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Peace Prize has died of cancer at the age of 71, her family announced yesterday.
Tributes flowed in for Maathai, who died on Sunday at a Nairobi hospital while undergoing treatment, lauding her outstanding struggle against environmental degradation.
“It is with great sadness that the family of professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on September 25 2011 at the Nairobi hospital after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer,” a statement said. Achim Steiner, director of the UN environment programme, described her as a “force of nature.” “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,” Steiner said in a statement.
Maathai became a key figure in Kenya since founding the Green Belt Movement in 1977, staunchly campaigning for environmental conservation and good governance.
She won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her reforestation work in Kenya, the first African woman, the first Kenyan and the first environmentalist to receive this honour.
Her organisation has planted some 40 million trees across Africa.
The first woman in east and central Africa to earn a doctorate, Maathai also headed the Kenya Red Cross in the 1970s.
Aside from her conservation work, Maathai was elected an MP in 2002 and then named the environment assistant minister, a position she held between 2003 and 2005.
“We mourn a global icon who has left an indelible mark in the world of environmental conservation,” said Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki in a statement.
For more than a decade from the 1980s, her movement also joined the struggle against the government of Kenya’s former president Daniel Arap Moi.
During that time, she famously campaigned against the construction of a high-rise building in a park in central Nairobi, stopped the grabbing of forest land outside the city and successfully pressed for the release of 51 political prisoners.
Maathai in recent years founded green groups and launched several campaigns against climate change and environmental protection. Outside Kenya, she was involved in efforts to save central Africa’s Congo basin forest, the world’s second largest tropical forest. Maathai, who was divorced, is survived by three children and a granddaughter.
“Professor Maathai’s departure is untimely and a very great loss to all who knew her as a mother, relative, co-worker, colleague, role model, and heroine, or who admired her determination to make the world a more peaceful, healthier, and better place,” her family said.
Kumi Naidoo, the director of Greenpeace International voiced sorrow at Maathai’s death. “It is a deeply distressing and painful loss, not only to the environmental movement globally but also to the social justice movement,” Naidoo told the BBC.
Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikewete, in a Twitter message, said Maathai had been “an inspiration for many women across Africa, a magnificent visionary and embodiment of courage.” – AFP.
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