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Kenyan green activist wins Nobel Peace Prize

Oslo, October 8
Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai today became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for aiding the continent’s poor with a campaign to plant millions of trees to slow down deforestation.

“Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment,” head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Ole Danbolt Mjoes said while announcing the winner. He praised her “contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”

“Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa,” she said.

Maathai won the prize, worth 10 million Swedish crowns (1.36 million dollars), from a record field of 194 candidates. Named after Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, the prize is handed out in Oslo on December 10.

Maathai is the founder of the Kenya-based Green Belt Movement, comprising mainly women, which says it has planted about 30 million trees across Africa.

Born in 1940, Maathai says tree plantings slow desertification, preserve forest habitats for wildlife and provide a source of fuel, building materials and food for future generations to help combat poverty.

“I am absolutely overwhelmed,” she told Norway’s NRK television after confirmation of the award. “This is the biggest surprise in my entire life. When we plant new trees we plant the seeds of peace.”

Maathai is the first African woman to win the peace prize and the 12th woman peace laureate since the first award was made in 1901.

The 2003 prize had also gone to a woman, Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi. The current Nobel Committee, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament early in 2003, comprises three women and two men. — Reuters