Profesor Wangari Maathai, a biologist and environmentalist, was the
first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She gained
international recognition in 1977, when she founded the Green Belt
Movement to combat deforestation and soil erosion in her native Kenya.

A week after receiving the prize in Oslo, she said the following here
in New York:

“In the beginning, 30 years ago, I was responding to the needs of rural
populations, especially women, who were looking for firewood. They were
looking for food. They were looking for building materials, for fodder
for the animals. They were trying to meet to meet basic needs in their
communities. I immediately connected what they were asking for with the
land. i suggested that what we needed was to plant trees.

It was then that I confronted the problem of democratic governance. I
noticed that we really did not have a democratic system, because
immediately we started organizing, the government did not want us to
organize. The government said you cannot meet. If you’re in a system
which does not allow its citizens to participate in decision-making, or
demand certain decisions from their government, it is impossible to
protect the environment. Therefore for me, the connection between
protecting the environment, managing resources responsibly and allowing
for equitable distribution of these resources to avoid conflict
required democratic space.

Development to me is a quality of life. It’s not necessarily
acquisition of things. I have been using the example of an African
three legged stool. On those legs balance a basin. One of those legs is
peace. Another is good governance. Another is good management of our
resources, as I’ve said includes equitable distribution - allowing as
many people as possible to share in the natural resources. This allows
as many people as possible to experience respect, dignity, and respect
of their rights - and therefore avoids conflict.

I remember the industrialized countries and even the World Bank saying
- ‘if we cancelled this debt, it is not the poor who will benefit. It
is the leaders - who are corrupt, who are engaging in wars and making
it impossible for people to do even the little that they could - who
will benefit. Therefore it doesn’t make sense to cancel.’

We cannot afford to have a region where a few people are filthy rich
and a huge number of people are in dehumanizing poverty. definitely we
cannot use our resources to fight each other and kill each other, to
the extent that we are now engaging our children to go to the
forefront. By doing that we don’t have a future! To me, that is the
message this Nobel prize brings Africa.

Quite often, people think that democracy, perhaps because it’s a a
Greek word, is something that is being imposed on Africans. But I know
that even within our traditional governance systems, this concept of
equity was very strong - even stronger than it is in many western
democracies. So I believe very strongly that it is not a new concept.
it is not a Western concept. It is not a conditionality that is coming
from the outside.”

We believe that what Wangaari Maathai was talking about is the essence
of sustainable development.

The World Economic Forum meets in Davos, Switzerland, January 25 - 29,
2006. It is expected to deal with the ways of making place for the
growth of China and India for the benefit of the world economy, but it
must also deal with the weaklings of the system - practically the whole
African continent. We are all expectation regarding what will be
suggested this year at Davos. Leaving Africa behind to rot in in its
own slums, while watching how all developed and growing countries only
help increase the rot, will do nothing less then create a further area
of instability in an already shaky world.