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And so I'm saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now.

Wangari Maathai

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Wangari Maathai
Age: 71 †
Born: 1940
Born: April 1
Died: 2011
Died: September 25
Biologist
Environmentalist
Political Activist
Politician
Teacher
Veterinarian
Wangari Maathaï
Maathai
Wangari Maathai
War
Colonialism
Away
Legacy
Describe
Wars
Terrible
Ought
Saying
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The living conditions of the poor must be improved if we really want to save our environment
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Do not be naive. AIDS is not a curse from God to Africans or the black people. It is a tool to control them designed by some evil-minded scientists, but we may not know who particularly did it.
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Quite often when you help poor people, they don't think about the environment. They think about survival.
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The planet needs trees. If there is indeed that carbon dioxide out there in the atmosphere, the only species on the planet that can actually trap it for us in a natural process of photosynthesis are the trees.
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First of all, farmers should work with universities and research institutions in the country, and hopefully with the government.
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When resources are degraded, we start competing for them, whether it is at the local level in Kenya, where we had tribal clashes over land and water, or at the global level, where we are fighting over water, oil, and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources.
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That's the way I do things when I want to celebrate, I always plant a tree. And so I got an indigenous tree, called Nandi flame, it has this beautiful red flowers. When it is in flower it is like it is in flame.
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Now when Nile perch was introduced [into Lake Victoria], I don't think enough research was done maybe it was done, maybe it was not. But Nile perch is a huge fish. So it ate all the little fish, and it grew into a monster which the local people could not fish with their little boats and their little nets.
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The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter.
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The developed world should be willing to help [Africa] and support her and make this energy affordable.
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Those of us who have been privileged to receive education, skills, and experiences and even power must be role models for the next generation of leadership.
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Disempowerment - whether defined in terms of a lack of self-confidence , apathy, fear, or an inability to take charge of one's own life - is perhaps the most unrecognised problem in Africa today.
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Unfortunately, the issues of climate change, unlike many other issues, are very subtle because the changes we observe are very, very subtle.
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What is really important is to educate people how to protect themselves and how to ensure that, despite their poverty, they can get tested and access drugs. So I just hope that those who can will make those drugs available.
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Sometimes I feel frustration at the bureaucracy for not moving fast enough to deliver in the way that I would prefer. But that is probably because I have worked for many years in the civil society, which tends to move much faster than government.
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When you think of all the conflicts we have - whether those conflicts are local, whether they are regional or global - these conflicts are often over the management, the distribution of resources. If these resources are very valuable, if these resources are scarce, if these resources are degraded, there is going to be competition.
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We tend to put the environment last because we think the first thing we have to do is eliminate poverty and send children to school and provide health.
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We see that the environment is something to exploit, because we see the environment in terms of minerals for example, or forests, or even raw materials that we produce on our land, or even land itself. We see it in terms of what we can exploit rather than the medium in which all of these activities have to take place.
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I think some of these solutions are prepared in an office without a full understanding of the local situation.
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I don't believe [Africa] is ready to shift - and she needs to shift. So she needs to get the technology and she can only get that technology from the developed world.
Wangari Maathai