Wangari Maathai

Nobel-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai dies

Wangari Maathai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, passed away. She was the first African woman and first environmental activist to win the prize.

Obama’s Nobel: What it means for greens

Dip a toe into the Nobel Peace Prize news and next thing you’re drowning in commentary. Here’s an attempt to distill what it means for greens, by which I mean the types of people who rely on air, water, soil, and other naturey elements. Obama’s nuclear disarmament work won him the award. A member of […]

Nobel Peace Prize update

The first Nobel Peace Prize given to an environmental activist, Kenyan Wangari Maathai, was officially awarded Friday night in Oslo. Professor Maathai laid out her case for an integrated understanding of the fights for the environment, democracy, and equitable natural resource management in a New York Times op-ed. Her acceptance speech is available on the Nobel site.

As earlier posts discussed, this particular award was not without its critics.

Roundtrippin’ from local to global

Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai isn't just sticking to the local environment, development, and security struggles that earned her the 2004 award. Dr. Maathai, the Kenyan environmental activist and deputy environment minister, recently called on African governments to be more aggressive in addressing climate change. She argued for presenting the climate change challenge in "simple terms" with "simple solutions" such as planting trees.  Read more on BBC.

Wince

As everyone likely knows by now, freshly-minted Nobel Prize Winner Wangari Maathai recently -- just a day after winning the prize -- claimed before a news conference that AIDS was "created by a scientist for biological warfare" to kill blacks. "Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial; others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that," she proclaimed.