[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 16421-16422]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    REMEMBERING DR. WANGARI MAATHAI

 Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, 2 months ago, on September 
25, 2011, Dr. Wangari Maathai of Kenya, the first African woman to 
receive a Nobel Peace Prize, passed away after her fight with ovarian 
cancer. She was a woman of firsts, of force, and of foresight. She was 
a woman who empowered millions of African women with hope and 
opportunity.
  Born on April 1, 1940, in Nyeri, Kenya, to peasant Kikuyu farmers, 
Wangari Muta Maathai, at the urging of her older brother, attended 
primary school at a time when it was rare for women to receive an 
education. Her father worked for a White landowner who forced him to 
sell all his crops to him at whatever price was offered. From an early 
age, Dr. Maathai possessed a deep and abiding love and respect for 
nature. As a child, she spent time at Kanungu--an underground stream 
that flowed close to a sacred fig tree, and she would till fields with 
her mother, once saying, ``I grew up close to my mother, in the field, 
where I could observe nature.''
  She went on to secondary school where she graduated at the top of her 
class. In 1964, she was awarded a scholarship to attend Mount St. 
Scholastica

[[Page 16422]]

College in Atchison, KS, where she graduated with a biology degree. She 
pursued her master's of science at the University of Pittsburgh. From 
there, she continued her studies in both Germany and Kenya where she 
earned her doctorate in veterinary anatomy from the University of 
Nairobi. She was the first woman from East or Central Africa to earn a 
doctorate degree, and also the first woman to hold a professorship at 
the University of Nairobi's Department of Veterinary Anatomy which she 
later chaired another first for a woman.
  Through the force of personality, she reinforced the links between 
poverty and health, economic security, and environmental 
sustainability. Returning to Kenya from her studies abroad, she saw how 
deforestation and planting of cash crops had stripped the land of 
resources, causing animals and plants to disappear. The result was a 
lack of food, water, and rampant erosion. The effect was particularly 
devastating for women who were not only the family caretakers, but as 
subsistence farmers, depended [S3]upon the land for their livelihood.
  In 1977, Dr. Maathai had the foresight to establish the Green Belt 
Movement which sought to combat the aggressive deforestation occurring 
in Kenya. Asked about her efforts, she once said, ``It occurred to me 
that some of the problems women talked about were connected to the 
land. If you plant trees you give them firewood. If you plant trees you 
give them food.'' While many derided her efforts, this Movement, made 
up mostly of women, has planted more than 30 million trees across 
Africa and helped approximately 900,000 Kenyans develop and sustain 
their ability to care for themselves and their families.
  The Green Belt Movement would spread across the continent. Dr. 
Maathai inspired the development of the Pan African Green Belt Network. 
Her efforts have resulted in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, 
Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe starting their own reforestation efforts. The 
Movement not only emphasizes the relationship between the people and 
their land, but also empowers women in the areas of family planning, 
reproductive health, nutrition, food security, and leadership 
development.
  Dr. Maathai's environmental work eventually permeated the realm of 
politics. As a proponent of civic responsibility, she entered politics 
with the understanding that ``the message for Africans is that the 
solutions to our problems lie within us.'' As an advocate for the poor 
and under-represented, Dr. Maathai suffered not only political taunts 
but also physical violence at one point being brutally beaten by police 
and at another time, a victim of a tear gas attack. Throughout the 
1990s, Dr. Maathai was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, and threatened 
for exercising her rights.
  Despite physical threats and political setbacks, in December of 2002, 
she was elected to Kenya's National Assembly and was appointed the 
Deputy Minister for Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife. She 
was also instrumental in the creation of Kenya's Bill of Rights. She 
went on to serve as the Presiding Officer of the Economic, Social, and 
Cultural Council ECOSOCC, of the African Union, as well as Goodwill 
Ambassador to the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem.
  As the author of multiple publications, Dr. Maathai garnered many 
awards including the 1989 WomenAid International Women of the World 
Award, the 1991 Goldman Environmental Prize, the 1991 United Nation's 
Africa Prize for Leadership, the 1993 Edinburgh Medal, the 2001 Juliet 
Hollister Award, the 2003 WANGO Environment Award, and the 2004 Sophie 
Prize. She has received numerous honorary degrees from a wide array of 
institutions including: Yale University; Williams College; University 
of California at Irvine; and Morehouse University. In 2005, she was 
honored by both Time Magazine and Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 
most influential people in the world and as one of the 100 most 
powerful women in the world, respectively. She was also a United 
Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Hall of Fame recipient. In 
2006, Dr. Maathai was awarded France's highest honor, the Legion 
d'Honneur, by French President Jacques Chirac.
  During her acceptance speech of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. 
Wangari Maathai said:

       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. A time when we have to shed our fear 
     and give hope to each other. That time is now.

  Whether she was advocating for the right of women or for the 
importance of protecting and developing the environments in which they 
live, Dr. Maathai's legacy of service advocating a message that one has 
the power to change the lives of many--remains.

                          ____________________