Wangari Maathai, Nobel laureate, African activist, dies
University of Pittsburgh alumna Wangari Muta Maathai, who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for igniting an environmental movement among poor African woman, died on Sunday in Kenya.
Maathai, 71, had been battling ovarian cancer when she died in a Nairobi hospital.
Born in Nyeri, in central Kenya, on April 1, 1940, Maathai earned a degree in biology at the Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kan., in 1964 before earning a master's degree in biology at Pitt in 1965.
She returned to Africa, where she became the first woman in East and Central Africa to obtain a doctorate when she received the degree in veterinary anatomy from the University of Nairobi in 1971. Maathai subsequently became chairman of the University of Nairobi's department of veterinary anatomy.
Maathai sparked the so-called Green Belt Movement in 1976 when, touched by the plight of poor women who could not find firewood in deforested regions in Kenya, she suggested they plant trees. Her recommendation triggered a campaign that resulted in the plantings of more than 47 million trees, helped restore the environment and bolstered the livelihoods of women, Green Belt officials say.
In 2004, the Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded her the prize for promoting democracy and fighting poverty through the Green Belt Movement.
But her work brought her the ire of Kenya's then-President Daniel Arap Moi, during whose tenure she was beaten and jailed several times. She later won election to Kenya's parliament in 2002. Three years later, Time magazine named Maathai one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Pitt doctoral candidate and Kenyan native KaKenya Ntaiya said on Monday that Maathai was well-known and much admired in her native land. Ntaiya, who plans to return to Kenya and work in public policy, said she wants to walk in Maathai's footsteps.
"She's a woman who really stood up for our country. She fought for forestry. She is a hero. We all know her for her fights. She is a great, great lady," Ntaiya said. "We are so sorry she has lost her fight (against cancer). We have not reached the place we have to go, so we walk the walk she has left us to make the world a better place."
Condolences poured in from around the world at the news of the activist's death.
"Wangari Maathai was a force of nature," Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said in an e-mailed statement. "While others deployed their power and life force to damage, degrade and extract short-term profit from the environment, she used hers to stand in their way."
Pitt awarded Maathai an honorary doctorate in 2006, when she returned to the university to deliver an address about her work with the Green Belt Movement.
Yesterday, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg lauded Maathai's work.
"Dr. Maathai's tireless advocacy as a stewardess of the earth and voice of women, the poor and the oppressed changed lives, a country and a continent," Nordenberg said in a prepared statement.
