A RADICAL scientist who gave up her lab coat for a lifetime helping poor African women plant trees has won the Nobel peace prize.
Last Friday, Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan, became the first African woman to win the prize for her 30-year stewardship of the Green Belt Movement. She recently took a job as assistant environment minister in Kenya鈥檚 new reformist government.
Maathai, the first woman in East Africa to get a biology doctorate, told New 杏吧原创 four years ago that her university had forced her to choose between academia and activism (22 July 2000, p 42). She chose the latter, fighting privatisation of common land and raising money to pay poor women small sums to run plant nurseries. Her movement has planted 30 million trees.
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鈥淢aathai鈥檚 movement has planted more than 30 million trees in Africa鈥�
She says her biggest achievement has been 鈥渢o link the environment to the problems rural people experience in their lives鈥�, such as shortages of water and deterioration of soils.
To celebrate her prize, she planted a Nandi flame tree in the shadow of Mount Kenya, an area that has been ravaged by loggers.