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People Need Open Space. People Need To Bring Their Children Into An Area Where They Can Play Without Restriction." And I Was Told, "this Is Development." And I Said, "that Is Not Development, Definitely Not Sustainable Development, Definitely Not Responsible Development. People Need Fresh Air. They Can Do Without Buildings. They Can Do Without Concrete. But They Cannot Do Without Fresh Air.

-Wangari Maathai

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People Need Open Space.

Wangari Maathai

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People Need Open Space. People Need To Bring Their Children Into An Area Where They Can Play Without Restriction." And I Was Told, "this Is Development." And I Said, "that Is Not Development, Definitely Not Sustainable Development, Definitely Not Responsible Development. People Need Fresh Air. They Can Do Without Buildings. They Can Do Without Concrete. But They Cannot Do Without Fresh Air.

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When People Can't Use You, They Ridicule What You Represent. I Was Lucky That I Understood That, Because When One Does Not Understand That, It Is Very Easy To Be Broken And To Be Subdued.

I Definitely Hope To Relax When I Get Back Hope. I Will Disappear Into The Forest And Be Rejuvenated By The Beauty Of The Mountains.

Those Of Us Who Witness The Degraded State Of The Environment And The Suffering That Comes With It Cannot Afford To Be Complacent. We Continue To Be Restless. If We Really Carry The Burden, We Are Driven To Action. We Cannot Tire Or Give Up. We Owe It To The Present And Future Generations Of All Species To Rise Up And Walk!

Recognizing That Sustainable Development, Democracy And Peace Are Indivisible Is An Idea Whose Time Has Come... Today We Are Faced With A Challenge That Calls For A Shift In Our Thinking, So That Humanity Stops Threatening Its Life-support System. We Are Called To Assist The Earth To Heal Her Wounds And In The Process Heal Our Own - Indeed, To Embrace The Whole Of Creation In All Its Diversity, Beauty And Wonder.

Support Systems

All Of Us Have A God In Us, And That God Is The Spirit That Unites All Life, Everything That Is On This Planet.

I Don't Believe [africa] Is Ready To Shift - And She Needs To Shift. So She Needs To Get The Technology And She Can Only Get That Technology From The Developed World.

Having Studied Biology Really Helped Me A Lot Because I Quickly Understand How Biological Systems Work, And How They Fail, And The Tragedy Of When They Fail, Because We Are Dealing With Life Systems, And When We Hear That A Species Has Become Extinct, Or Is Threatened, You Realize That This Could Mean That This Species Will Disappear From The Face Of The Earth Forever! So That Understanding Really Gives You Energy To Do Something To Save It.

For Example, They Have Land. The Government Of Qatar Wants To Lease The Tana River Delta, Which Is In Kenya, From The Kenyan Government, So That They Can Produce Food There. People In Kenya Need Food. We Have People Who Have Studied Agriculture. Why Is It That If We Really Need Food, We Cannot Go Into The Delta And Develop Our Own Food?

When I First Started, It Was Really An Innocent Response To The Needs Of Women In Rural Areas. When We Started Planting Trees To Meet Their Needs, There Was Nothing Beyond That. I Did Not See All The Issues That I Have To Come To Deal With.

There Are Opportunities Even In The Most Difficult Moments.

I Want To Do The Right Things - I Want To Plant Trees, I Want To Make Sure That The Indigenous Forests Are Protected Because I Know, Whatever Happens, These Are The Forests That Contain Biodiversity, These Are The Forests That Help Us Retain Water When It Rains And Keep Our Rivers Flowing, These Are The Forests That Many Future Generations Will Need.

The American Government Has Spent A Lot Of Money Trying To Reclaim, For Example, The Everglades, And To Allow The Natural Vegetation At The Coastal Areas To Be Restored Because That Was Part Of The Vegetation That Actually Protected The Hinterlands.

For The Rains And The Rivers You Need Forests And You Need To Make Sure These Your Forests Are All Protected, That There Is No Logging, That There Is No Charcoal Burning And All The Activities That Destroy The Forest. All This Really Needs To Be Done So That You Can Be Able To Grow Good Coffee, So That You Can Have An Income, So That You Can Send Your Children To School, So That You Can Buy Medicine, So That You Can Take Them To Hospitals, So That You Can Care For The Women, Especially Mothers.

People Are Dynamic. They Change, And Soon As There Are Enough Of You, Things Change [for A Whole Society].

There Will Always Be People Who Think That You Have Ambitions.

