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A few years ago, an educational garden at my child’s elementary school—complete with mature fruit trees—came under siege by the principal who wanted it paved over and made into a sterile kindergarten playground. She was disconcerted that the fourth-grade teacher was spending too much time cultivating the garden with his students instead of teaching to the No Child Left Behind standardized tests.

A philosopher, poet and beekeeper, this teacher established the garden decades ago, and would read poetry and ancient world history to the class in the shade of a native cottonwood. On fair weather days, an hour a day was spent working the garden, integrating math, chemistry, food anthropology, and personal leadership skills into the experiences of building the soil, implementing ancient agricultural methods and taking responsibility for a particular section of the garden. Each fourth-grader was also jointly responsible for a fruit tree or shade tree. Their cultivated, edible schoolyard set the stage for enriched learning as well as environmental conservation.

Several parents and I protested against the plans to remove the garden by distributing fliers and emails and writing letters to the editor of the local paper. So the school board called a community meeting. Impassioned testimonials came from the fourth-graders and former students, who told the school board that they had built relationships with those trees, and there was no reason the kindergarteners couldn’t garden as well. “Isn’t that what kindergarten means?” one child asked. A former lieutenant governor and senior US senator also weighed in with their support. The garden, which would have been uprooted without our uprising, was spared.

Whether saving a small educational garden or restoring a landscape stripped bare of trees for cooking fuel, neither is trivial work. There is strong international scientific consensus that decreased tree cover across the planet has been a major contribution to accelerated climate change. Trees sequester carbon, prevent soil erosion, provide habitat for other species and, according to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, contribute to sustainable development, democracy and peace.

Founder of the Greenbelt Movement, a Kenyan grassroots tree-planting organization of mostly women who have planted over 40 million trees across Africa since 1977, Dr. Maathai claims, “We have a responsibility to protect the rights of generations, of all species, that cannot speak for themselves today. The global challenge of climate change requires that we ask no less of our leaders, or ourselves.”

Having garnered international respect, her refreshing voice has been echoing in the chambers where it could inform the environmental debate significantly—in forums on how to mitigate climate change. In May 2009, she was the only woman in attendance at a three-day gathering of Nobel laureates and scientists hosted by Prince Charles. Attendees crafted a strategic memorandum for the international global-warming summit to be held in Copenhagen in December. Deforestation in poor and developing countries was central to the discussions and she challenged the delegation: “We all know what to do. Why don’t we do it? The question is, how are we to ensure something is done?”

A former member of the Kenyan parliament, Dr. Maathai is no stranger to distraction by leaders who play for political advantage or allow their self-importance and greed to get in the way of action. Awarded a Kennedy scholarship in 1960 to study in Kansas, she came to the US the same year as President Obama’s father. She went on to obtain a PhD and was a biology professor at the University of Nairobi.

She pointed out that women and Africans will suffer disproportionately on an overheated planet, observing, “The elites have become predators, self-serving and only turning to people when they need them. We can never all be equal, but we can ensure we do not allow excessive poverty or wealth. Inequality breeds insecurity…. It’s in the interests of the rich to help Africa adapt to climate change and preserve its forests. By allowing them to be destroyed, a lot of the efforts made in the rich world will be negated and undermined.” Her current fight is to save the world’s second-largest standing forest, in the Congo Basin.

Dr. Maathai has also noticed that cultures flourish when the environment is healthy. “If the soil is denuded and the waters are polluted, the air is poisoned and the mineral riches are mined and sold beyond the continent, nothing will be left that we can call our own…. Planting trees, speaking our languages, telling our stories are all part of the same act of conservation. We need to protect our local foods, recall our mother tongues and rediscover our communal character.”

Trees root us to our vision for the future. Leveled en masse, they represent greed and lack of foresight. Left to flourish, they vitalize and care indefinitely for human and non-human communities, and their fruits and services are free.

In the scope of deforestation and global warming, saving an elementary school garden was an act of mini-activism compared to the work of the Greenbelt Movement. But if we are to mitigate the effects of climate change, the humble status of trees must be elevated at every opportunity to the dignified stature they deserve. Everyone can plant a tree—and protect one.

Additional resources:
The Challenge for Africa: A New Vision by Wangari Maathai
The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience by Wangari Maathai
Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World, Stone and Barlow, eds.
Eco Hero: Wangari Maathai Joins Ecology and Peace in Africa

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