|
Prof. Wangari Maathai, awarded with $100,000 prize for
Tree Planting in Africa
NORWAY: March 31, 2004
OSLO - Kenya’s assistant environment minister won a $100,000 prize Monday for leading a campaign to combat
deforestation by planting more than 25 million trees across Africa.
Prof. Wangari Maathai, 63, was awarded the Sophie Prize for her work for the environment, justice and human
rights. The prize is named after the 1990s international bestseller “Sophie’s World,” a novel and
teenager’s guide to philosophy.
The awards committee said Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement, mainly women, had planted about 25 million
trees in a campaign to slow deforestation and erosion. The movement has spread to about 20 African nations.
“This gives hope that Kenya can reverse a trend where massive logging in the last decades has cut forest
coverage to 1.7 percent of the country,” it said.
“She is the incarnation of an Africa getting on its feet again after the colonial times,” Sophie’s World
author Jostein Gaarder told a news conference.
He also praised Prof. Maathai’s commitment to democracy and the idea that economic growth should not damage the
environment.
Wangari Maathai won a parliamentary seat in 2002 elections as head of the Green Belt Movement, which
went to court repeatedly under the previous government of president Daniel arap Moi in a bid to block forest
clearances.
The Sophie Prize was set up in 1998 with cash from Gaarder’s book sales in a drive to inspire work for the
environment and development.
|
