The Green Belt Movement plants its first trees - June 5th, 1977

On this day in 1977, the Green Belt Movement began with the planting of seven trees at Kamukunji Park in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that believes the seeds of the future lie buried
in the past. I'm Gabe Lucier and in this episode,
we're looking at how one Kenyan woman in the movement

(00:20):
she started, helped return trees to the soil of her
homeland after half a century of reckless deforestation. The day
was June fifth, nineteen seventy seven. The green Belt movement
began with a symbolic tree planting at Kamakunji Park in Nairobi, Kenya,

(00:46):
in recognition of World Environment Day, Professor Wangari Matai led
a group of women from downtown Nairobi to a recreational
park on the edge of the city. Once there, they
planted seven trees in honor of his oracle community leaders.
That gesture marked the beginning of the Green Belt Movement,
a Kenya based grassroots organization devoted to environmental conservation and

(01:11):
community empowerment. The group's name came from its wide scale
tree planting strategy, in which thousands of seedlings were planted
in long rows to form a dense band of trees,
also known as a green belt. In the nineteenth century,
Kenya was one of many regions on the African continent
to be colonized by European powers. Britain's actions, in particular,

(01:35):
left a lasting impact on the region's ecosystem, as huge
portions of Kenya's rainforest were cut down to make way
for lucrative tea and coffee plantations. Even after Kenya gained
its independence in nineteen sixty three, the clear cutting continued.
Thanks to the corruption of the newly installed government, Large

(01:56):
tracts of forested land were handed out to high ranking officials,
who then cut down the trees to build their own
luxury estates and plantations. As a result, by nineteen seventy eight,
the amount of Kenyan land covered by forest fell from
thirty percent to just two percent. The one two punch

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of colonization and crony capitalism created massive economic hardships for
average citizens. Without adequate tree cover, much of the region's
fertile top soil was washed away and crops withered in
the sun with nothing to shade them. Many farmers struggled
to feed their own families, much less their communities, but

(02:36):
few were willing to speak out on the issue. Due
to fear of government reprisal. The woman who finally helped
break that cycle of exploitation was Kenyan native Wangari Matai.
Born on April first, nineteen forty and the small village
of Ihit, Matai knew little of the environmental destruction and
political oppression that plagued much of mid century Africa. She

(03:00):
attended the primary school in her village and showed herself
to be such a promising student that her family bore
the financial burden of sending her to a Catholic boarding
school and then a Catholic high school. Her graduation happened
to coincide with a new US initiative called the Kennedy Airlift,
a program which offered an American education to several hundred

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African students, one of whom was Hungari herself. In nineteen
sixty she began attending Mount Saint Scholastica College in Kansas,
where she cultivated her growing passion for chemistry and biology.
In nineteen sixty four, she earned a spot at the
University of Pittsburgh, where she conducted several years of research

(03:42):
on the pineal gland. By nineteen sixty six, Mattai had
earned both her bachelor's and master's degrees in biology, and
thanks largely to her exposure to the US civil rights movement,
she'd become a strong human rights advocate as well. That
same year, she returned to Kenya and continued her studies
at the University of Nairobi. Five years later, Matai made

(04:05):
history for the first of many times by becoming the
first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a
doctorate degree. For the next several years, she remained at
the University of Nairobi as a professor, teaching veterinarian anatomy
and later becoming the chair of her department, another first
for a Kenyan woman. During the course of her tenure,

(04:27):
Matti's field work with livestock studies took her all over Africa,
where she witnessed first hand the harrowing effects of the
government's environmental degradation. Meanwhile, she also began working with the
National Council of Women in Kenya, an organization focused on
rural women's issues, education, and the environment. Her work with

(04:48):
the group exposed her to the growing social problems faced
by communities like the one she'd grown up in, and
the more she explored those issues the more she realized
they were directly connected to the poor health of the land.
For example, many Kenyan women suffered from malnutrition because there
wasn't enough firewood left in the cleared out forests to

(05:08):
cook with. That forced the women to eat more processed foods,
which were faster to cook but also far less nutritious.
Another major concern was a lack of clean drinking water.
Rampant soil erosion had clogged the region's rivers with silt,
leaving downstream communities with an ever dwindling supply of water

