Wangari Maathai at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, in 2004. RICARD MEDINA
Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting environmental and economic wellbeing and women’s rights, died yesterday (September 25) from ovarian cancer, The New York Times reported. She was 71 years old.
Maathai touched innumerable lives around the world. In 1977 she founded the Green Belt Movement in her native Kenya, aiming to plant trees across the country to battle erosion, provide jobs for women, and firewood for fuel. Her Movement enriched Africa with more than 30 million trees and aided around 900,000 poor women by paying them a few shillings to plant trees.
Maathai’s groundbreaking work inspired similar efforts in other African countries, and in 2004, Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace,” according ...