The Government Of Qatar, As I Mentioned, Has Proposed To Come And Lease Kenya's Tana River Delta In Order To Farm There. What I Am Not Sure Of Is, Has An Environmental Impact Assessment Been Made To Ensure That Exploiting This Delta For Agricultural Activities Is The Best Way We Can Use The Delta?we Must Be Concerned About The Long-term Impact Of Agricultural Activities In The Delta.

We Need To Promote Development That Does Not Destroy Our Environment.

As I Swept The Last Bit Of Dust, I Made A Covenant With Myself: I Will Accept. Whatever Will Be, Will Be. I Have A Life To Lead. I Recalled Words A Friend Had Told Me, The Philosophy Of Her Faith. "life Is A Journey And A Struggle," She Had Said. "we Cannot Control It, But We Can Make The Best Of Any Situation." I Was Indeed In Quite A Situation. It Was Up To Me To Make The Best Of It.

You Can Make A Lot Of Speeches, But The Real Thing Is When You Dig A Hole, Plant A Tree, Give It Water, And Make It Survive. That's What Makes The Difference

Every Person Who Has Ever Achieved Anything Has Been Knocked Down Many Times. But All Of Them Picked Themselves Up And Kept Going, And That Is What I Have Always Tried To Do.

It's A Matter Of Life And Death For This Country. The Kenyan Forests Are Facing Extinction And It Is A Man-made Problem.

As Long As There Is No Trust And Confidence That There Will Be Justice And Fairness In Resource Distribution, Political Positioning Will Remain More Important Than Service

Sometimes When I Talk To Little Children I Remind Them Of The Fact That When I Was Growing Up Myself, I Used To Play With Frog Eggs And Tadpoles And I Used To Walk In The Field, I Used To Literally Copy Whatever My Mother Was Doing On The Land. And That May Be The Reason Why I Eventually Developed The Passion For Green And For The Earth. So It Is Extremely Important For Adults And Especially Those Who Are In Charge Of Cities To Make Sure That We Do Not Lose Touch With The Land And With The Environment. And Especially Our Children.

It Goes To Local Authorities And Even To Members Of Parliament So That Individual Citizens Almost Become People Who Want To Sit And Wait For Their Member Of Parliament To Come And Solve The Problem. Now That Won't Take You Anywhere. And If You Follow It, You Will See That It Feeds Corruption In The Country.

We Think That Diamonds Are Very Important, Gold Is Very Important, All These Minerals Are Very Important. We Call Them Precious Minerals, But They Are All Forms Of The Soil. But That Part Of This Mineral That Is On Top, Like It Is The Skin Of The Earth, That Is The Most Precious Of The Commons.

Today With Technological Advancement, With The Internet, With Planes, With The Rate At Which We Travel - Even If You Wanted, You Cannot Hide From The Rest Of The World. And Whether You Like It Or Not, You Are Part Of This Global Marketplace, And So You Might As Well Understand It, You Might As Well Embrace It, Because Even If You Hide, It Will Find You.

If Africa Is Left Behind, She Is Going To Continue Pumping Greenhouse Gases Into The Atmosphere, Especially Carbon. She's Going To Continue Logging The Forests, She's Going To Continue Burning Charcoal, She Is Going To Continue Practicing Agricultural Activities That Destroy The Environment, And Sooner Or Later Africa's Problem Will Become A Global Problem.

There Are Certain Areas Where Foreign Investors Can Help The Local People To Generate Wealth, And Improve Their Quality Of Life. Some Companies, For Example, Del Monte, Which Produces Pineapples In Kenya, Pay A Huge Amount Of Taxes, I Am Sure, To The Kenyan Government, And They Do Create Jobs For Thousands Of Locals.

People Need Open Space. People Need To Bring Their Children Into An Area Where They Can Play Without Restriction." And I Was Told, "this Is Development." And I Said, "that Is Not Development, Definitely Not Sustainable Development, Definitely Not Responsible Development. People Need Fresh Air. They Can Do Without Buildings. They Can Do Without Concrete. But They Cannot Do Without Fresh Air.

It Is Important To Nurture Any New Ideas And Initiatives Which Can Make A Difference For Africa.

Monsanto Will Not Come Empty-handed. Monsanto Will Come With A Big Bag Of Money. And Because These Governments Are Poor, When They Are Shown Money For Their Research Institutions, For Their Universities, For Their Professors, They Are Very Quick To Say Yes, And I Can Tell You That When Monsanto Came To Kenya, They Were Able To Be Given Permission To Do Research In One Of Our Research Institutions, And Yet There Was Not A Single Law To Control Such Research.

One Of The Reasons Why I've Written The Challenge For Africa Is To Save It. Surely There Are So Many Problems We Can Solve In Africa, But First And Foremost, We Need A Government That Feels Responsible To Protect Their Own People From The Exploitations, From The Misuse, From The Mistreatment That They Can Easily Get.

