Wangari Maathai legacy continues to inspire humanity

This week marks the third anniversary of the death of one of Kenya’s and the world’s guiding lights - a woman with a vision of social justice through environmental integrity, and an infectious determination to make that vision a reality.

Wangari Maathai was an advocate, a champion, a leader, and an individual with an immovable resolve to protect one of our planet’s most prized possessions – trees. It is easy to feel the gap that such a luminary leaves behind. After all, Prof Maathai’s achievements are truly remarkable.

From her tireless work promoting women’s rights, first at the University of Nairobi and then as a member of the National Council of Women of Kenya, to founding The Green Belt Movement and inspiring one of the most successful environmental campaigns in the world - the Billion Tree Campaign - Wangari Maathai, Africa’s first female Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, left an indelible mark on Kenya and on the world. Prof Maathai never saw herself as a lone crusader. On the contrary, she saw herself as a catalyst for social and environmental justice, whose mission it was to reignite and mobilise a passion for nature, land and conservation that she determined to be innate to all Kenyans.

Stewards of one of the most breathtakingly beautiful and diverse landscapes on earth, Professor Maathai knew, would stand with her against the degradation of a natural environment that remains the envy of the world to this day. Prof Maathai started a movement that she believed was collectively owned by Kenya, then Africa and then the world.

Since her death, Kenya has proved that her faith was not misplaced, by taking on the mantle of environmental leadership in the fight against climate change and deforestation.

Under Kenya’s new Constitution Kenya has committed to achieving 10 per cent tree cover, as well as protecting and enhancing intellectual property in, and indigenous knowledge of, biodiversity and the genetic resources of the communities.

Under the leadership of the Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, the Government of Kenya is working to achieve full rehabilitation and protection of its five critical water towers, including its most important - the Mau Forest Complex. Research by the Kenya Forest Research Institute and UNEP estimates the economic benefit of the Mau Forest Complex to be more than Sh115 billion per year, with the forest serving as a natural water tower to approximately 10 million people and countless wildlife species.

The restoration of the Mau Forest was a lifelong pursuit of Prof Maathai, and in the years since her passing on, the Kenyan government, with the support of its partners, including UNEP, has repossessed more than 21,000ha of forestland, and rehabilitated more than 10,000 hectares as part of a long-term commitment to fully rehabilitate the forests.

Kenya is also a rising star in the renewable energy sector.

The Vision 2030-endorsed Lake Turkana Wind Power Project, which will comprise 365 wind turbines, is the largest single private investment in Kenya’s history, and is set to provide 300MW of reliable, low-cost wind power to the National Grid.

That’s equivalent to approximately 20 per cent of the current installed electricity-generating capacity and will replace Sh15.6 billion annual fossil fuel imports, and prevent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

The pledge made just two days ago at the UN Climate Summit in New York - to which Kenya is a signatory - to cut the loss of forests in half by 2020 and end deforestation by 2030 is testament to the growing importance of the mission of Kenya, its people and Prof Maathai, which began in 1974 with the planting of a single nursery tree in Karura Forest.

What Prof Maathai started decades ago with the planting of one tree, she started not for Kenya, but with Kenya, knowing that it was a spark that would ignite the passion of a nation with a deep sense of responsibility to the land to which so many have devoted their lives.