Nobel laureate talks at L.A. eco-event

The greeting outside Ward African Methodist Episcopal Church on Saturday was meant to send a clear message that their special guest and keynote speaker could feel at home.

Wangari Muta Maathai, the founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, received fresh bouquets of flowers as she walked to the church, down a street filled with the musical sounds of ululating women dancing to the rhythms of African drummers.

In Los Angeles, the city’s gritty environment is often talked about as something to be survived -- not something to be saved.

But Maathai delivered a different message at the pulpit at 1177 W. 25th St., talking about simple things that can be done, such as recycling, planting trees, changing light bulbs and using public transportation.

“It doesn’t have to start with big things; start with small things, start with ourselves,” she said.

Maathai’s appearance in Los Angeles was part of an Ecological Justice Day of Awakening sponsored by the Women’s Global Resource and Development Initiative, an organization that seeks to promote self-esteem in women and children through self-help projects around the globe.

“When you are talking about healing the earth, you are talking about healing the quality of life for all who share in the earth,” said the Rev. Cecelia Williams Bryant, executive director of the organization.

Minority communities in Los Angeles, Bryant said, need to look at the rise in asthma that stems from air pollution, and childhood obesity as an outgrowth of fast food diets. “Children are full, but not well-fed. If you send children to school hungry and ill-equipped and tired, you are sending them as fodder to respond negatively to a stressful environment.”

In addition to honoring Maathai, the program paid tribute to Anna Marie Carter, a local environmentalist known as “The Seed Lady” for her work promoting organic gardening in Watts and Long Beach.

“We are kindred spirits,” Carter said of Maathai. “We do the same work, but on opposite sides of the planet.”

As part of the event, Million Trees L.A., a joint project of the city and community groups, distributed free trees to those in attendance.

In front of an audience of more than 300 people, L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks welcomed Maathai and described her as a courageous woman who had risked her life on several occasions to save the environment.

Maathai’s campaign against deforestation also touches on issues such as poverty, malnutrition, corruption, women’s low economic status and the lack of media freedom in Kenya. She has also criticized the negative images of Africa. She studied biological sciences in Kansas and earned a master’s in science from the University of Pittsburgh in the 1960s. She founded Green Belt Movement in 1977, in a small nursery in her backyard in Kenya. She has been arrested several times for her environmental campaigning and once was beaten unconscious by police.

During her hourlong presentation at the church, Maathai gave a history of the Peace Prize, which was established by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in 1895 and first awarded in 1901. Maathai, who won in 2004, has led members of the Green Belt Movement, mostly women, in planting more than 30 million trees to counter the effects of deforestation. The campaign has created thousands of jobs while providing a sustainable source of firewood for families.

Maathai traced the roots of her environmental activism to the 1960s, when she came to study in the United States in the midst of the nation’s civil rights movement.

When she returned to Kenya, she found the demands for lumber by the timber industry were resulting in widespread deforestation. The soil was drying up, and farmers were having a difficult time growing crops.

“We can live in a home without furniture, but we cannot live in a place where there is no food or water,” she said.

To take part in the Green Belt Movement, each new member must plant at least one tree.

“If the tree dies, your membership lapses,” she said.

In Kenya, the Green Belt Movement has taken up several environmental issues, including the fight to reduce the use of plastic bags. “There were so many that people thought it was the native flower,” she said.

During this trip to the U.S., Maathai said she wanted to “try to get young people to understand the value of protecting the environment and the value of thinking about the environment that is not just in their neighborhood but far from where they live.

“Most communities are concerned about survival and their immediate needs rather than the long-term effects brought by climate change that affect us all, whether rich or poor,” she said. “It’s important to understand that if things are bad, they can get worse.”

Maathai delved only briefly into U.S. politics, and never directly mentioned the name of presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan.

She told the audience that that the world looks to America for direction.

“You have been a big inspiration, not only in politics,” she said. “I hope you can continue to spread the spirit.”

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john.mitchell@latimes.com