We Can Work Together For A Better World With Men And Women Of Goodwill, Those Who Radiate The Intrinsic Goodness Of Humankind. To Do So Effectively, The World Needs A Global Ethic With Values Which Give Meaning To Life Experiences And, More Than Religious Institutions And Dogmas, Sustain The Non-material Dimension Of Humanity. Mankind's Universal Values Of Love, Compassion, Solidarity, Caring And Tolerance Should Form The Basis For This Global Ethic Which Should Permeate Culture, Politics, Trade, Religion And Philosophy. It Should Also Permeate The Extended Family Of The United Nations.

It Is Wonderful When You Don't Have The Fear, And A Lot Of The Time I Don't ... I Focus On What Needs To Be Done Instead.

But When You Have Bad Governance, Of Course, These Resources Are Destroyed: The Forests Are Deforested, There Is Illegal Logging, There Is Soil Erosion. I Got Pulled Deeper And Deeper And Saw How These Issues Become Linked To Governance, To Corruption, To Dictatorship.

The People Are Starving. They Need Food; They Need Medicine; They Need Education. They Do Not Need A Skyscraper To House The Ruling Party And A 24-hour Tv Station.

Some Say That Aids Came From The Monkeys, And I Doubt That Because We Have Been Living With Monkeys From Time Immemorial, Others Say It Was A Curse From God, But I Say It Cannot Be That.

I Am Working To Make Sure We Don't Only Protect The Environment, We Also Improve Governance.

I'm Sure That Many People Who Are Involved In An Environmental Effort ... They Will Be Pretty Much Encouraged By This Recognition.

It's Very Important To Remain Optimistic And To See The Silver Lining In Everything You Do. Because No Matter How Sometimes Things Look Difficult, And Look Like There Is No Hope, There Is Always A Small Glimmering Of Silver Lining That Is In Everything, And I Always Look For That, And Hang On That, And Before I Know It, Another Day Comes And Is Gone.

You Can't Reduce Poverty In A Vacuum. You Are Doing It In An Environment.

The Issue Of Climate Change, It Really Does Bring Home The Fact That We Are On One Planet, And That Some Of The Impact Of What Human Beings Do In One Corner Of The World Is Going To Affect People In A Distant Corner Of The World. So We May Still Feel Very Far From Each Other, But We Are Really Very Close To Each Other Because Of The Changes We Have Made With Travel And Technology And Especially The Information Technology.

I Stand Before You And The World Humbled By This Recognition And Uplifted By The Honour Of Being The 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate. As The First African Woman To Receive This Prize, I Accept It On Behalf Of The People Of Kenya And Africa, And Indeed The World. I Am Especially Mindful Of Women And The Girl Child. I Hope It Will Encourage Them To Raise Their Voices And Take More Space For Leadership.

We Can Love Ourselves By Loving The Earth.

What A Friend We Have In A Tree, The Tree Is The Symbol Of Hope, Self Improvement And What People Can Do For Themselves.

I Knew That I Was Not Doing Anything Wrong, And I Knew In My Mind I Was Doing The Right Thing. I Knew That The People Who Were Going Against Me Were Not Going Against Me For A Good Purpose. I Knew That They Were Trying To Justify Their Corruption And Misgovernance.

It Gradually Became Clear That The Green Belt Movement's Work With Communities To Repair The Degraded Environment Could Not Be Done Effectively Without Participants Embracing A Set Of Core Spiritual Values.

You Can Educate People On How To Preempt Their Own Conflict.

Resources On The Planet Are Limited, And Limited Resources Can Come To An End. But There Are Also A Lot Of Resources That Are Renewable. A Lot Of Land, For Example, Can Be Reclaimed From The Encroaching Deserts.

Anybody Can Dig A Hole And Plant A Tree. But Make Sure It Survives. You Have To Nurture It, You Have To Water It, You Have To Keep At It Until It Becomes Rooted So It Can Take Care Or Itself. There Are So Many Enemies Of Trees.

The Way In Which We Can Promote Peace, Is By Promoting Sustainable Management Of Our Resources, Equitable Distribution Of These Resources, And That The Only Way You Can Actually Do That, Is That Then You Have To Have A Political, Economic System That Facilitates That. And Then You Get Into The Issues Of Human Rights, Justice, Economic Justice, Social Justice, And Good Governance Or Democratic Governance. That's How It Ties Up.

I’m Very Conscious Of The Fact That You Can’t Do It Alone. It’s Teamwork. When You Do It Alone You Run The Risk That When You Are No Longer There Nobody Else Will Do It.

