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Then, through popular education, village women, who had watched the Moi regime use public forests to grant political favors, were galvanized to see the forests differently: as something to which they — as citizens — had claim.

Through the Green Belt Movement, village women also came to see that a narrow focus on export commodities, such as coffee, at the expense of environmentally appropriate food crops, was an inheritance of colonialism reinforced by International Monetary Fund policies.

That, too, they could change

Through a village food-security campaign, Green Belt members are learning to re-establish indigenous crops using organic methods and to reintroduce kitchen gardens — a skill many lost in the wake of government-promoted, export-oriented agriculture. Over the years, Maathai and members of the movement have been jailed and even beaten for their protests of government anti-environment actions.

One of the movement’s organic farming educators described to us how he was almost arrested for promoting sustainable agriculture. The government, it turned out, had lucrative contracts with major chemical agriculture companies; the teachers’ education was deemed a serious threat.

Throughout the movement’s history, Maathai also continued to expand her vision, seeing the interconnections among the disparate crises facing Kenyan villagers. She has become a leader in international debt relief efforts. By the time we traveled to Kenya in 2000, the Green Belt Movement had grown into a major pro-democracy force in the country.

In the lead-up to the 2002 Kenyan presidential elections, Maathai made a last-minute decision to run for a seat in parliament. She beat her opponent 50 to one. Women, we were told, danced in the streets of Nairobi for joy. A few weeks later, when President Moi stepped down after holding power for more than two decades, Maathai was appointed Deputy Minister of the Environment.

We last saw Maathai in May 2004 at an intimate gathering in New York City. She shared with the audience that she was collaborating on writing her country’s new constitution.

“We are working on a Bill of Rights, only ours,” she said with her irrepressible grin, “will include rights not only for human beings, but for animals and the environment.”

We flashed back to our time in Kenya when we saw many village women wearing the signature Green Belt Movement T-shirt. Its slogan never failed to stir us because it seemed to capture the heart of the matter. The T-shirt simply says: “As for me, I’ve made a choice.”

Thus, in selecting Dr. Maathai, perhaps the Nobel Committee wants us to recognize not the power of a global leader to bring peace to our world, but rather that the real hope for peace, both with each other and with the Earth itself, lies in the choices — individual and collective — of empowered citizens.

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