With the selection of Wangari Maathai as the winner of this year’s Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee is sending a message — or a number of messages.
Maathai is a Kenyan politician and environmentalist who founded something called the Green Belt Movement 27 years ago. Since then, she has helped organize rural African women to plant an estimated 10 million trees. The women make money and the trees help halt deforestation.
Her award marks a shift in the Nobel Committee’s own thinking, by adding those who work to save the environment, to a list of those who work for peace.
Guests:
Jostan Gorder, Norwegian novelist and the founder of the Sophie Prize
Gary Dunning, executive director of the Forest Dialogue at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies;
June Zeitland, director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization in New York;
David Mikali is a journalist and the director of the Media Institute in Nairobi;
Uduak Amimo, journalist, originally from Kenya and now with African Service of BBC World;
Wanjiri Mathai, daughter of Wangari and has herself a long relationship with the Green Belt Movement