Kenya's lone crusader wins Nobel Peace Prize.

• Author: Warah, Rasna

There are many firsts in Wangari Maathai's life. In 1971, she was among the first women in East Africa to obtain a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy degree). Five years later, she became the first woman in the region to chair a university department. In the 1980s, she gained notoriety for becoming one of the first Kenyan women to obtain a divorce, at a time when it was taboo in polite Kenyan society. And today, at the age of 64, she has become the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ms. Maathai, a committed environmentalist, won the award for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, by combining science, social commitment and active politics, she showed the world that it is not just enough to protect the existing environment; rather, it is important to secure and strengthen the base on which ecologically sustainable development depends--on poor rural women.

In 1977, Ms. Maathai formed the Green Belt Movement, which aimed to mobilize poor women around the country to plant trees. She knew that asking a poor rural woman not to cut down a tree for fuel was like asking a hungry man not to fish. Her campaign was, therefore, aimed at producing sustainable wood fuel, while at the same time combating soil erosion and deforestation. To date, the Green Belt Movement has succeeded in growing more than 30 million trees around the country. However, it was her political activism in the 1980s and 1990s that made her a household name, but often also the subject of ridicule, in Kenya.

In 1989, she almost single-handedly took on the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union, and President Daniel arap Moi by opposing the construction of a 62-storey building in Uhuru Park, Nairobi's largest public park. Just before construction work was to begin, Ms. Maathai and some members of her Green Belt Movement held a vigil at the park, despite threats of arrest and physical beatings. Members of the ruling party dismissed her as a "mad woman" and "an unprecedented monstrosity" who threatened the order and security of the country. But Ms. Maathai was undeterred, and the building project was eventually stopped, amid international outcry. (The place in the park where she and her fellow women comrades spent days and nights is now known as "Freedom Corner".)

Then in 1990, at the Freedom...