Wangari Maathai

In 2004, Wangari Maathai summarised her longstanding perspective on environmental preservation:

Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. Recognising that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come.^[1]

This provides a fundamental insight into the deep ecology of Maathai’s ecofeminist campaigning that challenged the overall mentality of masculine superiority and the negative patriarchal attitudes during and following the 1970’s, in a society that mocked her ability to protect the environment and excluded and silenced women from actively participating in challenging how society is governed.^[2] Her contributions can be seen as a significant contribution to ecofeminist thought that also emerged around then – referring to a holistic ideology that compares the exploitation of both women and the environment, suggesting both person and planet are threatened by the same enemy.^[3] This is considered a feature of the paradigm shift towards deep ecology and the belief that humans are equal to all living things on earth, which also emphasises the uprising of a biocentric view within society in that time.^[4]

This blog explores the intrinsic environmentalism expressed by Wangari Maathai and her lifelong dedication to the advancement of women’s rights and environmental preservation in Kenya, as well as other prominent ecofeminist shifts around the world in this time, such as the Chipko movement and the Love Canal women, that expressed similar forms of female activism. Women have historically been at the forefront of environmental campaigning and conservation movements.^[5] Maathai’s efforts remain integral parts of this, as she laid the foundations for contemporary social structures and environmental modernity, by reinforcing the ideology of renewing the balance of nature, democracy and peace.^[6] Her activism draws on the fundamental interconnection between environmental and social injustice, which also conveys this symbiotic relationship between society and the natural world.^[7] She held a significant understanding of climate change, which Dipesh Chakrabarty describes as a crisis not only concerning the natural world, but that of many interconnected dimensions.^[8] This is something that is undoubtedly conveyed from Maathai’s contribution to environmental conservation discourse.^[9] The notion that women are undeniably central to civilization and sustainability is a pivotal aspect of the blog as, historically, female presence within environmental campaigns has been well documented, regarding notable coverage of tree preservation in particular.^[10]

Maathai founded and led the Green Belt Movement (GBM) in 1977, as she observed the extensive denudation of native forests for commercial agriculture.^[11] Guided by ecofeminist politics, the movement involved engaging rural women to establish tree nurseries in order to prevent further environmental harm, which addressed an abundance of ecological and social issues, such as habitat loss, rural economy decline and soil erosion from deforestation.^[12] This was during a period in Kenya that is described by Kathleen Hunt

as a major ‘forest fire of environmental and political injustice’.^[13] Through their contribution in the tree planting campaign, the women obtained a strengthened position of power over their lives.^[14] Maathai’s resilience and engagement throughout demonstrated her determination to show resistance in the face of oppression.^[15] Her contribution ultimately inspired women to plant over 30 million trees in Africa.^[16] They became known as ‘foresters without diplomas’, as she promoted that they do not need degrees to prove their “women-sense”, intelligence and ability to make an impact.^[17]

Maathai not only became an activist but also an intellectual who has made significant contributions to ideologies on ecological development, equality and gender.^[18] Whilst protesting for the release political prisoners of the Greenbelt movement, she was told to ‘respect men and be quiet’ by President Daniel arap Moi as he called her ‘a mad woman’ and ‘a threat to the order and security of the country’, whilst internationally, she became a symbol of environmental and feminist activism, as she received the Goldman Environmental Prize and was selected as chief spokesperson at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit).^[19] This geographical paradox is highlighted by Nancy Worthington, as she mentioned that Maathai withstood threats, beatings, gunshots, and public embarrassment, emphasising the global cultural disparities and gender injustice of the time in Kenya that Maathai resisted against.^[20]

After receiving the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize as the first African woman and first environmentalist, she was recognised for her life-long commitment to environmental sustainability and the empowerment of women, when Maathai stated,

Throughout Africa, women are the primary caretakers, holding significant responsibility for tilling the land and feeding their families… They are often the first to become aware of environmental damage as resources become scarce and incapable of sustaining their families.^[21]

This notion is also emphasised in ecofeminist thought as both women and the environment are considered victims and survivors of a destructive, dualistic ordering of the world, where women have historically and culturally not been seen as ‘able’ partners with men in the environmental movement as masculinity was supposedly ‘superior’.^[22] Thus, there is a significant link between the abuse of the Earth, the oppression of women and heightened female environmental activism.^[23]

The Chipko Movement is another leading example of ecofeminist activism, starting in the 1970’s and lead by predominantly rural Indian women.^[24] The movement also conveys the relationship between female empowerment and healing of the Earth.^[25] During this time, the environmental conservation group campaigned against large-scale commercial forest destruction and aimed to manage and replant forests for rural use.^[26] The rhetoric of the movement's leaders expressed an ‘idealized bond with nature’ and the requirement for further protection of forest land.^[27] The women became known as the true “original tree- huggers”, according to their non-violent acts of protest.^[28] Similarly to Maathai, they withstood significant threats and abuse, and endured this in dedication to their ecofeminist perspective; this is portrayed by George James, who gives the following account of one member, “This forest is our mother's home; we will protect it with all our might”.^[29] The notion is evident in figure 1, where women are physically holding a tree to symbolise their inhibition towards the commodification, globalisation and commercialisation of their land.^[30] Another advocate revealed that the forest was like her mother, and that someone would have to shoot her before they cut a single tree.^[31] The evident hostility the group endured aligns with the principal ideologies within ecofeminist thought, in that the exploitation of nature and women are deeply interconnected.^[32] This aspect of the protests meant that the Chipko women went from a grassroots eco-development movement to a worldwide phenomenon and similarly to Maathai, these women made significant historical contributions envisioning the prominent relationship between preserving the environment and the future of the Earth.^[33]

Figure 1: Women protect trees during the Chipko movement, Uttar Pradesh, 1973. Wiki.

