child, she. It was acknowledgement by a committee of some of the world's most learned individuals that we snub the chance for peace through environmental preservation at our own peril.
Does peace-through-preservation sound naïve in today's high-tech, sickeningly overdeveloped world? Of course. But can it help? Perhaps.
And in giving the prize to a woman who has devoted her life to planting trees and thus fighting back against deforestation in her native Kenya, the Nobel committee has revivified a process largely derailed by the world's mad dash toward environmental destruction.
She is by far not the first woman to win the most prestigious of all prizes. In fact, last year's winner was an Islamic woman -- Iranian human-rights activist Shirin Abadi. Maathai, however, is the first African woman to win the prize and the first East African woman to earn a Ph.D.
More important, the Nobel she earned is the first to acknowledge environmentalism as a way to build peace.
She came to international attention by founding what's called Kenya's Greenbelt Movement. Like with so many African nations, Kenya's natural resources have been rampaged and abandoned. Deforestation is rampant. The dismaying contrast between the pre-deforestation Kenya and post- was made clear to Maathai when she returned to her home country in 1966, after spending six years abroad (including in the United States).
She mourned the degradation of forests, the depleted topsoil that devastated native farmers' livelihoods and the silt-clogged, fertilizer-rife rivers. She decided it was time to plant new trees. But she did so on a scale never witnessed before. By joining forces with the National Council of Women of Kenya, and providing encouragement and resources to African women not just in Kenya but all over East Africa, she inspired some 30 million trees to take root on these women's farms, on school and church grounds and in depleted forests in Kenya and beyond.
For her good deeds, she was persecuted by the corrupt government of former President Daniel arap Moi. She was vilified by his underlings, subject to outright attacks and ultimately imprisoned. Through it all, she refused to stop lobbying for the Kenyan people to be given control of their natural resources, as arap Moi turned over whole swaths of public land to his cronies, which they then despoiled.
I felt only a slight tinge of sadness at learning of Maathai's supreme accomplishment. Nine years ago, an African environmental hero was hanged for his anti-government, pro-environment protests. Newspaper columnist and sometime government official Ken Saro-Wiwa gave his life to the Ogoniland oil fields in 1995. His protests against the Nigerian government and Shell Oil started as a crusade to give the native Ogoni tribes control over highly profitable oil fields on their delta lands. Until then, that natural resource returned nothing to tribesmen but pollution and environmental devastation.
As small protests swelled to masses and Saro-Wiwa gained international acclaim as an environmental hero, government repression accelerated. Shell, fearing ongoing bad publicity, decided to close down its Ogoniland wells. Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni won.
But victory brought infighting to Ogoni tribesmen and young Ogoni killed four tribal chiefs. Saro-Wiwa was tried and convicted for ordering these murders in what the world viewed as a sham tribunal. If only he could have been in the audience, sharing in Wangari Maathai's victory.
In accepting the prize, Maathai said there will be no peace until poverty is eradicated. As long as resources are scarce, new wars over forests, waters, land, minerals and yes, oil will continue to break out. She pointed out that many local and international wars, such as those in West and Central Africa and the Middle East, are fought over resources. Only by shepherding and sharing these resources can people peacefully coexist. Her logic is brilliant, as is her highly creative syllogistic thinking. It's a concept much of the West has yet to comprehend.
Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service.
