“Nobody would have bothered me if all I did was to encourage women to plant trees, but I started seeing the linkages between the problems that we were dealing with and the root causes of environmental degradation. And one of those root causes was misgovernance.” – Wangari Maathai, to the Economist about her conflict with the government
Poor governance and environmental degradation
Wangari Maathai realised that one of the many roots of environmental degradation was due to poor governance. The government was encouraging farmers to switch to producing cash which resulted in the damage of large forested land to make room for commercial planting. Embezzlement and corruption had led to stalled development, causing people to suffer from unemployment hence the welfare of environment was not their problem as they need to meet basic survival needs. This eventually led to the severe degradation of the environment, a phenomenon of “The Tragedy of Commons”, where people were using the resources for their own benefits, resulting in the damage of the environment and rapid depletion of resources.
Fought the government by joining it
In 1982, Wangari Maathai campaigned for the Parliamentary seat that was opened in her home region, Nyeri. In order to campaign for the Parliamentary seat, she had to resign her job in the university. However due to politics, she was disqualified from running for the elections and was not able to get back her job at the university.
Hence, she dedicated her time and effort to the Green Belt Movement after going into a partnership with Norwegian Forestry Society be a program coordinator. However in 1987, the government demanded for the Green Belt Movement to be separated from the NCWK. Maathai stepped down as the Director of NCWK and focused on GBM.