The Green Belt Movement

The Green Belt Movement is a popular movement that was formed as an indigenous grassroot environmental campaign on World Environment Day in 1977. Its founder, Wangari Mathai, a women's rights and environment campaigner is also the Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2004 as well as being on UNEP’s Global 500 Roll of Honour for Environmental Achievement.

Since its beginnings, the movement has worked with more than one million children in 3,000 schools to plant trees on school compounds, gotten more than 50,000 households and small-scale farmers to plant trees on their farms, and produced numerous booklets and films on reforestation issues. In the last ten years, more than seven million trees are recorded as having been planted and survived. More than 50,000 Kenyan women have been involved in the campaign.