So Gmos, Who Knows? Maybe Gmos Will Come, They Will Get Maize That Produces Double. But Who Knows What Else May Happen To The Maize?

Culture Defines Who We Are And How We See Ourselves. A New Attitude Toward Nature Provides Space For A New Attitude Toward Culture And The Role It Plays In Sustainable Development

You Cannot Blame The Mismanagement Of The Economy Or The Fact That We Have Not Invested Adequately In Education In Order To Give Our People The Knowledge, The Skills And The Technology That They Need In Order To Be Able To Use The Resources That Africa Has To Gain Wealth

What I Am Trying To Say Is That They Need To Learn To Rely On Themselves And To Learn From Other People, And When You Learn Something From Other People, Then You Keep Moving Onward For Yourself.

You Cannot Protect The Environment Unless You Empower People, You Inform Them, And You Help Them Understand That These Resources Are Their Own, That They Must Protect Them.

Sometimes We Become Bound By Other People's Thoughts Because We Are Not Sure About Ourselves.

I Think [gmo] Is One Area Where The Is A Need For Legal Regulations To Make Sure That Companies - Because At The Moment, Companies Are The Ones That Have This Technology - Will Not Use This Technology In A Way That Could Adversely Affect The People.

The Developed World Should Be Willing To Help [africa] And Support Her And Make This Energy Affordable.

In Kenya Women Are The First Victims Of Environmental Degradation, Because They Are The Ones Who Walk For Hours Looking For Water, Who Fetch Firewood, Who Provide Food For Their Families.

Those Of Us Who Have Been Privileged To Receive Education, Skills, And Experiences And Even Power Must Be Role Models For The Next Generation Of Leadership.

First Of All, Farmers Should Work With Universities And Research Institutions In The Country, And Hopefully With The Government.

We Can Work Together For A Better World With Men And Women Of Goodwill, Those Who Radiate The Intrinsic Goodness Of Humankind.

We Are Called To Assist The Earth To Heal Her Wounds And In The Process Heal Our Own - Indeed, To Embrace The Whole Creation In All Its Diversity, Beauty And Wonder. This Will Happen If We See The Need To Revive Our Sense Of Belonging To A Larger Family Of Life, With Which We Have Shared Our Evolutionary Process.

Human Rights Are Not Things That Are Put On The Table For People To Enjoy. These Are Things You Fight For And Then You Protect.

Why Do We Have To Have People Come From Afar To Come And Grow Food For Us, Or To Grow Food To Sell To Us? It Is Partly Because We Are Almost Becoming Used To People Doing Things For Us. Like Somebody Else Is Going To Solve That Problem For Us. And That To Me Is Very Disempowering System.

For Me, One Of The Major Reasons To Move Beyond Just The Planting Of Trees Was That I Have Tendency To Look At The Causes Of A Problem. We Often Preoccupy Ourselves With The Symptoms, Whereas If We Went To The Root Cause Of The Problems, We Would Be Able To Overcome The Problems Once And For All.

The Little Grassroots People Can Change This World.

All Of Us Have A God In Us, And That God Is The Spirit That Unites All Life, Everything That Is On This Planet. It Must Be This Voice That Is Telling Me To Do Something, And I Am Sure It's The Same Voice That Is Speaking To Everybody On This Planet - At Least Everybody Who Seems To Be Concerned About The Fate Of The World, The Fate Of This Planet.

If You Make Mistakes That Is Alright Because We All Make Mistakes And We Learn From Those Mistakes. You Gain Confidence From Learning, Failing And Rising Again.

The Essential Role Of The Environment Is Still Marginal In Discussions About Poverty. While We Continue To Debate These Initiatives, Environmental Degradation, Including The Loss Of Biodiversity And Topsoil, Accelerates, Causing Development Efforts To Falter.

You Have To Know Yourself, And That Once You Know Yourself, Then You Cannot Be Bound By - Because Sometimes We Are Bound By Other People's Thoughts, Because We Are Not Sure About Ourselves. But Once You Know Yourself... I Guess It Is Really An Expression Of The Biblical Statements That The Truth Will Make You Free! When You Know, Then You Are Free, Your Mind Is Free.

It's The Little Things Citizens Do. That's What Will Make The Difference. My Little Thing Is Planting Trees.

Unfortunately, The Issues Of Climate Change, Unlike Many Other Issues, Are Very Subtle Because The Changes We Observe Are Very, Very Subtle.

It Would Be Good For Us Africans To Accept Ourselves As We Are And Recapture Some Of The Positive Aspects Of Our Culture.

