Monthly Archives: March 2017

The Modern Era

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The Modern Era (2000-2017):

The Green Belt movement is a remarkable example of how a locally organized NGO can grow to support as many people as possible while staying true to its movements original goals and ideas.

The Green Belt movement is now so large it has multiple arms accomplishing a wide verity of feminist and environmentalist goals.

These arms are:

  • Advocacy and Networking
  • Civic and Environmental Education
  • – Continue the movements legacy supporting and eduction rural farmers on their role in saving their environments and the planet.
  • Foster women teaching other women on their roles in the movement.
  • Environmental conservation and tree planting
  • Climate Change
  • The Greenbelt Safari
    •  The newest arm, the Greenbelt safaris were designed to show a different sided of the Kenyan ecosystem and connect tourists and students to the Greenbelt movements many successes around the country.

As the Greenbelt movement continues to grow, it central action plan of empowering local women to save their environments by planting trees has not changed.

Entering the Political Era

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Entering the Political Arena (1989-1994):

By the mid 1980s this idea had expanded into the pan African Greenbelt movement, engaging women on the movements core mission all over central and Eastern Africa.

After the success of The Green Belt Movements early efforts in 1988 the movement expanded to included explicitly political goals and efforts. After noticing corruption and capitalism were becoming the main obstacles to their efforts, the Greenbelt movement began to foster centers for political organizing and activism.

The goals of this new focus on political engagement had specific goals:

  • Preserve traditional cultures. Give women the space and support to preserve their original identities
  • Protest capitalism in Kenya, especially efforts that lead to environmental destruction
  • Locally organize to protect elections, and fight corruption from the community level
  • “Practice day to day liberation”, lifted from western feminist rhetoric. Empowering both yourself and local women in all of your actions

In the mid-1990s this also meant fighting capitalism by training women in local agricultural easy to maintain trades. Such as beekeepings, sustenances farming and nursery running this would allow women to fight environmental destruction even more by supporting their own efforts in food production and agriculture

The Original Goals of the Movement

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The Greenbelt movement has been uncommonly successful at achieving their goals. As a result their goals and and missions expand along with them. These are loosely defined into the originations eras from their foundation in 1977 until now.

The Original Goals (1977-1988):

The movement was founded to address rural women’s concerns that their environment is becoming harder and harder to live in. The Greenbelt movement was created to engage women in nonviolent local activism through environmental restoration.

Steps to environmental restoration:

  • Create a network of nurseries all over Kenya to nurture and reproduce seedlings for planting
  • Create and maintain organized groups of women planting trees in green belts around their communities to restore local environments
  • Engage, promote and have women lead every part of the process.

This process was bolstered by women all over Kenya teaching and attending classes on the environment, locals relationship to it and how it influences every part of their lives and livelihood.

Untitled

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Challenging Patriarchal Structures: Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement in Kenya

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4066816.pdf

A Civic and Environmental Organization

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The Green Belt Movement – founded by Professor Wangari Maathai in 1977 as a response to the needs of women in Kenya whose streams were drying up, food supply was incredibly low, and their walk to get firewood was becoming increasing in distance. GBM became an organization that taught the benefits of working together to better communities by building trees, storing rainwater, and gaining better access to food and firewood.

However, more than providing necessary essentials for women and families, Maathai saw that the GBM could do more to raise awareness to the issues of disempowerment, disenfranchisement, and loss of traditional values revolved around working together unselfishly through trust and accountability. Because of this, GBM instituted seminars called “Community Empowerment and Education” to encourage individuals to acknowledge the role one plays in politics, economics, and environmental issues. CEE provided education on both civic and environmental problems.

Wangari Maathai’s Leadership

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Just through looking at Wangari’s positions of leadership, one can see the respect and power that she held in Kenya, and around the world. Her efforts were not solely with the GBM but in many aspects of African life, especially to ensure that women knew they had an important role in decision making in their communities.

“Maathai, through the GBM, has shown that leadership, combined with knowledge and experience, creates a powerful force for change. Maathai has proven that it is alright to be ‘too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control’ by challenging prevailing wisdom and traditional approaches.”

Wangari Maathai: The Creator

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Professor Wangari Maathai is an outstanding woman. She was the first woman to receive a doctorate degree in East and Central Africa (1971), to become chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy (1976), an associate professor (1977), and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (2004).

Among some of her other achievements and admirable roles: 
Founder and Coordinator of the Green Belt Movement (1977-2002)
Chair of the Board, GBM (2002-2011)
UN Messenger of Peace (2009-2011)
Co-Chair, Congo Basin Forest Fund (2007-2011)
Goodwill Ambassador, Congo Basin Forest Initiative (2005-2011)
Presiding Officer, Economic Social and Cultural Council of the African Union (2005-2007)
Founding Chair, GBM International (2005)
Assistant Minister, Environment, Republic of Kenya (2003-2005)
Member of Parliament, Tetu Constituency, Republic of Kenya (2002-2007)
Founding member, GROOTS International (1985)
Director, Kenya Red Cross (1973-1980)

Why do they exist/Why do they matter?

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The Green Belt Movement’s primary aim is to raise awareness to help achieve environmental justice while working with the government. A lot of these issues were raised when Maathai realized that the deeper, more systemic reason for Kenya’s poverty and mass inequality was because of immense amounts of deforestation. The deforestation disproportionately affected women and poor families, as they required fire wood to cook and maintain their quality of life. The massive deforestation had devastating impacts on soil quality, which in turn affected their ability to produce the necessary crops for survival. This movement exists to help bring back adequate soil quality to the farms in Kenya, as well as trying to replant the trees that were copiously removed. It is worthy to note that most of the farmers in Kenya are women, so the movement is classified as a women’s movement and the primary goal was to combat soil erosion and maintain natural resources as much as they could.

While aiming to achieve environmental justice, Maathai also had a pro-democracy initiative that she implemented along with her movement. This helped set a goal for future generations of women that will continue with Maathai’s legacy and continue her movement. The Green Belt Movement matters because it was able to plant over 50 million trees and supply clean running water to over 5,000 people from waterways that were previously washed up. The Green Belt Movement was also able to restore local vegetation that allows farmers to maintain their livestock and maintain a suitable living environment. This movement matters because it is not like a typical NGO; the Green Belt Movement was able to work through the hierarchies that were already in place within the Kenyan government. This organization was able to work with the local people at a grassroots level, along with the government itself. Moreover, it was especially productive because the movement taught local women how to plant and care for seedlings, which gave women a sense of productivity and ability to produce positive change for their community. Not only was this movement incredibly productive, it was especially utilitarian. This movement taught women how to properly plant trees, while also teaching women how to invest in livestock to make a living. It was absolutely incredible and Professor Maathai is an absolutely amazing woman. Maathai’s approach of implementation was incredibly intersectional, as she maintained strong relationships with people in the Department of Forestry and people down at the local level.

Where are they located?

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The Green Belt Movement is primarily located in Kenya, as much of their work regarding pro-democracy initiatives and environmental justice revolve around their social location. With the help of other transnational organizations, they have received funding and other resources needed to amplify the movement; however, the agency itself remains centralized to Kenya and throughout Africa.