Planet under attack, says Nobel prize winner

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai was today set to warn that the planet is under attack from a litany of threats, ranging from disease, deforestation and war, and urge a shift in human thinking to save the earth.

The 64-year-old Kenyan environmental activist said she would warn of the environmental threats to the planet in her remarks when she receives the 2004 peace prize in a formal ceremony at the Oslo City Hall attended by the Norwegian royal family.

She will receive the traditional gold medal and diploma that accompanies the 10 million kroner (€1.2m) prize from King Harald V.

Maathai, who is the first African woman to receive the prize and the 12th woman since it was first awarded in 1901, said she will use it to encourage more environmental protection, adding that the relationship between a safe environment and peace was and remains forever linked.

Maathai’s selection by the five-member Nobel Committee for the Peace Prize raised eyebrows because of her environmental ties and also because of controversy over statements she reportedly made asserting that Aids was a laboratory-created ailment.

But she said her comments about Aids being created to destroy Africans were misquoted and taken out of context.

“I have not said what I’m quoted as saying,” she said of claims that Aids was created by scientists and loosed upon Africa by the West.

She reaffirmed her stand in a statement released by the Nobel Committee that said: “It is therefore critical for me to state that I neither say nor believe that the virus was developed by white people or white powers in order to destroy the African people. Such views are wicked and destructive.”

Maathai, the first African woman and first Kenyan to win the award, was selected for her role in founding the Green Belt Movement, which has sought to empower women, improve the environment and fight corruption in Africa for nearly 30 years.

A deputy environment minister in the Kenyan government, Maathai also won acclaim for her campaign to fight deforestation by planting 30 million trees in Africa.

Her Nobel prize is the first to acknowledge environmentalism as a means of building peace.

When the award was announced in October, Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the committee “added a new dimension to peace” by choosing Maathai, but critics contended it diluted the nature of the prize.

Maathai said the five-member committee was looking at new ways to promote peace.

“This shift the Nobel Committee has made is an extremely important shift for us, because it puts the environment right at the top of the agenda,” she said.

Maathai said protecting the environment was a vital part of building both a democratic and peaceful society.

The Nobel Prizes are always presented on December 10, the anniversary of the death of their creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel. The peace prize is presented in Oslo, while the other Nobel prize are awarded in the Swedish capital of Stockholm.