One Of The Reasons Why We Started The Green Belt Movement Is To Work With These Ordinary Peasant Farmers So As To Educate Them That, Despite The Fact That They Are Poor, It Is In Their Interest To Protect The Soil That They Have, To Protect The Forest They Have, To Protect The Land That They Have, Because If They Don't Do It, Things Can Be Only Worse Tomorrow For Them For Them And For Their Children.

It Was Easy To Persecute Me Without People Feeling Ashamed. It Was Easy To Vilify Me And Project Me As A Woman Who Was Not Following The Tradition Of A 'good African Woman' And As A Highly Educated Elitist Who Was Trying To Show Innocent African Women Ways Of Doing Things That Were Not Acceptable To African Men.

Nile Perch Is A Fish That Was Introduced Into Lake Victoria. The Reason That Fish Was Introduced Into Lake Victoria Was Because It Was Decided That The People Living Near The Lake Needed More Proteins Than They Were Getting.

When These Resources Are Degraded Or Polluted, Then There Are Fewer Of Them For The Rest Of Us, And Then We Start Competing For Them And Eventually As We Compete, There Are Those Of Us, Who Have The Capacity, Who Have The Ability To Be The Controllers, To Decide Who Accesses Them, How Much They Access, And Eventually There Is A Conflict. Those Who Feel Marginalized, Those Who Feel Excluded, Eventually React In An Effort To Get Their Own Justice, And We Have Conflict.

Tradition Sometimes Excludes The Girl Child From Inheriting; Or Single Women May Not Want To Be Perceived As Pursuing Too Much Property. The Law Has Come A Long Way In Favor Of The Woman, But It Is The Tradition, The Attitudes, That We Often Have To Fight.

I Learned In America A Long Time Ago, The Three R's, The Principle Of Three R's - Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. And As I Say Those Words, There Are So Many Things Individually We Can Do To Reduce - We Don't Need To Consume As Much As We Are Consuming. Reduce. And By Reusing, We Can Reuse A Lot Of Things We Just Throw Into The Dumpsite. And Reduce The Production. The More We Reuse, The More We Can Reduce.

When We Plant Trees, We Plant The Seeds Of Peace And Seeds Of Hope.

It Was Easy For Me To Be Ridiculed And For Both Men And Women To Perceive That Maybe I'm A Bit Crazy Because I'm Educated In The West And I Have Lost Some Of My Basic Decency As An African Woman.

In The Course Of History, There Comes A Time When Humanity Is Called To Shift To A New Level Of Consciousness, To Reach A Higher Moral Ground. A Time When We Have To Shed Our Fear And Give Hope To Each Other. That Time Is Now.

I Don't Really Know Why I Care So Much. I Just Have Something Inside Me That Tells Me That There Is A Problem, And I Have Got To Do Something About It. I Think That Is What I Would Call The God In Me.

When Resources Are Degraded, We Start Competing For Them, Whether It Is At The Local Level In Kenya, Where We Had Tribal Clashes Over Land And Water, Or At The Global Level, Where We Are Fighting Over Water, Oil, And Minerals. So One Way To Promote Peace Is To Promote Sustainable Management And Equitable Distribution Of Resources.

Nobody In The World Is Completely Dependent On Another Person, But We Are All Interdependent.

I'm Sure The Government Of Qatar Is Not Coming In To Grow Food For The People Of Kenya; It's Coming To Grow Food To Sell. If It Can Also Sell To The People Of Kenya, Well, Then Good. I Think That The Moves Can Be Helpful, But I Think That The History That Africa Knows, As I Say In My Book, Has Been A History Of Exploitation.

As Long As We Have All These Conflicts, It Is The Women Who Will Continue To Suffer, So That Is One Reason Why I Guess As Women We Should Really Work For Peace, Because We Know How Painful Wars Can Be To Us And Our Daughters.

After Hurricane Katrina, Many People Said That The Levees Were Not As Effective As The Natural Vegetation That Had Been Removed At The Coast. So That Means As We Develop These Seaside Land Masses, We Need To Have Enough Knowledge To Not Regret In The Future. We Know That The Us Government Is Literally Buying These Lands Back To Allow Them To Be Rehabilitated.

We Do The Right Thing Not To Please People But Because It's The Only Logically Reasonable Thing To Do, As Long As We Are Being Honest With Ourselves - Even If We Are The Only Ones.

There's A General Culture In This Country To Cut All The Trees. It Makes Me So Angry Because Everyone Is Cutting And No One Is Planting.

No Matter Who Or Where We Are, Or What Our Capabilities, We Are Called To Do The Best We Can.

We Owe It To Ourselves And To The Next Generation To Conserve The Environment So That We Can Bequeath Our Children A Sustainable World That Benefits All.

