NOBEL PEACE PRIZE:Saying the planet is at risk from human activity, Kenyan environmentalist Ms Wangari Maathai urged democratic reforms and an end to corporate greed when she collected the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ms Maathai, Kenya's deputy environment minister and the first African woman to win the peace prize, said sweeping changes were needed to restore a "world of beauty and wonder" by overcoming challenges ranging from AIDS to climate instability.
"Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated," Ms Maathai, founder of a campaign to plant 30 million trees across Africa to slow deforestation, said yesterday in an acceptance speech at the ceremony in Oslo City Hall.
"Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system," Ms Maathai (64), told an audience of about 1,000 people including Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja.
"I call on leaders, especially in Africa, to expand democratic space and build fair and just societies," she said. "Further, industry and global institutions must appreciate that ensuring economic justice, equity and ecological integrity are of greater value than profits at any cost."
Grassroots citizens' movements should be encouraged, she added.
Ms Maathai collected a gold Nobel medal and a diploma to a standing ovation from 1,000 guests. She will also receive a cheque for 10 million Swedish crowns (€1.115 million). She will use the cash to expand her Green Belt Movement around the world.
"We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own," she said. The Nobel Prizes were set up in the 1895 will of Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel, 10 years before Norway won independence from Sweden.
Her tree-planting movement, led mostly by women, aims to produce firewood, building materials and also to slow desertification. It also works for women's rights, democracy and peace.
Ms Maathai said a stream where she used to see frogs and tadpoles as a child 50 years ago had dried up. "The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder."
Ms Maathai also said the environment was a barometer of a nation's health. Some critics have said environmentalism has too little to do with peace to warrant the Nobel accolade.
"The state of any country's environment is a reflection of the kind of governance in place, and without good governance there can be no peace," she said.
She said the world was facing a "litany of woes" including corruption, violence against women and children and diseases like AIDS or malaria. She brushed aside questions about her past suggestions that the deadly AIDS virus might have been the result of a laboratory experiment gone awry.
"I really don't know. I really don't have any idea. I'm not an expert in this field," she said.
She has also denied suggestions that scientists might have created the virus as a biological weapon against Africans.
Ms Maathai also urged peoples of the world to plant trees at Easter, when Christians believe Christ rose from the dead after being crucified on a wooden cross.