Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement

Speaker: 
Anne Clifford
 
26 Mar 2012
 
7:00 PM
 
Sun Room, Memorial Union

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Anne Clifford is the Msgr. James Supple Chair of Catholic Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State. She will discuss the work of environmentalist, women's rights activist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai. Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement began as a grassroots tree planting program to address environmental challenges in her home country of Kenya. It grew into a vehicle for empowering women in natural resource management, economic development, and political governance. Anne Clifford is a former consultant for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Environmental Justice Program and has written on the topic of Catholicism and environmental stewardship. She is also the author of Introducing Feminist Theology and coeditor of Christology: Memory, Inquiry, Practice. Msgr. James A. Supple Lecture Series.

On September 25, 2011, during the year designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Forests, the world lost an extraordinary woman, Wangari Muta Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement. Earning her bachelor's and master's degrees in the United States thanks to Kennedy Foundation African Students' scholarships, Maathai became the first woman in eastern Africa to obtain a Ph.D. in science. In 2004 Maathai also became the first environmentalist and first African woman to be awarded a Noble Peace Prize for her founding of the Green Belt Movement. She received this prestigious award in recognition for her tireless efforts to advocate for sustainable development, the eradication of poverty, the growth of democracy, and peace-making by planting trees. This lecture will pay tribute to this extraordinary woman by drawing attention to how her knowledge of the biological sciences and the influence of Catholic Social Teachings prompted her to work with nearly 900,000 women to plant forty-five million trees in her native Kenya and in thirty other African nations. Through the Green Belt Movement Maathai empowered women, most of whom were poor and illiterate, to rise up and walk together into the future buoyed by hope and committed to peace.