from Tebiti Oisaboke
By XN IRAKI
It seems the name Wangari is the route to courage and boldness.
The other Wangari—Martha Karua—has shaken our politics by joining the race to State House.
She has a chance to stamp her mark on Kenya’s political landscape by out-competing men to the house on the Hill.
We have more time to write about her in future; for now let us pay tribute to the other Wangari—the late Maathai.
For the 70 years she sojourned on this small planet, she left a mark that will influence future generations for long.
We know her more for her work in environmental conservation.
But her work has influence beyond environment. Her legacy is crosscutting for environment is our live.
Maathai lived ahead of her time. She foresaw the carbon credit trading as a means to reduce pollution. But her solution was simple and less market oriented.
Unfortunately, we refused to listen to her pieces of advice. We are now paying the price.
What is really her economic legacy?
First, she made us realise the intimate relationship between economic growth and environment. She long realised that our economy is based on environmental conservation.
Think of what you do everyday. It is tied to the environment.
Maathai was calling for a balance. By over exploiting the environment, she argued that we destroy the foundation on which our economy stands. It is hard to understand why we found it so hard to understand such a simple fact.
We preferred to be myopic. We only see open grounds as only best suited for apartments and skyscrapers.
But paradoxically, when we make money from renting the buildings on formerly open grounds, we rush to golf courses, green and open grounds.
When we go up the social and economic ladder, we want to go for holidays on unspoiled exotic islands.
We head to national parks to see nature as it was before we started spoiling it.
Maathai made us realise that our environment is priceless. You cannot put a price on the scent of a flower or “a green” on a golf course.
What is the price of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro or a beach? But her lasting mark of genius is connecting the environment to peace.
If we destroy the environment, we reduce resources available, leading to shortages of often-essential commodities like water and food.
Are most wars not about natural resources, from oil to land? Is it surprising that tribal clashes erupted after the best land had been dished away?
It is not clear why Maathai made conservation her life.
It might be that growing up near mountains, she realised early enough how our lives depended on nature.
Her science background might be another factor; it teaches you to look for cause and effect.
Her travels in America where great efforts have been made to conserve the environment may have been another motivator.
Space enthusiasts might also argue that our failure to find life in any other planet has made conservation more urgent.
Maybe the hills and the valleys on the moon and mars once teemed with life until opulent hands destroyed the delicate ecosystems.
Where do we go from there?
The constitution uses the word “conservation” five times in chapter five. Most of the chapter is about land ownership. Not its conservation.
While new bills on conservation can be proposed, we can argue that not enough attention has been given to conservation of the environment, Wangari’s life.
National Environment Management Authority should go beyond issuing licenses to environmental reclamation.
Private ownership of land and spillover effects complicates conservation.
Your pollution or conservation affects other people. Do we ever worry about where the polluted waters of Nairobi River eventually end up?
The best tribute we can pay to her is living to her ideals. This planet is our home, and even insane people rarely destroy their homes.
We work so hard to give our children an inheritance, why can’t we see that inheritance in nature terms; great forests, pristine rivers, snow peaked mountains, birds that sing for us in the morning, the antelopes that gallop in the noon sun and clean air and trees that tone life’s drudgery.
After all, is living in a leafy suburb not everyone’s dream?
Our hostility to environment and environmentalists may be informed by the fact that we eventually lose against nature, through death.
Yet, thinking far into the future is the hallmark of progressive nations.
We can pay tribute to the Nobel Laureate by making peace with the environment, it is our mother, a pedestal on which our economy stands.
Professor, I am glad we shall meet on the beautiful shore.
Rest in Peace.