Feminist Peace Network

As Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai writes, it is significant that this prize has once again been awarded to someone who focuses on the environment.  She says that when she first met Al Gore in 1990,

“neither of us could imagine being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize or, indeed, that the Norwegian Nobel Committee would expand its conception of peace and security to encompass protecting the environment, ensuring the equitable and sustainable use of natural resources, and raising awareness of the linkages between ecological stress and conflict. By choosing Al Gore and the IPCC as this year’s peace laureates, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has rightly reminded us that climate change is the single biggest threat to world peace.”

She also points out that one has to go beyond what Gore is saying,

“Al Gore and others have visualized the technological possibilities, and the individual and policy choices, that can mitigate global warming. From my perspective, working at the grassroots, there’s another obligation: to protect the resources we have. One vital component of a sustainable future, for instance, must be standing forests. We know that intact forests contain the biodiversity that makes life possible for numerous species as well as forest-dwelling human communities. But forests–particularly thick, healthy stands of indigenous trees–also absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, and hold vast reserves of carbon in their soils. As these forests are felled for timber, agriculture, human settlements or commercial development, the world loses a vital component needed to slow, and ultimately reverse, global warming.”

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