Why wangari maathai

Millions of planted trees through this program have provided fuel, food, shelter, income, and an improvement to soil and watersheds. It has empowered citizens by giving them hope for peace with one another and with nature. Professor Maathai died in after a battle with ovarian cancer. She will be forever recognized for her tireless struggle for human rights and environmental conservation.

In , Wangari Gardens opened in Washington, DC and is a community garden project for local residents which consists of over 55 garden allotments.

The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. For more updated biographical information, see: Maathai, Wangari, Unbowed : a memoir. William Heinemann, London, Wangari Maathai died on 25 September Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page. Nobel Prizes Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in , for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.

See them all presented here. Maathai played an active part in the struggle for democracy in Kenya, and belonged to the opposition to Daniel arap Moi's regime. In she started a grass-roots movement aimed at countering the deforestation that was threatening the means of subsistence of the agricultural population. The campaign encouraged women to plant trees in their local environments and to think ecologically.

As well as having been featured in a number of books, she and the Green Belt Movement were the subject of a documentary film, Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai Marlboro Productions, She obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St.

Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas , a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh , and pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, before obtaining a Ph.