Wangari Maathai's Other Initatives

In addition to the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai's other intiatives include:

Mottainai: The Four R's (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, ...and Repair)

Wangari Maathai first learned of the concept mottainai while visiting Japan. One meaning in Japanese is "what a waste!" But it also captures in one term the "Three Rs" that environmentalists have been campaigning on for a number of years: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Maathai is seeking to make mottainai a global campaign, adding one more "R" suggested by Klaus Töpfer, the head of the UN Environment Program: "respect" resources.

We can practice mottainai in rich countries where overconsumption is rampant, and we can do it in regions where environmental devastation is causing the poor to get poorer and the ecosystems on which they depend to be degraded, some beyond repair.

In Wangari Maathai's case, mottainai means continuing to plant trees. She has also called on her parliamentary colleagues to ensure that government offices use both sides of each sheet so they can halve the amount of paper they consume.

Wangari Maathai urges the public (and manufacturers) not to use plastic bags that are so thin they tear almost immediately, or are used once and then thrown away. These bags clog waste dumps and blight the landscape in Kenya and other countries. They also provide good breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. If we did not use these bags, and instead carried our shopping in more long-lasting and environmentally friendly containers, we could revitalize traditional industries like basket and cloth weaving.

This could become a global trend. If Kenya began exporting millions of baskets woven by women from sustainably harvested sisal plants to developed countries at a fair price, that would be an important contribution to the protection of the earth, to rural livelihoods, and to fair trade. This is just one example of mottainai. Wangari Maathai encourages us to think of others relevant to our life, our community, and our country.

Watch Wangari Maathai speak about mottainai in April, 2009!

Protecting the Congo Basin

At the Second Heads of State Summit for Conservation and Sustainable Management of Central Africa’s Forest Ecosystems held in Congo, Brazzaville on February 4-5, 2005, Wangari Maathai accepted a public invitation by H.E. President Denis Sassou Ngeuso to be the roving Ambassador for the Congo Basin. In this role she will advocate for the sustainable management of this world heritage site.

As Professor Maathai has said: “The Congo Basin forest is a global hotspot for biodiversity and is also one of the world’s two remaining forest “lungs” (the other is the Amazon). As such, the rainforests in central Africa play an important role in absorbing CO2, a main greenhouse gas, and providing the world with oxygen. They literally help keep us breathing.

"Yet, the Congo Basin forest ecosystem is threatened by illegal logging, mineral exploration, poaching and the bush meat trade, all of which are putting the trees, the animals and the people who depend on them at risk. Therefore the world’s remaining forests must be protected, because without them not only will the global climate not be stabilized, but the world will suffer, in particular the poor, who have few options."

The Millennium Development Goals

The eight Millennium Development Goals were established by the United Nations at the turn of the twenty-first century as a reference point for the world in its attempts to alleviate human suffering and develop sustainably. The eight goals are:

  • To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
  • To achieve universal primary education
  • To promote gender equality and empower women
  • To reduce child mortality
  • To improve maternal health
  • To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
  • To ensure environmental sustainability
  • To develop a global partnership for development

Wangari Maathai has long supported the aims of the MDGs, and believes that environmental conservation must play a central role if the MDGs are to be achieved. Unless there is adequate food security, based on the care of ecosystems, poverty and hunger cannot be eradicated (1), children will die (4), and education (2) will be impossible, as children are pulled out of school to work in the fields or are too malnourished to learn. There can be no development (8) or combating of tropical diseases or HIV/AIDS (6), or healthy (5) and empowered women (3) unless we stop polluting and destroying the environment in which we live and begin to relieve the burden of women, who have to walk so far to get firewood or spend so long gathering food. Only when we acknowledge the centrality of the environment (7) will we have a hope of reaching the Millennium Development Goals.