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Quote by Wangari Maathai

“We tend to put the environment last because we think the first thing we have to do is eliminate poverty and send children to school and provide health.”

Quote by Wangari Maathai

Author

Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan political activist and environmentalist who became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Born on April 1, 1940, and passing away on September 25, 2011, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization dedicated to environmental conservation and women's rights. more

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“In Kenya, one of our biggest exports is coffee. Where do you grow coffee? You grow coffee in the land. To be able to grow coffee you need rain, you need special kinds of soils that are found on hillsides, and that means you have to protect that land from soil erosion so you don't lose the soil. You also want to make sure that when the rains come you're going to be able to hold that water and have it go into the ground so that the streams and the rivers keep flowing and the ground is relatively humid for these plants.”

Want Needs Kind Mean Able Found Grows Water Loses Land Special Protect Rain Rivers Plant Coffee Streams Soil Kenya Erosion Soil Erosion

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“My thing is to gain the respect as an actor, as a professional, and the friendship and everything else will happen from there.”

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“For the rains and the rivers you need forests and you need to make sure these your forests are all protected, that there is no logging, that there is no charcoal burning and all the activities that destroy the forest. All this really needs to be done so that you can be able to grow good coffee, so that you can have an income, so that you can send your children to school, so that you can buy medicine, so that you can take them to hospitals, so that you can care for the women, especially mothers.”

Needs Children Done Care Able School Mother Grows Activity Rain Rivers Our Children Medicine Coffee Income Forests Burning Your Children Hospitals Protected Charcoal Logging Good Coffee

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“We see that the environment is something to exploit, because we see the environment in terms of minerals for example, or forests, or even raw materials that we produce on our land, or even land itself. We see it in terms of what we can exploit rather than the medium in which all of these activities have to take place.”

Term Environment Land Example Produce Materials Activity Forests Mediums Exploits Raw Materials Minerals

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“You can't reduce poverty in a vacuum. You are doing it in an environment.”

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“What I am trying to say is that they need to learn to rely on themselves and to learn from other people, and when you learn something from other people, then you keep moving onward for yourself.”

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“For example, they have land. The government of Qatar wants to lease the Tana River delta, which is in Kenya, from the Kenyan government, so that they can produce food there. People in Kenya need food. We have people who have studied agriculture. Why is it that if we really need food, we cannot go into the delta and develop our own food?”

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“Why do we have to have people come from afar to come and grow food for us, or to grow food to sell to us? It is partly because we are almost becoming used to people doing things for us. Like somebody else is going to solve that problem for us. And that to me is very disempowering system.”

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“If you go out and have unprotected sex with lots of people, that behavior puts you at risk. Similarly, violent behavior can spread. One violent act can elicit a response. It can spread to people in a peer group so that they feel that they have to respond. It can pass generation to generation almost like a genetic disease.”

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“Nobody in the world is completely dependent on another person, but we are all interdependent.”

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