Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, is an environmental leader known in her native Kenya as the “Tree Woman.” In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement, an organization, consisting mostly of women, that has fought deforestation by planting more than 20 million trees in Kenya. She wanted to prove that “women could improve the environment without much technology or financial resources.” The movement has spread to other African nations, but her work has also met with opposition, and at one time she was jailed for her fight against deforestation. Today she continues to work for environmental causes, women’s rights, and democracy.

Clive Oxenden & Christina Latham-Koenig, American English File, Student Book 3, p. 95. Oxford University Press 2012.