Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first African woman to be awarded the prestigious prize since it was first handed out in 1901.
Maathai, who has served as Kenyan assistant minister for the environment since 2003, founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, the largest tree planting project in Africa, aimed at promoting biodiversity. The movement also aims at creating jobs and giving women a stronger identity in society.
The Nobel Committee honoured her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.
"Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment," the committee said. Maathai stands at the "front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa", it said. "She thinks globally and acts locally."
Maathai said she was delighted at having been awarded the prize and pledged to pursue her environmental work. "I am very delighted and I thank God for everything," she said. "I will carry on with my campaign and I ask Kenyans to join me.
Maathai said she had been informed earlier in the day by Norway's ambassador to Kenya that she had won the coveted prize and told Norway's NRK radio that it had been the "biggest surprise in my entire life".
Deforestation has been a major problem in Kenya, exposing millions of people to drought and poverty. Maathai's organisation has planted more than 30 million trees and its nurseries now employ tens of thousands of people.
The environment was an important aspect of peace, "because when our resources become scarce we fight over them", Maathai said on NRK.
"We plant the seeds of peace, now and in the future," she said. Maathai, 64, is a biologist by training. She was the first woman in eastern Africa to receive her doctorate and become a professor. She is also an ardent human rights activist in Kenya.
She was elected to the Kenyan parliament on the Green party ticket in December 2002 in the first free elections held in the country in decades. In January 2003, she was named assistant minister for the environment.
The Nobel committee has for many years chosen to give the prize to people or organisations who have worked either to resolve conflicts by peaceful means or in defence of human rights.
But the committee said in 2001, on the centenary of the first Nobel prizes, that it planned to widen the scope of the award. Maathai is the first environmentalist to win the coveted prize.
External Links:
For details visit Nobel Prize website
Click for more on Green Belt Movement
