Three decades ago, Wangari Maathai suggested to rural women in
her native Kenya that they plant trees for firewood and to stop
soil erosion — an act that grew into a nationwide movement to
safeguard the environment, defend human rights, and fight
government injustice. The tree-planting groups that formed gave
the women a reason to come together and become involved in
resolving their communities’ challenges. Taking Root: The Vision
of Wangari Maathai tells the story of Kenya’s Green Belt
Movement and follows Maathai, the movement’s founder and the
first environmentalist and African woman to win the Nobel Prize.
Maathai discovered her life’s work by reconnecting with the
rural women with whom she had grown up. They told her they were
walking long distances for firewood, and that clean water was
scarce. The soil was disappearing from their fields, and their
children were suffering from malnutrition. “Well, why not plant
trees?” she suggested. Maathai soon discovered that tree
planting had a ripple effect of empo