It's not an obvious connection, but Wear Pact is offering to plant 20 trees through the Green Belt Movement, run by Lantern author Wangari Maathai, for every piece of underwear that you buy from their site. You can buy patterned or plain, and there are men's and women's styles. The underwear is "responsibly manufactured" in Turkey, and vegan. So, I just bought two pairs, and thought you might be interested in doing the same. What more is there to say?
This planet is the only home we've got, and we need to protect it. We can't live without it and we're destroying it thoughtlessly. All of us want to make a difference, but we're often overwhelmed by the task ahead of us, or don't know how to begin. A living example of how one person can make a difference is Wangari Maathai. Thirty years ago, she began planting trees and changed the face of Kenya, becoming, in 2004, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The Green Belt Movement is a record of her achievements and a primer on setting up your own organization. It is also, however, a testament to her achievements as a woman of peace, seeding not only the means whereby we can literally keep our planet alive but also providing hope and possibility to the world's poorest.
Congratulations to Nobel Laureate, environmentalist, and Lantern author Wangari Maathai, sometimes known as Mama Miti or "Mother of the Trees," on becoming a grandmother for the first time. Wangari's daughter, Wanjira, and her husband Lars welcomed Ruth Wangari into the world on July 24th. Ruth weighed eight pounds, and mother and daughter are doing well.
During her visit to the United States to promote her book The Challenge for Africa, Lantern author and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai spent a few days in Calistoga, California, where Lantern had the good fortune to catch up with her. In this video, made in collaboration with The Green Belt Movement, Prof. Maathai talks about the Billion Tree Campaign campaign, which has so far planted over a billion trees, had two billion more pledged, and aims to plant seven billion in total by December 2009.
During her visit to the United States to promote her book The Challenge for Africa, Lantern author and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai spent a few days in Calistoga, California, where Lantern had the good fortune to catch up with her. In this video, made in collaboration with The Green Belt Movement, Prof. Maathai talks about the mottainai campaign, an attempt to reduce, reuse, and recycle plastic bags throughout Kenya.
Lantern author Professor Wangari Maathai has a new book out. Entitled The Challenge for Africa, the book aims to provide a (welcome) contrast to the barrage of voices on Africa that come from white, non-African, men (Bono, Bob Geldof, Nicholas Kristof, Jeffrey Sachs, William Easterly, Paul Collier, et al.). In the book, Prof. looks at the legacies of colonialism, failed leadership post-Independence, and the culture of dependency caused by unfair trade rules, poorly targeted aid, and corruption from the top to the bottom and shows how they have held Africa back.
Characteristically, she advocates for a grassroots revival, and offers a clarion call for individuals of character and integrity to lead Africa to self-determination and self-confidence. It's a powerful and prophetic book, and it offers a (sadly) all-too-rare perspective: that of an African, who still lives in Africa, and knows and loves her continent enough to tell the unvarnished truth.
Things are at an impasse politically between President Mwai Kibaki and prime minister-designate Raila Odinga over the size and composition of the Kenyan cabinet. Ever since former UN secretary general Kofi Annan brokered a peace deal that brought to an end weeks of violence that followed the disputed December 2007 elections, citizens had hoped that the two leaders would work together to create a coalition government that would start governing and repair the considerable damage to peoples' lives and Kenya's reputation and economy. Unfortunately, Kenyan politics for decades has been marked by people doing their own business rather than the people's, and enriching themselves rather than their citizens.
In her autobiography Unbowed, Wangari Maathai mentions the several times that her life was threatened during the early 1990s when the government was out to get her for her outspoken support of democracy and against thuggishness.
In the wake of the contested 2007 elections, her life is once more being threatened. This time, the would-be assassins, who come from the Mungiki criminal gang have texted three messages to her cellphone promising that if she does not stop criticizing the government of her fellow Kikuyu, President Mwai Kibaki, she will be killed.
In Unbowed, Prof. Maathai thanks the international community and the pressure groups for spreading the word about threats against her life, since, she believes, it was international pressure and awareness that saved her from harm. While there's no evidence the government is behind the Mungiki threats, the situation is grave. Readers are invited to visit the Amnesty International site to express their support for Wangari and urge the authorities to stop Mungiki before it's too late.
When I wrote in a blog in early December about Wangari Maathai, the up-coming Kenyan elections, and dangerous signs of violence, neither I nor (I imagine) Wangari Maathai could have conceived that post-election Kenya would spiral into interethnic conflict so severe and desperate.
Perversely, however, I'm going to concentrate on the positives. While Wangari Maathai did, indeed, lose her seat, as expected, many of us are relieved, since it will allow her to speak out beyond the constraints of politics. Indeed, she's doing this right now: meeting with Archbishop Desmond Tutu to find ways to mediate the crisis, asking for peace on the BBC and in the Kenyan media, and calling on both President Kibaki and the opposition leader (and aggrieved "winner" of the presidential election) Raila Odinga, to come together to stop the violence.