Women Are Responsible For Their Children, They Cannot Sit Back, Waste Time And See Them Starve.

The Women Of The Green Belt Movement Have Learned About The Causes And The Symptoms Of Environmental Degradation. They Have Begun To Appreciate That They, Rather Than Their Government, Ought To Be The Custodians Of The Environment.

That's The Way I Do Things When I Want To Celebrate, I Always Plant A Tree. And So I Got An Indigenous Tree, Called Nandi Flame, It Has This Beautiful Red Flowers. When It Is In Flower It Is Like It Is In Flame.

The Issue Of Carbon Is One Area Where We Really Need To Work Together And If People Don't Have The Technology They Need, That Technology Needs To Be Made Available And Affordable.

The Planet Needs Trees. If There Is Indeed That Carbon Dioxide Out There In The Atmosphere, The Only Species On The Planet That Can Actually Trap It For Us In A Natural Process Of Photosynthesis Are The Trees.

Disempowerment - Whether Defined In Terms Of A Lack Of Self-confidence , Apathy, Fear, Or An Inability To Take Charge Of One's Own Life - Is Perhaps The Most Unrecognised Problem In Africa Today.

Self Confidence

Because I Was A Woman, I Was Vulnerable. It Was Easy To Vilify Me And Project Me As A Woman Who Was Not Following The Tradition Of A 'good African Woman.'

We Refuse To Share Resources; We Govern Irresponsibly. If We Are Confident, If We Have Some Of Our Cultural Values, Then We Would Be More Committed To Assisting Our People Out Of Poverty And Creating An Environment That Can Make It Possible For Our Friends To Assist Us.

We Tend To Put The Environment Last Because We Think The First Thing We Have To Do Is Eliminate Poverty And Send Children To School And Provide Health.

That's The Way I Do Things When I Want To Celebrate, I Always Plant A Tree.

When You Know Who You Are You Are Free.

Quite Often When You Help Poor People, They Don't Think About The Environment. They Think About Survival.

We Cannot Tire Or Give Up. We Owe It To The Present And Future Generations Of All Species To Rise Up And Walk!

We Have A Responsibility To Protect The Rights Of Generations, Of All Species, That Cannot Speak For Themselves Today. The Global Challenge Of Climate Change Requires That We Ask No Less Of Our Leaders, Or Ourselves.

Why Has There Been So Much Secrecy About Aids? When You Ask Where Did The Virus Come From, It Raises A Lot Of Flags. That Makes Me Suspicious.

The Living Conditions Of The Poor Must Be Improved If We Really Want To Save Our Environment

Until You Dig A Hole, You Plant A Tree, You Water It And Make It Survive, You Haven't Done A Thing. You Are Just Talking.

I Know There Is Pain When Sawmills Close And People Lose Jobs, But We Have To Make A Choice. We Need Water And We Need These Forests.

An Individual Citizen Cannot Protect Himself From The Powers Of Large Corporations Or External Governments. It Is The Responsibility Of The Government To Protect Its Citizens.

I Have Seen A Lot Of Men, For Example, Who Will Make A Will And Include Their Daughters Whether They Are Married Or Not. And Perhaps The Greatest Change Of Attitude Is That Today, At Least In Kenya, If You Don't Send Your Child To School - Unless It's A Matter Of Poverty Or Religion, And It Is Not That There No Schools - Then People Wonder, "why The Hell Don't You Send Your Children To School?" Now That's A Very Big Jump From When I Was Going To School And Educating Girls Was An Exception To The Rule.

African Women In General Need To Know That It's Ok For Them To Be The Way They Are - To See The Way They Are As A Strength, And To Be Liberated From Fear And From Silence.

Education Of Course Is A Very Empowering Experience, So Many People Who Went To School Also Managed To Improve Their Quality Of Life Much Faster Because They Could Get A Job, They Could Get Money, And With Money You Could Buy Things That You Cannot Buy If You Don't Have Money.

It Is Evident That Many Wars Are Fought Over Resources Which Are Now Becoming Increasingly Scarce. If We Conserved Our Resources Better, Fighting Over Them Would Not Occur ... Protecting The Global Environment Is Directly Related To Securing Peace. Those Of Us Who Understand The Complex Concept Of The Environment Have The Burden To Act. We Must Not Tire, We Must Not Give Up, We Must Persist.

For Us Who Are Now In Power, We Need To Be Challenged To Serve The People And Ignore Our Own Egos And Personal Interests So That We Can Really Demonstrate To Other African States That It Is Possible To Share Power Without Going To War.

I Think What The Nobel Committee Is Doing Is Going Beyond War And Looking At What Humanity Can Do To Prevent War. Sustainable Management Of Our Natural Resources Will Promote Peace.

