Below are excerpts from the New York Times article today about Wangari Maathai, the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. What is so wonderful about this award, aside from the obvious facts that it went a woman, an African woman, is that it acknowledges the absolute dependence of humanity on our environment. Particularly those of us who are United Statesers have been brought up to believe in individuality and self-reliance without awareness of our true interdependence on each other and our planet, and on an ideology that we are separate from nature and can exploit it at our will. This award signals a recognition our worldview is mistaken. When I was in the Peace Corps, we learned just how dependent our surroundings were on us as well as vice versa. The East Africa is a harsh, beautiful and fragile land and disturbances are quickly evident. Soil on land stripped of trees blows quickly away, and people find themselves trying to grow food to eat in the desert. Swollen bellies blossom on kids without enough protein in their diets. Pesticides and herbicides kill lakes in front of our eyes. Even up on the side of our mountain, water was too polluted with human and animal waste to drink without treatment. Today, with the great growth in poverty and population at least in part triggered by economic relations with the west, the situation is far graver with the worst problems of industrialization and urbanization seeping across the countryside to kill soil and water, wildlife and people.
From the article, an AP release:
Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her work as leader of the Green Belt Movement, which has sought to empower women, improve the environment and fight corruption in Africa for almost 30 years.
Maathai, Kenya's deputy environmentminister, is the first African woman to win the prize, first awarded in 1901. She gained recent acclaim for a campaign planting 30 million trees to stave off deforestation.
"We believe that Maathai is a strong voice speaking for the best forces in Africa to promote peace and good living conditions on that continent," the Nobel committee said in its citation.
Maathai said she thought she was selected as a symbol of the struggles against poverty and environmental degradation in Africa.
"This is an overwhelming experience. It is elating. It is unbelievable, it's the kind of thing you never hear in your life. I am very flattered," she told the AP in Nyeri, Kenya.
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It was the first time the prize recognized work to preserve the environment. During the 2001 centennial anniversary of the prize, the committee said it wanted to widen the scope of the award, including honoring those who worked to improve the environment, as well as contributed to advancing peace worldwide.
"This is the first time environment sets the agenda for the Nobel Peace Prize, and we have added a new dimension to peace. We want to work for a better life environment in Africa," said committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes.
Maathai, 64, is believed to have been the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate. She got a degree inbiological sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas in 1964.
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"The environment is very important in the aspects fo peace because when we destroy our resources and our resources become scarece, we fight over that," Maathai told Norwegian state television, fighting back tears. "I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.
Maathai has also been praised for standing up to Kenya's former government, led by President Daniel arap Moi for 24 years until he stepped down after elections in 2002.
"Peace on earth depends onour ability to secure our living environment," Maathai´s citation said. "Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa."