Another positive was that while the presidential election was, to put it mildly, filled with irregularities (something that even the notoriously supine attorney general of Kenya, Amos Wako, has noted), the parliamentary elections seem to have been generally reflective of the wishes of the people—and that the people kicked the bums out. No fewer than 20 cabinet ministers lost their seats, including some of the most notorious and corrupt time-servers. If Kibaki retains power, which it is currently hard to see him doing, he will either face a vote of no confidence when the parliament convenes, or, if he survives that, have to work with the opposition and bring many of them into his cabinet. The hope, of course, expressed by the people is for reform and an end to the cronyism and corruption that has marked Kenyan governance for decades. As of now, it remains only that: a hope.
I imagine that Lantern author Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and veteran campaigner for human rights and democracy, must look out on the current parliamentary and presidential campaign in Kenya and feel a disturbing sense of deja vu. As she writes in her autobiography, Unbowed, efforts through the 1990s to defeat at the ballot box strongman Daniel arap Moi, and his party KANU, were stymied by a fractious opposition. In 2002, this opposition gathered together under the acronym NARC, pooled their candidates, and won. Wangari Maathai herself was elected to Parliament for her home constituency of Tetu in Kenya's Central Highlands, and made Assistant Minister for the Environment.
That was five years ago. The NARC coalition, always fragile, barely survived a ruckus over constitutional reform that descended into ethnic rivalry. When President Kibaki sacked his cabinet in the winter of 2005, Wangari Maathai was twice looked over for the job of Minister of the Environment—something that must have stung deeply for someone honored for her commitment to her country's environment.
We went along the other night to the New York premiere of The 11th Hour, the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced documentary about how our climate is changing, why it is, why our politics isn't working to change it, what science and technology is doing to address it, and what we can do about it. As that last sentence indicates, the film is densely packed with very BIG issues, and it doesn't quite work. In spite of its density, it barely touches upon food issues (it does have images of factory farms and acres of wheatfields), or population, or the issue of equity and environmental justice in the developing world (which will be disproportionately affected by global climate change).
Still, it's a very worthy film, on a subject that we need to be made aware of over and over again, just so we get the message and change our lives. The 11th Hour is currently in general release.
In getting ready to watch some of the Live Earth events, I began to wonder: will the global concert series make clear that even though, as I've heard organizers say, "everyone" will be affected by climate change, some (many) will be affected more than others? Namely those in poor countries and poor communities in rich countries (think Katrina)—people who haven't contributed much to the greenhouse gases now warming up the planet. "Climate justice" is a rallying cry, but I haven't heard it loud and clear from that many U.S. climate activists or activist musicians . . . at least not yet.
Evidence of climate change in Africa is already here. Food emergencies have risen three-fold each year since the mid-1980s. A warming world will increase the risk factors for conflicts between and within countries. According to a recent paper, when shortfalls in seasonal rains led to drought and economic distress in 40 sub-Saharan African countries, the likelihood of civil war rose by 50 per cent. . . .
Calling for the restoration of Kenya’s water towers and protection of the Congo forest does not mean excusing developed countries, whose greenhouse gas emissions are the main culprit.
Many others and I are challenging the leaders and citizens of industrialised nations, and in fact all nations, to move beyond fossil fuels, to reduce their energy consumption, and to adopt policies so that individuals can live more responsibly on the planet.
The industrialised governments must not only accept their moral responsibility to help Africa and other poor regions find alternative and renewable sources of energy, but also protect forests.
Al Gore and the many others who'll be on stage this weekend, I'm waiting for you. Justice and equity ought to be the words of the day, and beyond. century.
Wangari Maathai, Nobel peace laureate (and Lantern author) has been waging a campaign in Kenya to get the government to ban thin plastics, especially those ubiquitous flimsy bags, and to get consumers to use “eco-friendly” carrying devices like baskets made from grasses. The effort is taking off, and not a moment too soon. It’s sad but true that even here in the Maasai Mara ecosystem, one of the world’s great wildernesses, plastic bags are around. Inside the Maasai Mara reserve it’s rare to see anything other than biological material—thick grasses, trees, shrubs and of course an amazing number of animals and birds. But outside the reserve it’s a different story. On the drive here from Narok, the honky-tonk town that is the gateway to the Mara, near every town and village a thousand (or so) plastic bags seemed to bloom.
In bushes, in the grasses, in trees. Mostly clear, but also the occasional blue-green variety. It’s depressing to see, as it must be depressing to live around. So why do people toss the bags into their environment? It’s hard to know, which means it may be hard to stop. Yet nearly everyone would agree that the bags are a nuisance. And an unsightly and unhealthy one at that (they can lodge in the stomachs of domestic and wild animals and serve as a petri dish for malaria-carrying mosquitoes). So why do these bags continue to bedevil us and the landscape? They’re cheap, they’re everywhere, and even though they’re a relatively new invention, they have become a staple of everyday life, even here in a remote region of Kenya. And their manufacturers want to keep churning them out. After all, there’s money to be made. Kenyan industrialists cite the jobs created by creating all of those plastic bags.
Of course, the calculus is false: they’re costing an arm and a leg and more. I hope San Francisco and Ireland and Dhaka, Bangladesh can withstand the caterwauling of the bag manufacturers so their bans and taxes on the flimsy nuisances hold up. Then, on my or your next visit to the Mara, perhaps Kenya will have done the same—and the most infinite variety of species to greet you on your way in won’t be those made of petrochemicals and oil.
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