Nobel-winner Maathai, 71, dies

JOHANNESBURG – Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist who made it her mission to teach her countrywomen to plant trees and became Africa’s first female Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has died.

One of Kenya’s most beloved figures, Maathai, 71, died Sunday after a yearlong battle with cancer.

Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on sustainable development, democracy and peace. She believed that environmental degradation and unbridled development was one of the roots of poverty.

“You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them,” Maathai said on the website of the environmental movement she founded, the Green Belt Movement.

All her life, she battled government corruption and corporations that put profits and development ahead of the interests of the population.

She was a thorn in the side of the government of Daniel arap Moi in the 1980s and 1990s, and was arrested for treason, harassed and beaten several times.

She also exasperated her husband, who divorced Maathai in 1979, reportedly complaining that she was “too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control.”

Maathai had been scheduled to give a lecture at Gonzaga University on Oct. 6. Gonzaga canceled the event earlier this month.