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	Right Livelihood Awards turn the spotlight on solutions to global wrongs by BBC News Sweden   Chinese solar power pioneer Huang Ming is one of four winners of the 2011 Right Livelihood Awards, also called the alternative Nobel prize. Mr Huang was honoured for developing "cutting-edge technologies for harnessing solar energy". Also honoured were Chadian human rights activist Jacqueline Moudeina, Spain-based farmers advocacy group Grain and US midwifery educator Ina May Gaskin.   In a statement, the Right Livelihood Awards Foundation said this year"s winners "turn the spotlight on solutions to global wrongs".   Ms Moudeina was cited "for her tireless efforts at great personal risk to win justice for the victims of the former dictatorship in Chad and to increase awareness and observance of human rights in Africa". She has worked to represent the victims of Chad"s former President, Hissene Habre, who is blamed for killing and torturing tens of thousands of opponents between 1982 and 1990, charges he denies. He has been sentenced to death in Chad but has been living in Senegal since he was ousted in 1990.   Grain, international non-profit organisation supporting small farmers and rural communities in the developing world was lauded for "their worldwide work to protect the livelihoods and rights of farming communities and to expose the massive purchases of farmland by foreign financial interests", the foundation"s citation said.   And the foundation said Ina May Gaskin was recognised for "her lifelong work to promote natural childbirth methods in a society where medicated deliveries and caesarean sections are the norm".   * Visit the link below for more details. Visit the related web page
	Kenyan Nobel Winner Wangari Maathai, hailed on passing by Reuters, Green Belt Movement & agencies Kenya   September 26, 2011   Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaigns to save Kenyan forests, has died in hospital after a long struggle with ovarian cancer.   Maathai, 71, founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to plant trees to prevent environmental and social conditions deteriorating and hurting poor people, especially women, living in rural Kenya.   Her movement expanded in the 1980s and 1990s to embrace wider campaigns for social, economic and political change, setting her on a collision course with the government of the then-president, Daniel arap Moi.   Maathai, who won the Peace Prize in 2004, had to endure being whipped, tear-gassed and threatened with death for her devotion to Africa"s forests and her desire to end the corruption that often spells their destruction.   "It"s a matter of life and death for this country," Maathai once said. "The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem."   "You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them."   Maathai was born in the central highlands of Kenya on April 1, 1940. She earned a master"s degree in the United States before becoming the first woman in Kenya to receive a doctorate for veterinary medicine and be appointed a professor.   "Wangari Maathai will be remembered as a committed champion of the environment, sustainable development, women"s rights, and democracy," said former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.   "Wangari was a courageous leader. Her energy and life-long dedication to improve the lives and livelihoods of people will continue to inspire generations of young people around the world," he said.   In 1999, Maathai was beaten by guards during a protest against the sale of public land in Karura Forest.   "We have lost a serious personality who shaped not only Kenya but the world at large. We have lost a great mind, a great woman who could change lives in this country," said Nairobi resident Gikonge Mugwongo.   Maathai called forest clearance a "suicidal mission."   "To interfere with them is to interfere with the rain system, the water system and therefore agriculture, not to mention the other industries dependent on hydro-electricity."   Maathai"s movement spread across Africa and has gone on to plant more than 47 million trees to slow deforestation and erosion. She joined the U.N. Environment Program in 2006 to launch a campaign to plant a billion trees worldwide.   "Her departure is untimely and a very great loss to all of us who knew her -- as a mother, relative, co-worker, colleague, role model, and heroine -- or those who admired her determination to make the world a peaceful, healthy and better place for all of us," her movement said in a statement.   Besides founding the Green Belt Movement, Maathai was also elected to parliament in 2002 and appointed assistant minister for the environment in 2003 under President Mwai Kibaki.   Kibaki said Maathai was a "global icon who has left an indelible mark in the world of environmental conservation."   "With the passing on of Professor Maathai, the country and the world has not only lost a renowned environmentalist but also a great human rights crusader," he said.   Wangari Maathai describes what motivated her groundbreaking work.   During my more than three decades as an environmentalist and campaigner for democratic rights, people have often asked me about my activism and the work of the Green Belt Movement (GBM).   