The Love Canal movement was also a major catalyst for ecofeminism during the late 1970’s. This stemmed from a chemical disaster as 22,000 tons of chemical waste was buried in the LaSalle neighbourhood, Niagara Falls, which eventually began to leak out.^[34] The site was originally planned to be a hydroelectric site – however it became something far from that; it initiated one of the most controversial environmental disasters in United States history.^[35] As thirty years’ worth of toxic radioactive chemicals and pesticides started leaching into the surrounding environment with no governmental acknowledgement of the many health repercussions of this, including miscarriage, birth defects, respiratory, central nervous disorders, liver damage, cancer, suicides, death, the women of the love canal, many as outraged mothers, saw this as their opportunity to break confines the of their restrictive gender roles using maternalistic rhetoric in their campaigning.^[36] The women were the driving force in the community's protests as they campaigned for relocation and remediation of the chemicals, as conveyed in figure 2.^[37]

Figure 2: Protest about the Love Canal contamination by a resident, ca. 1978. EPA/wiki

Love Canal represents one of the first cases of citizen environmental activism, specifically by working-class women.^[38] It allowed them to employ a form of leadership during a period when post-World War II gender roles had substantially restricted their realm of influence.^[39] There were numerous struggles that followed their newfound expression of ecofeminist activism, as while the residents had significant health implications from the chemical leaching, they experienced resentment from the men within the community due to the withstanding strict belief system and ideologies on gender roles and leadership.^[40] State health authorities also considered the housewives “well-intentioned but essentially clueless about matters beyond domestic duties”.^[41] However, this only empowered the women to resist more, as they used slogans referring to their female roles as mother, wife and homemaker to induce emotion to outsiders in order for change.^[42] This activism is ecofeminism at its finest and it is what historians refer to as ‘maternalism’.^[43] This relates to empowered motherhood, which had great significance in the process of getting the site officially declared as the nation's first federal emergency for a nonnatural environmental disaster and initiating the following 10 years of remediation efforts.^[44]

Wangari Maathai, as well as the Chipko women and Love Canal movement demonstrate the intrinsic global emergence of the ecofeminism during the 1970’s, that historically marked the evolving societal paradigm of the time towards the interconnected advancement of gender equality and environmental conservation practices. However, the question still remains, who was the ultimate catalyst for ecofeminism?

