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Tuesday, 30 November, 2004, 09:36
GMT
Africa 'makes excuses on climate'
By Alex Kirby
BBC News website environment correspondent, in Nairobi
| Wangari
Maathai, who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, says African
governments should do more about climate change.
Professor Maathai, also
Kenya's deputy environment minister, was speaking to African
journalists at the United Nations Environment Programme HQ
here.
She said climate change
mattered, and the Kyoto Protocol on how to limit its effects
must be taken seriously by all. |
Professor Maathai says
Africa's women "carry a heavy burden" |
Professor Maathai, an environmental
and human rights campaigner, will receive the peace prize in
Norway in December.
She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which has planted
20-30 million trees in Africa to counter forest loss and slow the
spread of the deserts.
Challenge to backsliders
Mrs Maathai told the journalists, attending a climate workshop
organised by Unep's GRID-Arendal office: "There's no reason
why our African governments can't control greenhouse emissions,
but quite often we make excuses.
| "We
say, for example, we're poor and so we can't impose taxes.
But should we be taxing people trying to earn a living?
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"We see our
children dying in the fields, we see the future slipping
away"
Wangari Maathai
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"When we act, we challenge
those who are not doing as much as we think they should. I'm
trying to educate the Kenyan government, and sometimes I have to
do it loudly."
She criticised the way in which firewood and charcoal cost people
less than electricity. "In the long term", she said,
"using wood will cost us more. It's a very expensive
resource.
"The tree is an empowering symbol: when you've planted one,
something happens to the environment. It's not the only solution,
but it's something most of us can do.
Trees for remembrance
"Anyone can dig a hole. And one tree multiplied several
million times gives you a forest."
Professor Maathai said many Africans did not understand the
problem of climate change.
| "We need to
explain it to them in simple terms and to give them simple
solutions," she said. "When a baby is born, or
when someone dies, plant a tree."
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"We women in Africa
carry the burden of poverty and conflict"
Wangari Maathai
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Winning the prize had made "a
lot of people open their eyes. Many wondered why a highly educated
person would spend their time digging holes and planting trees.
"But this is a matter of life and death, and the Nobel
committee has made a wonderful decision."
Mrs Maathai lamented the decline of traditional knowledge and the
neglect of African species.
Forgotten familiars
She said: "Much of our knowledge and experience is not in
books but in our cultures, and that's why I'm concerned about
their loss.
"We import
seeds, not from this environment but for instance maize from
the Americas. Every year we're dealing with a new hybrid.
"I don't know how far we'll go till we rediscover the
sorghums and millets and pumpkins that are indigenous to
Africa."
And she was far from
convinced that African men were leading the continent well.
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Trees can galvanise people,
Maathai says
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Professor Maathai said: "We
women in Africa carry the burden of poverty and conflict. We see
our children dying in the fields, we see the future slipping away.
"I've been calling on Africa's leaders, who are mostly men,
to make sure resources are exploited for the people's benefit, to
help them out of poverty, ignorance and disease.
"We've been waiting for men to change. We women have an
important role in challenging them to be responsible to us and to
our children - to stop sending them off to die on the front lines."
SOURCE
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