AFRICA AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Jul 4th, 2008 by admin
In 2004, Wangari Maathai from Kenya became the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.
HOW MUCH OF AN IMPACT WILL CONTINUED CONFLICT IN AFRICA HAVE ON THE ENVIRONMENT?
There is no doubt that many of the conflicts are over resources, access to these resources and distribution of these resources. The issue is there are a number of people who are trying to access these resources in Africa and exploit these resources for their own benefit quite often at the expense of the African people.
During the post colonial period many of the leaders changed positions with the colonial leaders so we ended up with the Africans who instead of exploiting the resources to the benefit of the African people, started exploiting resources for their own benefit and accumulating resources for their own benefit oftentimes excluding large numbers of Africans either because of their ethnicity or political affiliation, as a result we have found ourselves preoccupied with wars and conflicts much too long. This has caused the African people a lot of damage, so the message I have been trying to preach and the message that I know the Norwegian Nobel Committee was trying
to get to Africa when they gave me the prize was that Africa has a lot of resources, Africa is very rich but it must use these resources for the benefit of its people, Africa must improve its system, the political and economic system of governance in order to manage these resources better, more responsibly, more sustain ably for the benefit of Africa, only then would Africa pre-empt many of the reasons why she and her people are fighting.
YOU HAVE SAID EVERY PERSON HAS AN OBLIGATION TO PLANT TREES TO HELP THE ENVIRONMENT, HOW FEASIBLE IS THIS INAFRICA?
It is very easy to plant at least ten trees. We shall be making a positive step towards cooling down the earth and also beautifying the environment. It also enables one have a personal responsibility to making sure that our planet stays alive.
ARE AFRICANS AWARE OF THE HUGE RESPONSIBILITY THEY HAVE, TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS?
I think that one of the challenges that we have in Africa is that because so many of our people are poor, dependence is so much on the primary resources as majority of them are still using energy from the world, therefore contributing a lot to the release of carbon dioxide. It is always difficult to make them think of tomorrow because poor people tend to think of today, they worry more about survival, they are not thinking about tomorrow and the day after.
It is therefore our responsibility especially at the leadership level, that’s where I like to put a lot of responsibility because if a president for example declares a national tree planting day, declares and encourages it through the ministry of environment, ministry of agriculture and the ministry of works, all the ministries that depend very much on our natural resources, then we can plant trees. It is not difficult but when leadership trivializes the environment then of course the rest of the population doesn’t care.
YOU HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN EDUCATION,HUMAN RIGHTS, THE GREEN BELT MOVEMENT AND THE CIVIL SOCIETY AT LARGE HOW IMPORTANT ARE ALL THESE FACTORS?
All very important, I dare say even as I speak to call on the leadership to mobilize the civil society, mobilize farmers, mobilize the private sector but I want to also challenge our education population to come out and contribute their own quota to making a difference to the society and environment. There are many people in Africa who have College degrees but quite often they are more interested in making money, becoming rich and least interested in working to protect the environment in Africa and promote development in
HOW WIDE SPREAD AND FAR REACHING ARE YOUR PROGRAMMES IN AFRICA?
We have tried very hard for the last twenty years to reach out to other African countries, today I have reached more than twenty African countries. I have invited many individuals and organisations to Kenya to come and learn how we do it, but let me tell you there are challenges, I want to let our people know, those who run organisations, those in governments, civil societies and farmers, I want to challenge them to go beyond their personal gain and truly commit to the benefit of our environment, more or less the way missionaries committed themselves and came to Africa and converted us to Christianity, they gave us education. It is not as if we paid them, many of them came because they had values. In Africa we need values to effectively commit ourselves. On the other hand, Africans are failing to take care of the environment because they do not know, majority of the educated and the ruling elite understand but too often are selfish and just thinking of themselves and their families. They seek to be paid and compensated for what ever service they render; sometimes the value of our service must be a priority. We must be willing to provide a service especially when endowed with education and wealth. The concern should be about providing service for the common good of the country and one’s region.
HOW MUCH OF AN EFFECT WILL GLOBAL WARMING HAVE ON AFRICA?
Scientist tell us that although Africa has not contributed very much to the emission of green house gasses, nevertheless because of our geographical positioning within the tropics and poor technology in agriculture, many of our people still depend on subsistence agriculture, that tends to destroy the environment and bring very little yield due to encroachment on our forest. An example is the Congo forest and national forest. Again, there are so many companies outside
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORK?
I was many times discouraged and worried about my involvement and my fear about the fact that so many people were not appreciating especially my government and the citizens but I never gave up. I always felt that I was right, Though it is sometimes difficult when you believe something and you are pursuing it and others do not understand, therefore are not supportive.
WHAT KEPT YOU GOING?
I kept going because I had a clear understanding that what I was doing was right and I knew many of the people who were opposing me were not opposing me in principle, but were opposing me partly because they were responsible for the destruction of the environment, they were privatising the forest, public lands and disrespecting human rights and I knew they were wrong. Their objections to my work were because I was indeed exposing them and demanding that the right thing be done.
WHATS THE NEXT STEP FOR YOU?
Presently, I am very much involved at the grassroots level within Africa in desperate efforts to make sure that the rest
I was in Slob ad, Norway where we were creating and establishing a seed vault where seeds from the rest of the world will be deposited in the hope that in the future we will be able to access them, should anything happen to our national seed banks. I am very much involved from the grass root, the regional to the global level. The main idea really, is to pass the message of empowering individuals so that we can all do something and to emphasize the need for co-operation not only at the regional level but at the global level as well in order to take care of issues that go beyond the capacity of one nation and one region.