I Think Some Of These Solutions Are Prepared In An Office Without A Full Understanding Of The Local Situation.

It Is Very Important For Young People Not To Be Afraid Of Engaging In Areas That Are Not Common To The Youth. Get Involved In Local Activities, Get Involved In Local Initiatives, Be Involved In Leadership Positions Because You Can’t Learn Unless You Are Involved. And If You Make Mistakes That Is Alright Too Because We All Make Mistakes And We Learn From Those Mistakes. You Gain Confidence From Learning, Failing And Rising Again.

The People Are Learning That You Cannot Leave Decisions Only To Leaders. Local Groups Have To Create The Political Will For Change, Rather Than Waiting For Others To Do Things For Them. That Is Where Positive, And Sustainable, Change Begins.

In A Few Decades, The Relationship Between The Environment, Resources And Conflict May Seem Almost As Obvious As The Connection We See Today Between Human Rights, Democracy And Peace.

Education Is A Very Empowering Experience, So Many People Who Went To School Also Managed To Improve Their Quality Of Life Much Faster Because They Could Get A Job, They Could Get Money. Once People See That You Improve Your Life If You Are Educated, Then Education Becomes A Valuable Tool And People Want It.

I Have Always Felt That Perhaps Women Have Sometimes Almost Embraced The Same Values As Men, And The Same Character As Men, Because They Are In The Men's World, And They Are Trying To Fit Into A System That Men Have Created. And Maybe In Truth When There Is A Critical Mass Of Women Who Play That Role In Governments, Then We Will See Whether Women Can Really Manage Power In A Way That Is Less Destructive Than The Way That Men Have Used Power.

I Was Particularly Talking With Respect To Aid, Because That To Me Is One Area That Can Make People So Dependent, And Unfortunately, That Dependency Starts With The Government.

Culture Is Coded Wisdom

I Would Like To Call On Young People To Commit Themselves To Activities That Contribute Toward Achieving Their Long-term Dreams. They Have The Energy And Creativity To Shape A Sustainable Future. To The Young People I Say, You Are A Gift To Your Communities And Indeed The World. You Are Our Hope And Our Future.

What Is Really Important Is To Educate People How To Protect Themselves And How To Ensure That, Despite Their Poverty, They Can Get Tested And Access Drugs. So I Just Hope That Those Who Can Will Make Those Drugs Available.

When You Think Of All The Conflicts We Have - Whether Those Conflicts Are Local, Whether They Are Regional Or Global - These Conflicts Are Often Over The Management, The Distribution Of Resources. If These Resources Are Very Valuable, If These Resources Are Scarce, If These Resources Are Degraded, There Is Going To Be Competition.

Yet Now The Industrialized World Is Moving Away From Fossil Fuels And Moving Towards Renewable Sources Of Energy. And Because We Have Not Invested So Much Into Education, We Don't Have The Technology And Sometimes We Don't Even Have The Capital To Buy This Technology.

All Through The Ages The African People Have Made Efforts To Deliver Themselves From Oppressive Forces.

We Tend To Put The Environment Last Because We Think The First Thing We Have To Do Is Eliminate Poverty. But You Can't Reduce Poverty In A Vacuum. You Are Doing It In An Environment.

Now When Nile Perch Was Introduced [into Lake Victoria], I Don't Think Enough Research Was Done; Maybe It Was Done, Maybe It Was Not. But Nile Perch Is A Huge Fish. So It Ate All The Little Fish, And It Grew Into A Monster Which The Local People Could Not Fish With Their Little Boats And Their Little Nets.

We All Share One Planet And Are One Hummanity, There Is No Escaping This Reality.

One Of The Reasons Why I Say We All Need To Work Together To Save The Congo Forest, Because If We Don't Save The Congo Forest, The Amazon Forest And The Southeast Asia Forest, If Those Forests Release The Carbon They Are Trapping At The Moment, Much Of What You Will Be Doing In The North Will Be Negated By The Amount Of Carbon Released Into The Atmosphere.

Passion Begins With A Burden And A Split-second Moment, When You Understand Something Like Never Before. That Burden Is On Those Who Know. Those Who Don't Know Are At Peace. Those Of Us Who Do Know Get Disturbed And Are Forced To Take Action.

We’re Constantly Being Bombarded By Problems That We Face And Sometimes We Can Get Completely Overwhelmed. [but] We Should Always Feel Like A Hummingbird. I May Feel Insignificant, But I Don’t Want To Be Like The Other Animals Watching The Planet Go Down The Drain. I’ll Be A Hummingbird, I’ll Do The Best I Can.

