Author Archives: bloomis

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 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 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.

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.

The Greenbelt movement is not a typical non-governmental organization. They greenbelt movement was a grassroots organization that was started by Wangari Maathai. Maathai used this grassroots movement to advocate for environmental justice, human rights, women’s rights, and a pro-democracy initiative in Kenya. Because the organization had a larger focus in environmental justice, it becomes apparent how the intersections of one’s social location arise to the forefront of a political movement. In addition to the movement advocating for political change, the Green Belt Movement has also influenced citizens about the importance of environmental justice. People in Kenya have a greater understanding of how important the environment is with regards to the general welfare. According to the organization’s website, Professor Maathai recognized the environmental injustice was one of the deeper, systemic issues that perpetuated food insecurity, disenfranchisement, and a loss of traditional Kenyan values. In Kenya, there is a very rigid heteropatriarchal structure in place that puts women’s job as fetching firewood, cooking, cleaning, and doing other household jobs. But, with a lack of firewood from deforestation, this disproportionately affects poor families and women. The Green Belt Movement has been successful in planting over 51 trees is Kenya to date.

The people that were involved in the Green Belt Movement was the founder, Wangari Maathai, the United Nations Voluntary Fund, and The National Council for the Women of Kenya. Essentially, this started in 1977 when Maathai saw that immense environmental degradation in Kenya was disproportionately affecting women and increasing the amount of poverty in the nation. The amount of deforestation was surpassing the number of trees that were being replanted to compensate for the tree removal. The Green Belt Movement has also partnered with the United Nation’s Environmental Programme in its Billion Tree Campaign.