Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai dies

Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmentalist Wangari Maathai has died in hospital, where she was being treated for cancer.

Maathai was the founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, and a civil and women’s rights activist. She also served as a member of parliament.

“It is with great sadness that the Green Belt Movement announces the passing of its founder and chair, Prof Wangari Muta Maathai, after a long illness bravely borne,” the organisation said in a statement on its website.

One post on Twitter noted that Maathai’s knees always seemed dirty from showing VIPs how to plant trees.

Wangari Maathai, who was also a veterinary anatomy professor, rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s and 1990s.

She branded the clearances a political ploy that caused irreversible environmental damage. The courts blocked her suits, and Green Belt lawyers complained that their cases were dismissed on technical grounds or their files were mysteriously lost.

During her 2004 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Maathai said that the inspiration for her life’s work had come from her childhood experiences in rural Kenya, where she witnessed forests being cleared and replaced by commercial plantations.

Online tributes have poured in for the activist, including one posting on Twitter which noted that Maathai’s knees always seemed to be dirty from showing VIPs how to plant trees.