What People See As Fearlessness Is Really Persistence. Because I Am Focused On The Solution, I Don't See The Danger.

Once People See That You Improve You Life If You Are Educated, Then Education Becomes A Valuable Tool And People Want It.

For Me Planting A Tree Is A Very Doable Thing. It's Not Complicated, It Doesn't Require Technology, It Doesn't Require Much Knowledge, But It Can Be A Very Important Entry Point Into Communities Understanding How They Destroy Their Own Resources, But How They Can Also Restore Those Resources, And Not Wait For Their Government Or International Agencies To Come And Help Them.

Do Not Be Naive. Aids Is Not A Curse From God To Africans Or The Black People. It Is A Tool To Control Them Designed By Some Evil-minded Scientists, But We May Not Know Who Particularly Did It.

We See That The Environment Is Something To Exploit, Because We See The Environment In Terms Of Minerals For Example, Or Forests, Or Even Raw Materials That We Produce On Our Land, Or Even Land Itself. We See It In Terms Of What We Can Exploit Rather Than The Medium In Which All Of These Activities Have To Take Place.

As A Scientist I Cannot Say We Don't Want To Hear Anything About Gmos, Because These Are Advances In Science. But I Think Its Also Important, Especially When You Are Dealing With Food, To Be Cautious.

I Think That For Anybody Who Has Worked In The Civil Society, Government Bureaucracy Moves Very Very Slowly.

Education, If It Means Anything, Should Not Take People Away From The Land, But Instill In Them Even More Respect For It, Because Educated People Are In A Position To Understand What Is Being Lost. The Future Of The Planet Concerns All Of Us, And All Of Us Should Do What We Can To Protect It. As I Told The Foresters, And The Women, You Don't Need A Diploma To Plant A Tree.

In Kenya, One Of Our Biggest Exports Is Coffee. Where Do You Grow Coffee? You Grow Coffee In The Land. To Be Able To Grow Coffee You Need Rain, You Need Special Kinds Of Soils That Are Found On Hillsides, And That Means You Have To Protect That Land From Soil Erosion So You Don't Lose The Soil. You Also Want To Make Sure That When The Rains Come You're Going To Be Able To Hold That Water And Have It Go Into The Ground So That The Streams And The Rivers Keep Flowing And The Ground Is Relatively Humid For These Plants.

When I Went Back Home, I Was Constantly Being Reminded, I'm An African Woman, And So There Are Certain Things I Shouldn't Do, Certain Ambitions That I Should Not Entertain. That Was A Problem For Me Because I Had Never Thought Of Myself As An African Woman, Never Thought Of Myself As A Woman To Begin With. For Me The Limit Was My Capacity, My Capability.

We Are Very Fond Of Blaming The Poor For Destroying The Environment. But Often It Is The Powerful, Including Governments, That Are Responsible.

There Is No Reason Why A Company Like Monsanto, For Example, That Is Pushing Gmos, Cannot Go To Kenya, Partner With The University, Partner With The Research Institutions, And Try To Promote - In A Responsible Way - Advanced Techniques To Help Farmers. But This Should Be Done In Such A Way That The Farmers' Livelihoods Are Not Undermined Because The Government Is Irresponsible Or Careless, Or Because It Is Compromised.

Sometimes I Feel Frustration At The Bureaucracy For Not Moving Fast Enough To Deliver In The Way That I Would Prefer. But That Is Probably Because I Have Worked For Many Years In The Civil Society, Which Tends To Move Much Faster Than Government.

Every One Of Us Can Make A Contribution. And Quite Often We Are Looking For The Big Things And Forget That, Wherever We Are, We Can Make A Contribution. Sometimes I Tell Myself, I May Only Be Planting A Tree Here, But Just Imagine What's Happening If There Are Billions Of People Out There Doing Something. Just Imagine The Power Of What We Can Do.

Using Trees As A Symbol Of Peace Is In Keeping With A Widespread African Tradition. For Example, The Elders Of The Kikuyu Carried A Staff From The Thigi Tree That, When Placed Between Two Disputing Sides, Caused Them To Stop Fighting And Seek Reconciliation. Many Communities In Africa Have These Traditions.

Obviously The World Is Moving Away From High Carbon Energy To Low Carbon Energy, And Eventually Moving Away Toward Renewable Energy. So It Is In The Interest Of Africa To Move Towards That, Because That's Where The World Is Moving.

And So I'm Saying That, Yes, Colonialism Was Terrible, And I Describe It As A Legacy Of Wars, But We Ought To Be Moving Away From That By Now.

You Cannot Enslave A Mind That Knows Itself. That Values Itself. That Understands Itself.

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