LIFE OF THE SUSTAINBILITY HERO

SUBMITTED BY
CHINMAYA KUMAR SWAIN
EXCUTIVE MBA,
BATCH: - 2015 - 16
Enrollment No: UMEF15007
SUBMITTED TO
PROF. S. PEPPIN
XAVIER INSTITUTE OF MANAGENENT,
XAVIER UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION
Wangari Maathai was a renowned Kenyan environmentalist activist who
spent the better half of her life fighting for environmental issues.
Her original name was Wangari Muta.
She was the first African woman environmentalist to be honoured with the
prestigious Nobel Prize for her contribution to sustainable development,
democracy and peace. Also she was the first African woman to be
awarded with a doctorate degree. It was her excellent academic
background and great skills that earned her prestigious positions at the
University of Nairobi.
In 1970s, she founded the Green Belt Movement, which involved
planting trees to conserve the environment. With time, the nongovernment organization expanded and focussed on environmental
conservation and womens rights as well.
In 2006, France bestowed upon her one of its highest decorations, Legion
dhonneur.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Childhood & Early Life
Wangari Maathai was born as on 1 April 1940 in the village of Ihithe
in the central highlands of the colony of Kenya.
Two years later, she shifted along with her parents to a farm near
Rift Valley where her father had found work.
In 1947, she returned to Ihithe, for lack of educational opportunities
at the farm.
At the age of eight, she enrolled at the Ihithe Primary School and
within three years, moved to St. Cecilia's Intermediate Primary
School. It was during her years at St Cecilia that she became fluent
in English and converted to Catholicism, thus taking up the surname
Maathai.
In 1956, Completing her preliminary education with the top grade,
she gained admission at Loreto High School.
In 1960, she was one of the 300 promising students selected to
study in the United States.
She gained admission at Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas,
wherein she majored in biology.

 Finishing her BSc in 1964, she enrolled at the University of

Pittsburgh to get an MSc in biology, which she attained in 1966.
During her tenure at the university, she was first exposed to
environmental restoration by group of environmentalists who were
looking to free the city from air pollution.
Career
Concluding her studies, she returned to Kenya to take up the seat of
a research assistant to a professor of zoology at the University
College of Nairobi. However, the post was transferred to someone
else due to gender and tribal biasness.
She finally found work under Professor Reinhold Hofmann in the
microanatomy section of the newly established Department of
Veterinary Anatomy in the School of Veterinary Medicine at
University College of Nairobi.
Following continuous persistence from Prof Hoffman, she relocated
to Germany in 1967 to pursue a doctorate degree from the
University of Giessen and University of Munich. Two years later, she
returned to Nairobi to further continue her studies. She took up the
post of the assistant lecturer at the University College of Nairobi.
In 1971, she became the first Eastern African woman to be
awarded with a Ph.D. in veterinary anatomy.
Her career graph witnessed an upward drift in the following years.
She gradually rose up to be assistant professor from assistant
lecture, in 1977.
It was while holding on to these significant positions that she fought
against gender and tribal biasness, strongly raising her voice for
equal rights of women.
Other than holding on to her university profile, she worked for
various civic organizations, serving as the member of the Kenya
Association of University Women, local Environment Liaison Centre,
and National Council of Women of Kenya.
In 1973, she was elected as the director of Kenya Red Cross Society.
It was while working for the non-profit organizations that she
realized that the root of the problems in Nairobi was due to
environmental degradation.
In an attempt to fulfil her husbands claim of limiting unemployment
in Kenya, she founded Envirocare Ltd. The company not only
provided employment, but also attended to the idea of
environmental restoration. The job required no special skills and
involved people to plants trees to save the environment.
Envirocares first nursery was formulated in the Karura Forest.
However, due to financial hitches, the project closed down.
Nevertheless, her efforts did not go unnoticed and she was selected
to be a part of the first UN conference on human settlements,
known as Habitat I, in June 1976.