^[1] Maathai, Wangari. “Nobel Peace Prize Lecture”. 2004. Accessed 19^th November 2021. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2004/maathai/26050-wangari-maathai-nobel-lecture-2004/
^[2] Ebila, Florence. "'A Proper Woman, in the African Tradition': The Construction of Gender and Nationalism in Wangari Maathai's Autobiography Unbowed/'A Proper Woman, in the African Tradition': The Construction of Gender and Nationalism in Wangari Maathai's Autobiography Unbowed." Tydskrif vir letterkunde 52, no. 1 (2015): 144-154.
^[3] Theodore Roszak, Person/planet (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1979), 32.
^[4] Naess, Arne. "The shallow and the deep, long‐range ecology movement. A summary." inquiry 16, no. 1-4 (1973): 95-100.
^[5] McNeill, John R. "Observations on the nature and culture of environmental history." History and theory 42, no. 4 (2003): 5-43.
^[6] Udvardy, M. L. "Theorizing Past and Present Women's Organizations in Kenya." World Development 26, no. 9 (1998): 1749-1761.
^[7] Scharff, Virginia. "Are Earth Girls Easy?: Ecofeminism, Women's History and Environmental History." Journal of Women's History 7, no. 2 (1995): 164-175.
^[8] Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "The climate of history: Four theses." Critical inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009): 197-222.
^[9] Chirindo, Kundai. "Bantu sociolinguistics in Wangari Maathai's peacebuilding rhetoric." Women's Studies in Communication 39, no. 4 (2016): 442-459.
^[10] Gandotra, Nikita, and Shuchi Agrawal. "Sustainability, Civilization and Women-An Environmental Study of The Overstory by Richard Powers." Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 12, no. 5 (2020).
^[11] Presbey, Gail M. "Women's empowerment: the insights of Wangari Maathai." Journal of Global Ethics 9, no. 3 (2013): 277-292.
^[12] Hunt, Kathleen P. "It's More than Planting Trees, it's Planting Ideas": Ecofeminist Praxis in the Green Belt Movement." The Southern communication journal 79, no. 3 (2014): 235-249.
^[13] Hunt, "Planting Trees, Planting Ideas", 235-249.
^[14] Maathai, “Nobel Peace Prize”, 2004.
^[15] Kirkscey, Rusell. "Accommodating Traditional African Values and Globalization: Narrative as Argument in Wangari Maathai’s Nobel Prize Lecture." Women & Language 30, no. 2 (2007), 12-17
^[16] Gorsevski, Ellen W. "Wangari Maathai's emplaced rhetoric: Greening global peacebuilding." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 6, no. 3 (2012): 290-307.
^[17] Maathai, Wangari. "Unbowed." (2006).
^[18] Muthuki, Janet. "Challenging patriarchal structures: Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt movement in Kenya." Agenda 20, no. 69 (2006): 83-91.
^[19] Maathai, ”Unbowed”.
^[20] Worthington, Nancy. "Shifting identities in the Kenyan press: Representations of Wangari Maathai's media complex protest." Women's Studies in Communication 26, no. 2 (2003): 143-164.
^[21] Maathai, “Nobel Peace Prize”.
^[22] Scharper, Stephen Bede. Redeeming the time: a political theology of the environment. (A&C Black, 1998).
^[23] Radford Ruether, Rosemary. "New woman/new Earth: Sexist ideologies and human liberation." (Seabury, New York, 1975).
^[24] Rangan, Haripriya. Of myths and movements: Rewriting Chipko into Himalayan history. (Verso, 2000).
^[25] Dwivedi, and Lucy Reid. "Women and the Sacred Earth: Hindu and Christian Ecofeminist Perspectives." Worldviews : environment, culture, religion; 11, no. 3 (2007): 305-323.
^[26] Haigh, Martin J. "Understanding ‘Chipko’: the Himalayan people's movement for forest conservation." International Journal of Environmental Studies 31, no. 2-3 (1988): 99-110.
^[27] Crowley, Thomas. "Climbing Mountains, Hugging Trees: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Love for Nature." Emotion, Space and Society 6, (2013): 44-53.
^[28] Brown, Trent. "Chipko legacies: sustaining an ecological ethic in the context of agrarian change." Asian Studies Review 38, no. 4 (2014): 639-657.
[29] James, George A. "Ethical and religious dimensions of Chipko resistance." Hinduism and ecology: The intersection of earth, sky, and water (2000): 470-99.
^[30] Sivaramakrishnan, K. "Of Myths and Movements: Rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History." Environmental History 7, no. 2 (2002): 338.
^[31] James, “Dimensions of Chipko”, 470-99.
^[32] Resurrección, Bernadette P. "Persistent Women and Environment Linkages in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Agendas." Women's Studies International Forum 40, (2013): 33-43.
^[33] Dwivedi and Reid, “Women and Earth: Ecofeminist perspectives”, 305-323.
^[34] Ann Hillis, "Love Canal's Contamination: The Poisoning of an American Family," undated manuscript, p. 20, box 11, folder 74, Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara Frontier Love Canal Collection, University Archives of the State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, hereafter ETF Collection.
^[35] Yablonsk, Steven K., Anthony L. Young, and Cynthia J. Morris. "Current case developments: Defense of CERCLA and toxic tort hazardous‐waste site claims: Love Canal, revisited." Environmental Claims Journal 10, no. 4 (1998): 151-172.
^[36] Nancy Unger, Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2012) 190.
^[37] Hay, Amy M. "Recipe for disaster: motherhood and citizenship at Love Canal." Journal of Women's History 21, no. 1 (2009): 111-134.
^[38] Hay, “Motherhood at Love Canal”, 111-134.
_^[39] Michelmore, Molly. "Creating the Marriage Penalty: Tax Politics, Gender, and Political Realignment in 1970s America." Journal of Women's History 30, no. 2 (2018): 136-160.
^[40] Blum, Elizabeth D. "Toxic Relationships: Two Sides of the American Relationship with Chemicals." Reviews in American History 45, no. 2 (2017): 355-361.
^[41] Blum, "American Relationship with Chemicals.", 355-361.
^[42] Rosenberg, Harriet G. "12. From trash to treasure: housewife activists and the environmental justice movement." In Articulating Hidden Histories, pp. 190-204. University of California Press, 1995. See, for example ‘Love Canal protester Grace McCoulf with sign 'Welcome to the Killing Grounds' at Governor Carey's speech to New York State teachers at the Niagara Falls Convention Center’, 1979. New York Heritage Digital Collections, State University of New York at Buffalo. (Online). Accessed 17th December 2021; ‘Lois Gibbs and her children, Missy and Michael, carrying signs at a Love Canal protest at the Niagara Falls, N.Y. City Hall’, 1978. New York Heritage Digital Collections, State University of New York at Buffalo. (Online) Accessed 17th December 2021.
https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16694coll1/id/1370/rec/325
https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16694coll1/id/1705/rec/288
^[43] Blum, "American Relationship with Chemicals.", 355-361.
^[44] Hoffman, Andrew J. "An uneasy rebirth at Love Canal." Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 37, no. 2 (1995): 4-31.