(05:29):
to drink, cook and bathe with. In both those cases
and in a dozen more just like them, the natural
solution was to replace what had been lost, and while
local level action could never restore the great forests that
had been cleared for British cultivation, planting slots of trees
and traditional villages was a way to counteract at least

(05:50):
some of the damage done to small communities. As Matai
once explained, quote, if you destroy the forest, then the
river will stop flowing, the rains will become a regular,
the crops will fail, and you will die of hunger
and starvation. Planting trees breaks the cycle. When we can
give ourselves food, firewood, and help to nurture soil for

(06:14):
planting and clean water, then we begin to roll poverty back.
With that goal in mind, Matai proposed community tree planting
as a project for the National Council of Women of Kenya.
The group's Environment and Habitat Committee was initially opposed to
the idea, but since it was the best proposal they'd received,

(06:34):
the project was ultimately approved. Matai called the venture the
green belt Movement, and its inaugural tree planting ceremony took
place in a Nairobi park on June fifth, nineteen seventy seven.
Seven trees were planted that day, two of which still
survive under the care of the Nairobi City Council. Three

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months after the tree planting and Nairobi, a second green
belt was established on land and owned by a rural
women's cooperative in the nearby district of Kiambu. From there,
Matai and the GBM continued to encourage women to plant
tree nurseries all over Kenya. Matai extolled the practice not
only as a way to combat food insecurity, but as

(07:17):
a way for disenfranchised women to reclaim a sense of
agency in their communities. By banding together to grow seedlings
and plant trees, Kenyan women would be protecting their environment
and working for mutual benefit, a mindset which Professor Matai
considered vital to Kenya's sustainable development. As she once said, quote,

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it's a matter of life and death for this country.
The Kenyan forests are facing extinction, and it is a
man made problem. You cannot protect the environment unless you
empower people. You inform them, and you help them understand
that these resources are their own that they must protect them.
Under Matai's leadership, the Green Belt movement expanded beyond Kenya

(08:02):
in nineteen eighty six to other African nations. A year later,
the GBM became its own organization, fully distinct from the
National Council of Women in Kenya. In addition to tree plantings,
the group also held peaceful protests against land grabbing and
the encroachment of agriculture into national forests. In the decades

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that followed, Matai continued to mobilize African women for environmental causes.
The work sometimes brought her into conflict with various governments,
as any time a well healed official was rewarded with
a patch of national forest. The Green Belt movement was
there to shine a light on the misuse of public land.
As a result, Matai, the face of the movement, was

(08:45):
routinely targeted by the government. She was arrested numerous times,
was beaten and whipped by guards during protests, and was
even barred from employment in most public sectors. However, despite
these emotional and economical hardships, she never wavered in her
fight for the ecology of her homeland and for the
political empowerment of her people. The more the government tried

(09:08):
to suppress her message, the more determined she became, and
the more her fellow citizens took notice. Her dedication to
the betterment of her people helped inspire a revolution in Kenya.
In nineteen ninety one, the country finally allowed the existence
of more than one political party, and by two thousand
and two, the Moi administration, which had oppressed Kenyans for decades,

(09:31):
was removed from power. That same year, Matai herself was
elected to parliament with an astounding ninety eight percent of
the vote. She became the assistant Minister of Kenya's Ministry
for Environment and Natural Resources, and in two thousand and four,
she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution
to sustainable development, democracy and peace. She was the first

(09:55):
environmentalist and the first African woman to receive that honor.
Wangari Matai died on September twenty fifth, twenty eleven, from
complications of ovarian cancer, but the work she began with
the Green Belt movement goes on to date. More than
fifty one million trees across the African continent and beyond

(10:17):
have been planted, trees that have slow deforestation and erosion
and bettered the lives of countless people who live alongside them.
On its website, the GBM succinctly summarizes Matai's life work, saying, quote,
there is legacy enough there for several lifetimes, and proof
that just as a single tree can begin the process

(10:39):
of transforming a landscape, a single person, however humbly born,
can become the catalyst for continental and world change. I'm
Gabe Luzier and hopefully you now know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. If you and

(11:00):
joy today's episode, consider keeping up with us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at TDI HC Show and If you have
any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my
way by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com.
Thanks to Chandler Mays and Ben Hackett for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

(11:21):
again tomorrow for another day in history class