 Returning to Nairobi, she promoted her idea of planting trees at the

National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK). Accepting the idea,
the council led a procession on June 5, 1977 planting seven trees.
Formerly known as Save the Land Harambee, it later became
popular as Green Belt Movement.
Same year, she underwent personal crises following divorce from
her husband and the subsequent charges of contempt of court. Her
bad phase left her monetarily weak. As a result, she sent her kids to
her ex-husband, while she took up a job at the Economic
Commission for Africa which involved too much travelling.
In 1979, she contested for the position of a chairman at the National
Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK). She lost by three votes and was
eventually given the seat of vice chairman. Following year, she won
an unopposed election and was chosen as the chairman, a position
she retained until 1987. Despite immense financial problems, the
organization gained worldwide fame for its environmental friendly
work.
In 1982, she gave up her position at the University of Nairobi to
contest for a Parliamentary seat. However, she was ruled ineligible
for the same. She eventually found work as a coordinator for Green
Belt Movement, which started to flourish.
With greater popularity, the Green Belt Movement expanded
throughout Africa and founded the Pan-African Green Belt Network.
It transformed to become a separate non-government organization
and aimed to combat issues such as desertification, deforestation,
water crises and rural hunger.
Towards the latter half of the 1980s, she started pressing for
democracy, constitutional reform and freedom of expression. This
did not go down well with the government which forced her to
vacate the office.
In a series of events that followed, she launched a hunger strike to
liberate political prisoners. Though the government did not bow
down to the demands initially, they eventually surrendered and the
prisoners were freed in 1993.
With an attempt to defeat the ruling party and bring down President
Arap Moi from his chair, she twice attempted to unite the opposition,
but in vain. As a result, in 1997, she ran for the seat of the president
as a candidate of the Liberal Party but lost it.
In 2002, she again stood for the elections, this time as the candidate
of the National Rainbow Coalition, which unified the opposition. She
finally defeated the ruling party and took on the office of the
Assistant Minister in the Ministry for Environment and Natural
Resources and served in the capacity from 2003 until 2005.
In 2005, she was appointed as the first president of the African
Union's Economic, Social and Cultural Council and was selected a
goodwill ambassador for an initiative aimed at protecting the Congo
Basin Forest Ecosystem.
In 2007, she was defeated in the Party of National Unity's primary
elections for its parliamentary candidates. Choosing to run as a

candidate of a smaller party, she was later defeated yet again in

December 2007 parliamentary election.

Awards & Achievements

Throughout her life and posthumously, she has received various awards
and honours for her outstanding contribution as an environmentalist and
activist. The most prominent of those include the Nobel Peace Prize in
2004 for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and
peace.
She was bestowed with one of Frances most honourable decorations,
Legion dhonneur, in 2006.
She was awarded two honorary degrees, Doctor of Public Service by the
University of Pittsburgh in 2006 and Doctor of Science by Syracuse
University posthumously in 2013.

Personal Life & Legacy

She married Mwangi Mathai, in May 1969. The couple was blessed with
three children. They parted ways in 1977 which was followed by a legal
separation in 1979.
On September 25, 2011, she breathed her last dying out of complication
arising from ovarian cancer.
A year after her death, Wangari Maathai Award was inaugurated to honour
and commemorate an extraordinary woman who championed forest issues
around the world.
On April 1, 2013, marking her 73rd birthday, she was posthumously
honoured with a Google Doodle.

CONCLUSION
From her biography I learned she was a born worrier from childhood. She
had inner desire to excel, which is being shaped gradually by her interest
towards education and situations around her. The worrier within her had
taken shape for the betterment of community, society, environment and
the world. The Seed of Green Belt Moment (GBM), she showed in the
heart of the peoples around her, despite so many odds became a big tree
today with lots of branches.
Number of GBM supported community tree nursery groups 4,034

 Number of indigenous seedlings raised by the community nurseries

annually 8,000,000 seedlings
Average number of trees planted in critical watershed areas
annually 5,000,000 trees
Number of trees planting sites in critical watersheds across Kenya
6,500
Total number of trees planted since 1978 to date Over 51 million
Average survival rate 70%
Warangi Matai not only involved with the Green Belt Movement, the other
area where she was also promoting was :

Self and Community Empowerment

Water conservation
Uplifting of livelihood of community.
Human Rights
Pro Democracy Movement
Gender equality

Even if she was being through lots of situations like disasters in personal
life, critical financial situations and political obstructions from political
parties in Kenya, she stood out against all the odds. Which resulted in
below: Today Green Belt Movement is huge success not only Kenya around
the world.
Community involvement in the environmental protection,
conservation and replenishment.
Democracy in Kenya.
Recognigation for her and her model for environment, community
empowerment.
She has been honoured with lots of prizes including NOBEL PRIZE.
At last I will close the topic from the Wangari Maathai Book Unbowed
Although I was a highly educated woman, it did not seem odd to me to work with
my hands, often with my knees on the ground, alongside rural woman. Some politicians
and others in the 1980s and 1990s ridiculed me for doing so. But I had no problem with
it, and the rural women both accepted and appreciated that I was working with them to
improve their lives and the environment. After all, I was a child of the same soil.
Education, if it means anything, should not take people away from land, but instill in
them even more respect for it, because educated people are in a position to understand
what is being lost. The future of the planet concerns all of us, and we should do what

we can to protect it. As I told the foresters, and the women, you don't need a diploma
to plant a tree.
Wangari Muta Maathai Unbowed, pp. 137138.

When I see Uhuru Park and contemplate its meaning, I feel compelled to fight for it so
that my grandchildren may share that dream and that joy of freedom as they one day
walk there.
Wangari Muta Maathai Unbowed, p. 192.

!! MY GRAND SALUTE TO THE SUSTAINABILITY WARRIOR !!