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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.

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
Stills
Continue
Initiative
Falter
Still
Role
Efforts
Marginal
Loss
Discussion
Initiatives
Poverty
Debate
Biodiversity
Development
Environmental
Accelerate
Roles
Essential
Discussions
Environment
Essentials
Causing
Accelerates
Effort
Including
Degradation
Topsoil

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There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.
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You can educate people on how to preempt their own conflict.
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The people are starving. They need food they need medicine they need education. They do not need a skyscraper to house the ruling party and a 24-hour TV station.
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Every one of us can make a contribution. And quite often we are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever we are, we can make a contribution. Sometimes I tell myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just imagine what's happening if there are billions of people out there doing something. Just imagine the power of what we can do.
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I was particularly talking with respect to aid, because that to me is one area that can make people so dependent, and unfortunately, that dependency starts with the government.
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Passion begins with a burden and a split-second moment, when you understand something like never before. That burden is on those who know. Those who don't know are at peace. Those of us who do know get disturbed and are forced to take action.
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When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope.
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You can't reduce poverty in a vacuum. You are doing it in an environment.
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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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I know there is pain when sawmills close and people lose jobs, but we have to make a choice. We need water and we need these forests.
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African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.
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We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!
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We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our children a sustainable world that benefits all.
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What people see as fearlessness is really persistence. Because I am focused on the solution, I don't see the danger.
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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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All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it's the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet - at least everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet.
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What I am trying to say is that they need to learn to rely on themselves and to learn from other people, and when you learn something from other people, then you keep moving onward for yourself.
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No matter who or where we are, or what our capabilities, we are called to do the best we can.
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When I first started, it was really an innocent response to the needs of women in rural areas. When we started planting trees to meet their needs, there was nothing beyond that. I did not see all the issues that I have to come to deal with.
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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.
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