Interview: Wangari Maathai

  • Wangari Maathai in Kenya in 2004 - the year she won the Nobel Peace Prize. (Photo by Mia MacDonald, courtesy of the Green Belt Movement)

This week, the world’s leaders are
talking about climate change. The
talks are part of ongoing negotiations
on a climate change treaty between the
world’s countries. The hope is for an
agreement in Cophenhagen in December.
A Nobel Peace Prize winner is visting
the United States to talk about the role
of trees in climate change. Wangari
Maathai spoke
with Lester Graham about the importance
of saving the rainforests of the world:

Transcript

This week, the world’s leaders are
talking about climate change. The
talks are part of ongoing negotiations
on a climate change treaty between the
world’s countries. The hope is for an
agreement in Cophenhagen in December.
A Nobel Peace Prize winner is visting
the United States to talk about the role
of trees in climate change. Wangari
Maathai spoke
with Lester Graham about the importance
of saving the rainforests of the world:

Wangari Maathai: Because 20% of the greenhouse gasses, especially carbon, comes from deforestation and forest degradation.

Lester Graham: You know, in the US, it seems the rainforests are so far away – it’s hard to imagine what I can do to have some affect on their future. What can someone like me to do save the rainforest?

Maathai: Even though we live very far from the Amazon, or from the Congo forests, or from the Southeast Asian blocks of forest, these three are the major lands of the planet. They control the climate from very far away. So, the planet is very small when you come to discuss these huge ecosystems.

Graham: But what is it I can do to change things?

Maathai: Well, one thing I think is very, very important – especially here, in North America – when legislators are discussing this issue at Capitol Hill, is to influence your legislator. Convince him or her that dealing with climate change is a very important issue and that it is very important to have legislation that will facilitate this. Because no matter how much we know and recognize the dangers, until our leaders give us legislation around which we can work, it just continues to be talking. And we need this legislation, so I hope citizens will call their leaders.

Graham: What, specifically, can the United States do to save rainforests around the world?

Maathai: Well, I think that one of the agreements that we are hoping will take place in Copenhagen – and America will be part of this – in fact, we hope that America will provide the leadership in Copenhagen – is to agree on a financial mechanism that will help countries that have huge forests – the Amazon, the Congo, the forests in Indonesia and Borneo and that region – that there will be money that will be made available so that these countries will be financially compensated so that they keep these forests standing. Now, if America, the United States of America, if she’s left out – the way she was left out in Kyoto – we can’t go very far. Because, believe me, America – her actions, her attitude – influences the thinking in the world. So I’m hoping that America will provide the leadership and will also contribute towards the financial mechanism that is needed to support forests.

Graham: In your leadership of Green Belt in your native country of Kenya, you’ve used the action of planting a tree as a political statement. In the US, we spend a lot of time talking about using less fossil fuels, but there’s not a lot of talk about planting trees. Are we missing part of the solution?

Maathai: I think it’s very important to encourage farmers, individual citizens to plant trees. And, I’m very happy to know that in some of your states, tree planting has been embraced as one of the solutions. It’s one of the activities that every one of us citizens can do and feel good about it, and teach kids to do it, because every tree will count. And when there are 7 billion of us, almost, in the whole world, so you can imagine, if every one of us planted a tree and made sure that tree survived – can you imagine the impact?

Wangari Maathai won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2004 for her work in
forestry and women’s issues. She spoke
with The Environment Report’s Lester
Graham.

Related Links

Companies Push for Forest Certification

  • Magazine publishers and other companies are thinking ahead and getting their paper from forests that have been certified. But what does this really mean? (Photo by Stanley Elliott)

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousands of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousand of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


It’s lunchtime and employees on break from Compuware in downtown Detroit are browisng through the magazine racks at Borders. Melody Kranz says she reads three different magazines every month. She says she is an avid recycler and an impassioned environmentalist, but never considered what kind of paper was going into her magazines.


“I don’t know why I haven’t thought about it, I just haven’t. I will now. Because I’m a gardening nut, I love to garden. So yeah, I just never really thought about it.”


But executive David Refkin is betting that Franz and others like her would think twice before picking up Time Magazine if they thought a forest was demolished to make the paper. Refkin is the Director of Sustainable Development for Time Incorporated. He says he’s noticed a strong surge in environmental awareness over the past two or three years.


“We don’t want people looking at a magazine and feeling guilty that a stream has been damaged and the fish are dying in there, or that habitats aren’t being protected because people are practicing bad forestry practices.”


Refkin says his company wants to take action now, before consumer groups decide to boycott its magazines over ecological issues. Time uses more coated paper for its publications than any other company in the U.S. The company is asking that 80 percent of all paper products Time buys be certified by 2006.


To the average consumer, that may not seem like big news. But for paper producers and foresters, it’s earth shattering. Larry Pedersen is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Pedersen says getting certified means years of work for state employees. The government has to prove to investigators that its management standards take into account issues such as biodiversity, water quality, soil erosion and wildlife habitat. Pedersen says the state is also required to provide records for each tree from the moments it’s planted or inventoried to the time it’s cut down and then made into planks or paper. But he says it’s worth the effort.


“A number of wood and paper-using companies brought it to our attention that they needed to have certified products because their consumers were demanding those. And with us having four-million acres of state forestlands, we saw the writing on the wall that we needed to jump on this.”


State forests in the region generate a lot of revenue. Wisconsin’s forests earn two and a half million dollars from timber sales and Ohio pulls in almost three million. Michigan’s forests bring in 30 million dollars annually. Earlier this year, Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that all state forests will be certified by January 1st of 2006. And the Great Lakes State is not alone… New York, Wisconsin, and Maine are also pursuing certification and Ohio and other states are considering it.


Andrew Shalit, with the environmental activist group Ecopledge, says he’s glad Time Warner is encouraging paper companies and state governments to get certified. But he says that doesn’t necessarily mean the paper is produced in an environmentally friendly way.


“It’s great to say that they’re going to get all of their paper from certified forests. The question is, who is certifying? And in the case of Time Warner, a lot of the forests are certified by a group called SFI, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and their standards are so weak as to be almost meaningless.”


There’s a heated debate over just what certification means. There are currently two groups that certify forests in the U.S. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or SFI, was originally founded by the timber industry but is now an independent body. The Forest Stewardship council, or FSC, came out of the environmental movement… or more specifically, out of the effort to protect South American rainforests. Shalit says he doesn’t think SFI certification is as rigorous or as comprehensive as FSC.


“It really is a problem for the consumer because you see something in the store and it has a little green label on it with a picture of a tree and it says sustainably certified, and you think you’re buying something good. It’s hard for the individual consumer to keep up with that.”


Shalit says several states, like Michigan, have solved the dilemma of rival certification programs by getting dual certification. he says although the system has flaws, it will improve if consumers demand more stringent forestry regulations.


Executives at Time Warner hope they can avoid boycotts and pickets by taking action preemptively. The company is leading the push for forest certification in the U.S., and environmentalists say the federal government may have to bow to pressure eventually and get the national forests certified as well.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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Interview With Mark Plotkin

  • Plotkin is the president of the Amazon Conservation Team, a group working to preserve the cultures and species in the rainforests of Central and South America.

Last year Time magazine named researcher Mark Plotkin an
environmental "Hero for the Planet." Plotkin has spent nearly 20 years
in
the rain forests of Central and South America, and is working to save
not
only the forests, but also the tribes who live there. He’s just
finished a
new book entitled "Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature’s Healing
Secrets." In it he argues that many ancient tribes of the forests
understand
plants better than botanists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham recently talked with Plotkin and asked about his work:

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