In Kenya women are the first victims of environmental degradation, because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water, who fetch firewood, who provide food for their families. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war. Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
But when you have bad governance, of course, these resources are destroyed: The forests are deforested, there is illegal logging, there is soil erosion. I got pulled deeper and deeper and saw how these issues become linked to governance, to corruption, to dictatorship. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
And so I’m saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
You cannot blame the mismanagement of the economy or the fact that we have not invested adequately in education in order to give our people the knowledge, the skills and the technology that they need in order to be able to use the resources that Africa has to gain wealth. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
When you think of all the conflicts we have – whether those conflicts are local, whether they are regional or global – these conflicts are often over the management, the distribution of resources. If these resources are very valuable, if these resources are scarce, if these resources are degraded, there is going to be competition. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
That’s the way I do things when I want to celebrate, I always plant a tree. And so I got an indigenous tree, called Nandi flame, it has this beautiful red flowers. When it is in flower it is like it is in flame. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
There’s a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
It’s a matter of life and death for this country. The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa. Wangari Maathai Read Quote
