Wanjira Mathai Sees Green in Africa’s Future
- The Earth & I Editorial Team
- Apr 23
- 6 min read
Updated: May 5
Environmental Activist Says Opening Hearts Is Key
The Earth & I Editorial Team
□Part 1□ Special Section: Fourth Anniversary of The Earth & I |
Wanjira Mathai, a leader of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and Managing Director for Africa and Global Partnerships at the World Resources Institute, was in Seoul, Korea, in April 2025, to receive her 2025 Sunhak Peace Prize. Around that occasion, editors of The Earth & I had the privilege of interviewing her about her life and work. Here we present some highlights of that interview, and some comments she made as a guest speaker at a conference on environmental issues on April 12, organized by the Hyo Jeong International Foundation for Environmental Peace (HJIFEP). |
Wanjira Mathai sees green in Africa’s future. Perhaps she has always seen things that way, but there is a rich history behind how this lover of nature became the environmental champion she is today.
Now at mid-life, Wanjira Mathai has garnered global acclaim for her many contributions to sustainable development, such as leading the AFR100 initiative, which aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land across 31 African countries by 2030. She has also led and now serves on the Board of the Green Belt Movement, founded by her mother, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, and is currently serving as managing director for Africa and Global Partnerships at the World Resources Institute (WRI), and as the Africa advisor at Bezos Earth Fund.
Wanjira Mathai’s many awards include BBC’s 100 Women (2023), TIME’s 100 Climate list of most influential climate leaders in 2024, and the 2025 Sunhak Peace Prize (see “World Peace Education Center Events Open New Era of Global Cooperation”).
In brief remarks at an environmental conference organized by HJIFEP on April 12, 2025, in Seoul, Mathai said, “The Earth is our life support system … it is what we need to survive … I cannot tell you how many times people ask me, ‘What is the choice we have to make in this relationship between economic sustainability and environmental protection?’ It is a false choice … if we destroy the planet, we will have nothing to build these future economies on.”
Being an environmental activist wasn’t always in Mathai’s future. In her interview with editors of The Earth & I, she said, “I studied biology in college (Hobart & William Smith Colleges, USA) and then thought I wanted to be a doctor.” She added, “I decided at last that it didn't really energize me.” She went on to get a master’s degree in public health at Emory University in Atlanta and worked for six years at the Carter Presidential Center on disease eradication.
At that stage, she decided to take a break and returned to Nairobi where she began to work with her mother. “And it was again about community and people,” she said, though this time, “the work was about planting trees and saving the environment.” She soon realized her mother’s work “was no different [than working in public health] because it was about a healthy environment that supports healthy people.”
‘Green’ is More than Planting Trees
Today, “green” means more to Wanjira Mathai than planting trees, though she is setting records for doing that—as of 2023, the Green Belt Movement had planted over 51 million trees.
Transformation requires cross-boundary cooperation, something that is hindered by silos built around expertise.
She told The Earth & I that transformation requires cross-boundary cooperation, something that is hindered by silos built around expertise. “People have the best of intentions, they intellectually know that they should be integrating, but it's very difficult to do when you are an expert in your own domain.”
“That's why we work at the World Resources Institute (WRI) in teams,” she adds. “You need to consider community perspectives on the issues. The carbon issue, for example—it's very complex, and often the part that is left out is the people. Who benefits, who gains, who wins, who loses?”
Mathai’s passion for this type of work is palpable. “Right now, I'm in the middle of an initiative that is extremely exciting, trying to work on the protection of the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and the forests of Indonesia. We're saying that … those three forest blocks, as the lungs of the planet, require all of us to … work together. Because if we lose any of them, we all lose.”
‘All Decisions Are Local’
Mathai “gets” effective cooperation. She says it involves everyone, up and down. “We have to encompass everything, because the global diplomatic narrative feeds the local. In the end, all solutions are local. It all happens on the ground; but it's so important that there's global solidarity because the financing, the solidarity around what people believe, the priorities that are set by multinational organizations or even multilateral processes, come from the realities on the ground. So, we have to have a constant conversation up and down.”
An important part of her work involves mobilizing funds, getting global finances to communities where they are needed. “I think philanthropy is getting smarter and smarter about working with community, working and being partners. We're actually dropping the use of words like ‘donors,’ because it implies a one-way relationship. But if they're your partners, they're in this with you.”
Skipping the High Emissions Phase
When asked if it’s possible for developing nations to skip the high emissions stage that plagued developed countries, Wanjira Mathai was optimistic. “Take the example of the epic leapfrogging that was mobile telephony,” she said. “On the African continent, we went straight to mobile telephony at a speed that even the consultants who had been hired to model transformation could not appreciate. It transformed everything we know about mobile telephony … We leapfrogged [the landline stage].”
“Africa today is arguably more connected than most places. More young people are on their mobile phones, on AI, on all sorts of technology, than anywhere in the world.”
“Investing in the future is the way to go,” she advised. “Africa today is arguably more connected than most places. More young people are on their mobile phones, on AI, on all sorts of technology, than anywhere in the world.”
Is education in Africa keeping up with the future? “I think not enough. I think there's a lot more relevant education needed. We are seeing a huge growth in tech-based solutions. FinTech, AI, data hubs, data languages, models that need to be instructed in African languages.”
Simple is Luxurious
Does she think that as we move into this more ecologically friendly future, people will need to adopt a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle to protect the environment? Or does she think advanced technology will be the key? “Technology has brought a lot of benefits. But in terms of lifestyle, we have to break the mold we have. It's not sustainable. So, we need to move into a more sustainable mode. It may still be luxurious. It's luxurious to eat healthy. It's luxurious to eat local.”
“It's luxurious to eat superfoods today,” she added. “But a lot of those are local. For many Kenyans, the vegetables we find in our supermarkets today were not there 10 years ago. They were not considered supermarket worthy. But they are superfoods. There are seven, eight green vegetables that I can buy in my supermarket today that I couldn't buy [before].”
“That's progress!” she said. “I think the nomenclature is a little bit confusing because we almost imply that sustainable is ‘less than.’”
Family Traditions
“As a family, we compost to make sure that we reduce the sort of waste that leaves our house and make sure that what we can use, we use,” she told The Earth & I. “In our neighborhood we have a program where all that compost comes back to our gardens … [in six weeks] we get an announcement: The compost is ready.” She said her teenage children “have grown up separating their waste in Nairobi.”
Does she think her children will carry on her mission of protecting the environment? “Oh, absolutely, I think so. It's now stuck in their heads.”
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