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Kenyan Woman Environmentalist Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Posted on: Saturday, 9 October 2004, 06:00 CDT

Kenyan woman environmentalist wins Nobel Peace Prize

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 8, (Xinhua) -- Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her work that has sought to empower women, better environment and fight corruption in Africa for almost 30 years.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Maathai, Kenya's deputy environment minister, for founding the Green Belt Movement (GBM) that has planted more than 30 million trees across Africa to slow deforestation.

"Through education, family planning, nutrition and the fight against corruption, the Green Belt Movement has paved the way for development at grass-root level," the Nobel committee said in its citation.

"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 jury said.

"Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment," the citation said, adding "Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa."

Maathai, 64, founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, which has been carried out primarily by women in the villages of Kenya, who through protecting their environment and through the paid work are able to better care for their children and their future.

She was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree and to head a university department in Kenya.

Having earned a biology degree from Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas and a master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh, Maathai returned to Kenya and earn a Ph.D. at the University of Nairobi. She eventually became head of the veterinary medicine faculty at the university.

Maathai became involved in organizing work for poor people in the 1970s and this later became a national grass-roots organization, providing work and improving the environment at the same time. She also served as national chairperson for the National Council of Women of Kenya.

Maathai is the seventh African to win the prize since it was first awarded in 1901. Previous winners from Africa include United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who shared the prize with the United Nations in 2001, and Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, South Africa, in 1993.

"Thank you so much, I am absolutely overwhelmed and very emotionally charged, really. I did not expect this," she told Norwegian state television after the announcement.

"The environment is very important in the aspects of peace because when we destroy our resources and our resources become scarce, we fight over that. I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance," said Maathai, who has served as Kenya's Assistant Minister for the Environment since 2003.

Maathai won the prize, worth 1.36 million US dollars, from a record field of 194 candidates. The award is always presented on Dec. 10 the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the prize's creator Alfred Nobel, in the Swedish capital Stockholm.

The peace prize is awarded in Oslo, and the other Nobel prizes are announced in Stockholm.

This year's award announcements began Monday with the Nobel Prize in medicine going to Americans Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck for their work on the sense of smell.

On Tuesday, Americans David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek won the physics prize for their explanation of the force that binds particles inside the atomic nucleus.

On Wednesday, Israeli biochemists Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose of the United States won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work related to how the human body singles out unwanted proteins for destruction to defend itself from disease.

Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek was awarded the literature prize Thursday becoming only the 10th woman to win the prize.

The economics prize will be announced Oct. 11.

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