Wangari Maathai Quotes
We tend to put the environment last because we think the first thing we have to do is eliminate poverty. But you can't reduce poverty in a vacuum. You are doing it in an environment.
Maathai, Wangari. The Challenge for Africa. Pantheon Books, 2009.
Although the Premier recognizes the importance of environmental protection it is difficult for China and other developing countries to make the necessary trade off’s at the expense of slower growth which means continued poverty. Even in the United States with all its affluence, slowing economic growth for environmental reasons is politically very difficult.
What is also neglected very often is that America and the other developed nations exploited and destroyed much of their own environment in the process of developing yet they express concern that the lesser developed nations will do what they do.
Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlift she studied in the United States, earning a Bachelor's Degree from Mount St. Scholastica and a Master's Degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She went on to become the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy, receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi in Kenya.
