Karura Forest sits in the northern corner of Nairobi, Kenya, an oasis of more than 1,000 hectares of native trees, waterfalls and nature trails surrounded by a modern city of more than 3 million people.
It’s one of the largest urban forests in the world, and it wouldn’t exist without the efforts of one woman: 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai.
Her story begins in 1940 on her family’s farmstead in Kenya’s central highlands, where she was born at the foot of Mount Kenya. In 1960, she won a Kennedy scholarship to study in the United States, and earned a master’s degree in biology from the University of Pittsburgh.
Wangari returned to Kenya in 1966 to teach at the University of Nairobi, where she became the first African woman to earn a Ph.D. Five years later she chaired an academic department, another first.
When Wangari returned to Africa, deforestation was a growing problem. Illegal logging and corrupt development deals had degraded forests and farmland; topsoil erosion from heavy rains filled rivers and streams; and widespread fertilizer use affected the quality of soil, making it hard to grow crops.
Her solution: Plant more trees.
In 1977 Wangari founded the Green Belt Movement (GBM), an organization that planted trees and employed regular citizens, mostly women, to do it.
Working with the National Council of Women of Kenya, and with support from the new Environment Program at the United Nations, Wangari grew the GBM into a broad-based, grassroots organization that recruited women from farms, at schools and in churches. Her simple message: Planting just one tree is “a simple act with profound meaning” that symbolizes the nurturing of democracy, good governance and a practical approach to resource management.
But her path wasn’t an easy one. Wangari’s belief that ordinary people, particularly women, were the best advocates for their communities, and should be trusted to manage them, ran counter to the Kenyan government at the time.
She fought government corruption, especially among land developers, and in 1989 led a successful international protest against a $220 million development in Uhuru Park, directly petitioning England’s Prince Charles for help.
In 1992, Wangari went into hiding after Kenya’s president targeted her and other pro-democracy activists; six years later she led a hunger strike to prevent developers from building in Karura Forest in Nairobi.
Still, she persisted. In 2002, Wangari campaigned for and won a seat in Parliament, and two years later she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She was the first African woman and the first environmentalist to be recognized.
“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground,” Wangari said in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
“A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”
Wangari died in 2011 after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her legacy lives on in the butterflies, waterfalls and lily ponds of Karura Forest, where the Kenyan Forest Service runs education programs and community events.
Professional guides lead groups of schoolchildren through the memorial groves dedicated to her memory. To date, the Green Belt Movement has planted more than 50 million trees in Kenya and East Africa — one tiny sapling at a time.
Top photo credit: Mekami