Did I conceive conservation of the environment and empowerment of ordinary people as a kind of religious vocation?   When I began this work in 1977, I wasn"t motivated by by religion. Instead, I was thinking literally and practically about solving problems on the ground. I wanted to help rural populations, especially women, with the basic needs they described to me.   They said that they needed clean drinking water, adequate and nutritious food, income, and energy for cooking and heating. So, when I was asked these questions during the early days, I"d answer that I didn"t think mobilizing communities to protect or restore the trees, forests, watersheds, soil, or habitats for wildlife that surrounded them was spiritual work.   However, I never differentiated between activities that might be called "spiritual" and those that might be termed "secular."   After a few years I came to recognize that our efforts weren"t only about planting trees, but were also about sowing seeds of a different sort—the ones necessary to give communities the self-confidence and self-knowledge to rediscover their authentic voice and speak out on behalf of their rights (human, environmental, civic, and political).   Our task also became to expand what we call "democratic space," in which ordinary citizens could make decisions on their own behalf to benefit themselves, their community, their country, and the environment that sustains them.   In this context, I began to appreciate that there was something that inspired and sustained the GBM and those participating in its activities over the years. Many people from different communities and regions reached out to us because they wanted us to share the approach with others. I came to realize that the work of the GBM was driven by certain intangible values. These values were: love for the environment; a gratitude and respect for Earth"s resources; a capacity to empower and better oneself; and a spirit of service and volunteerism.   Together, these values encapsulate the intangible, subtle, nonmaterialistic aspects of the GBM as an organization. They enabled us to continue working, even through the difficult times.   Of course, I"m aware that such values are not unique to the Green Belt Movement. They are universal; they can"t be touched or seen. We cannot place a monetary value on them: in effect, they are priceless.   These values are not contained within certain religious traditions. Neither does one have to profess a faith to live by them. However, they do seem to be part of the our human nature and I"m convinced that we are better people because we hold them, and that humankind is better off with them than without them. Where these values are ignored, they are replaced by vices such as selfishness, corruption, greed, and exploitation.   Through my experiences and observations, I have come to believe that the physical destruction of the earth extends to us, too.   If we live in an environment that"s wounded—where the water is polluted, the air is filled with soot and fumes, the food is contaminated with heavy metals and plastic residues, or the soil is practically dust—it hurts us, chipping away at our health and creating injuries at a physical, psychological, and spiritual level. In degrading the environment, therefore, we degrade ourselves.   The reverse is also true. In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves. If we see the earth bleeding from the loss of topsoil, biodiversity, or drought and desertification, and if we help reclaim or save what is lost—for instance, through regeneration of degraded forests—the planet will help us in our self-healing and indeed survival.   When we can eat healthier, nonadulterated food; when we breathe clean air and drink clean water; when the soil can produce an abundance of vegetables or grains, our own sicknesses and unhealthy lifestyles become healed.   The same values we employ in the service of the earth"s replenishment work on us, too. We can love ourselves as we love the earth; feel grateful for who we are, even as we are grateful for the earth"s bounty; better ourselves, even as we use that self-empowerment to improve the earth; offer service to ourselves, even as we practice volunteerism for the earth.   Human beings have a consciousness by which we can appreciate love, beauty, creativity, and innovation or mourn the lack thereof. To the extent that we can go beyond ourselves and ordinary biological instincts, we can experience what it means to be human.   That consciousness acknowledges that while a certain tree, forest, or mountain itself may not be holy, the life-sustaining services it provides—the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink—are what make existence possible, and so deserve our respect and veneration. From this point of view, the environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.   * Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was a Kenyan activist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner. She the founded the Green Belt Movement, which has trained women throughout Africa to combat deforestation, in part through the planting of more than 40 million trees. Visit the related web page
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