Environmental Visionary Dies

Wangari Maathai, a human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, started a movement to plant more than 30 million trees and generate nearly 1 million jobs.

| 2 min read

Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
2:00
Share

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 ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

The Scientist Logo
Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!
Already a member? Login Here

Keywords

Meet the Author

  • Rachel Nuwer

    This person does not yet have a bio.
Share
3D illustration of a gold lipid nanoparticle with pink nucleic acid inside of it. Purple and teal spikes stick out from the lipid bilayer representing polyethylene glycol.
February 2025, Issue 1

A Nanoparticle Delivery System for Gene Therapy

A reimagined lipid vehicle for nucleic acids could overcome the limitations of current vectors.

View this Issue
Enhancing Therapeutic Antibody Discovery with Cross-Platform Workflows

Enhancing Therapeutic Antibody Discovery with Cross-Platform Workflows

sartorius logo
Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Lonza
An illustration of animal and tree silhouettes.

From Water Bears to Grizzly Bears: Unusual Animal Models

Taconic Biosciences
Sex Differences in Neurological Research

Sex Differences in Neurological Research

bit.bio logo

Products

Tecan Logo

Tecan introduces Veya: bringing digital, scalable automation to labs worldwide

Explore a Concise Guide to Optimizing Viral Transduction

A Visual Guide to Lentiviral Gene Delivery

Takara Bio
Inventia Life Science

Inventia Life Science Launches RASTRUM™ Allegro to Revolutionize High-Throughput 3D Cell Culture for Drug Discovery and Disease Research

An illustration of differently shaped viruses.

Detecting Novel Viruses Using a Comprehensive Enrichment Panel

Twist Bio