"I will be a hummingbird" - Wangari Maathai - 4/1/1940 - 9/25/2011

By Theodora Filis

Professor Wangari Maathai was internationally recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human rights, and environmental conservation. She had addressed the UN on behalf of women at special sessions of the General Assembly for the five-year review of the earth summit and served on the Commission for Global Governance and Commission on the Future. She and the Green Belt Movement (GBM) Kenya, a non-profit grassroots, non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Kenya, have received numerous awards, most notably The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Prof. Maathai started the Green Belt Movement in 1977, working with women to improve their livelihoods by increasing their access to resources like firewood for cooking and clean water. She became a great advocate for better management of natural resources and for sustainability, equity, and justice.

The Green Belt Movement and Professor Maathai are featured in several publications including The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach (by Professor Wangari Maathai, 2002), Speak Truth to Power (Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, 2000), Women Pioneers for the Environment (Mary Joy Breton, 1998), Hopes Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé, 2002), Una Sola Terra: Donna I Medi Ambient Despres de Rio (Brice Lalonde et al., 1998), Land Ist Leben (Bedrohte Volker, 1993).

"I will be a hummingbird" - Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai was born in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri, in the Central Highlands of Kenya on April 1, 1940. At a time when most Kenyan girls were not educated, she went to school at the instigation of her elder brother, Nderitu. Principally taught by Catholic missionary nuns, she graduated from Loreto Girls’ High School in 1959. The following year she was part of the “Kennedy Airlift,” a scholarship program of the U.S. government and the Kennedy family that took her to Mount St. Scholastica (now Benedictine College) in Atchison, Kansas, where she completed a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences.

In 1966 she earned a master’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh. That year she returned to a newly independent Kenya, and soon after joined the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Nairobi. In 1971 she received a Ph.D., the first woman in East and Central Africa to do so. She became the first woman to chair a department at the University and the first to be appointed a professor.

In June 1997, Wangari was elected by Earth Times as one of 100 persons in the world who have made a difference in the environmental arena. Professor Maathai has also received honorary doctoral degrees from several institutions around the world: William's College, MA, USA (1990), Hobart & William Smith Colleges (1994), University of Norway (1997), and Yale University (2004).

Professor Maathai served on the boards of several organizations including the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament, The Jane Goodall Institute, Women and Environment Development Organization (WEDO), World Learning for International Development, Green Cross International, Environment Liaison Center International, the Worldwide Network of Women in Environmental Work and National Council of Women of Kenya.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Green Belt Movement joined with other pro-democracy advocates to press for an end to the abuses of the dictatorial regime of then-Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi. Professor Maathai initiated campaigns that halted the construction of a skyscraper in Uhuru (“Freedom”) Park in downtown Nairobi and stopped the grabbing of public land in Karura Forest, just north of the city center. She also helped lead a yearlong vigil with the mothers of political prisoners that resulted in freedom for 51 men held by the government.

As a consequence of these and other advocacy efforts, Professor Maathai and GBM staff and colleagues were repeatedly beaten, jailed, harassed, and publicly vilified by the Moi regime. Professor Maathai’s fearlessness and persistence resulted in her becoming one of the best-known and most respected women in Kenya. Internationally, she also gained recognition for her courageous stand for the rights of people and the environment.

Professor Maathai’s commitment to a democratic Kenya never faltered. In December 2002, in the first free-and-fair elections in her country for a generation, she was elected as Member of Parliament for Tetu, a constituency close to where she grew up. In 2003 President Mwai Kibaki appointed her Deputy Minister for the Environment in the new government. Professor Maathai brought GBM’s strategy of grassroots empowerment and commitment to participatory, transparent governance to the Ministry of Environment and the management of Tetu's constituency development fund (CDF). As an MP, she emphasized: reforestation, forest protection, and the restoration of degraded land; education initiatives, including scholarships for those orphaned by HIV/AIDS; and expanded access to voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) as well as improved nutrition for those living with HIV/AIDS.

Professor Maathai documented her life, work, and perspectives in four books: The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience (2003), which charts the organization’s development and methods; Unbowed (2006), her autobiography; The Challenge for Africa (2008), which examines the social, economic, and political bottlenecks that have held back the continent’s development, and provides a manifesto for change; and replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World(2010), which explores the values that underpin the Green Belt Movement and suggests how they can be applied.

“Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.”

“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.”

Mama Wangari, as she is known, is known to Kenyans as a national hero - the first woman to earn a university doctorate and one of the first to win undergraduate and graduate scholarships to the US.

 

- Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer on 25 September 2011 - 

Mandatory Labeling for GMOs

By Theodora Filis

Yearly, hundreds of children die from food allergies. Genetically Modified Foods (GMOs) contain proteins from other plants, making non-labeling a big concern for allergy sufferers. Because of the lack of labeling people are now, unknowingly, exposed to substances that trigger allergies. For example, a tomato plant may contain a protein from peanuts – peanut allergy has more than doubled since 1997 -- concern is that if scientists create new proteins and put them into foods people who did not have food allergies before could begin to have reactions.

Each year in the U.S., 200,000 people require emergency medical care for allergic reactions to food.

Food allergy symptoms are most common in babies and children, but they can appear at any age. You can even develop an allergy to foods you have eaten for years with no problems. Food allergies occur when a person's immune system reacts to a protein in a food he or she eats. The allergic response can be as mild as a slight stomach ache or as severe as anaphylactic shock.

Genetically-modified plants, animals, and processed foodstuffs were introduced to the international marketplace in the 1990s. North American production of corn, soybeans, and canola is now more than 50% with transgenic traits (herbicide tolerance or bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) resistance), while milk from the US is produced with recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), and meat is being produced with various biotechnologically-based growth hormones.

Countries that regulate the introduction of GMOs are Canada, the US, Mexico, Japan, and the European Union (EU). Only the EU requires labels that specify the presence of GMOs. This potential "technical barrier to trade" poses challenges to producers, consumers, and governments alike.

Over the past two decades, there has been a 1500% increase in children diagnosed with autism.

Without proper labeling of GMOs, consumers lack consumer sovereignty and are unable to make 'rational consumption decisions.' Goods, where consumers lack information, are said to be 'credence goods' because there exists some degree of consumer uncertainty that cannot be factored into purchasing decisions.

The true credence goods is one that may have harmful (or beneficial) effects that are not discernible at the point of consumption. In many cases, the full impact is not known for a long period of time. Transfused blood tainted by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) are two contemporary examples. In both cases, the impacts of consuming those goods were not evident for years.

A report by the University of Saskatchewan, Canada said labeling products with words like "natural" or "naturally derived" does not mean the same as certified organic and does not mean the food does not contain GMOs.

Soy allergies jumped 50% in the UK just after GM soy was introduced.

The report goes on to suggest that “if GM soy was the cause, it may be due to several things. The GM protein that makes Roundup Ready Soy resistant to the herbicide does not have a history of safe use in humans and may be an allergen. In fact, sections of its amino acid sequence are identical to known allergens.”

Today, 6 million children have asthma. Asthma deaths have increased by 56 percent in the past two decades.

Asthma and breathing difficulties were reported by people who inhaled Bt-corn pollen. They also experienced swollen faces, flu-like symptoms, fever, and sneezing. Some individuals reported long-term effects after exposure.

There is a great deal of evidence of toxicity and reproductive effects associated with GM foods. Sheep that grazed on Bt-cotton plants in India, for example, exhibited nasal discharge, reddish and erosive mouth lesions, cough, bloat, diarrhea, and occasional red-colored urine. Shepherds report that 25% of their herds died within 5–7 days.

Rats fed Bt corn showed toxicity in their livers and kidneys. And farmers link Bt corn with deaths among cows, water buffalo, horses, and chickens, as well as sterility in thousands of pigs and cows.

Animal feeding studies with Roundup Ready soy indicated toxic livers, altered sperm cells, significant changes in embryo development, and a fivefold increase in infant mortality, among others.

Until we have the proper research and safeguards in place, the US government should not risk the health of the entire population with GMO Frankenfoods or release these crops into the ecosystem where they self-propagate for generations.

An immediate ban on GM foods and crops is not only justified – it is imperative!

Mandatory labeling is clearly a threat to the continued development of biotechnology products and processes. Therefore, in the absence of industry action to positively label and preferably ban GMOs, governments must be pushed by consumers and groups to impose mandatory labeling to ensure companies are held accountable.