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2013 Annual Report the green belt movement ANNUAL REPORT 2013 1 | the green belt movement Annual Report 2013 2 | the green belt movement Annual Report 2013 table of contents 3 Letter from the Green Belt Movement (GBM) Board Chair 4 Our Story 4 Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies Key Achievements of 2013 6 Tree Planting “ We owe it to ourselves 8 Advocacy and Climate Change and to the next generation 10 Community Empowerment and Education (CEE) to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our 12 Financial Statement children a sustainable world that benefits all.” 14 Supporters and Partners — PROFESSOR WANGARI MAATHAI Founder, The Green Belt Movement 16 In Memoriam — A Tribute to Wangari Maathai Image Credits All photos © Green Belt Movement unless noted below. © Adrian Arbib, inside front cover © Patrick Wallet – Foundation Yves Rocher, page 16 www.greenbeltmovement.org | 1 2 | the green belt movement Annual Report 2013 letter from the GBM board chair Dear Friends, I send you warm greetings from the Green Belt Movement (GBM). This year was a particularly important year for the Green Belt Movement family. I felt in all of us a sense of renewal and resurgence. I hope that through this annual report you will see concrete evidence of our optimism and renewed energy. When, at the end of 2012, during our Annual Programme Review, our guest speaker urged us to “step into the light” and move GBM to the next level, it felt like an impossible task. He added this question: “If Wangari were to return today, would she be proud of the Green Belt Movement she would find?” Those were the words we needed to hear and 2013 has indeed made us all proud of the Green Belt Movement. Indeed, Prof (as we called her at GBM) also would be proud of the resurgence of GBM today. We are excited about the re-alignment of GBM programmes that has brought to the fore GBM’s work in protecting and restoring the most critically degraded watershed areas in Kenya. The link between intact forests, climate mitigation and improved livelihoods has never been clearer. Now the urgency is to ensure that the communities we work with also make these connections. GBM continues to seek new ways of highlighting the critical and central role the environment plays in changing the lives of the communities we work with. That’s why the addition of our Bamboo Biomass and Entrepreneurship Project in Murang’a is so exciting. I have been struck by the fact that energy access continues to be a massive development challenge across Africa. Fewer than 7% of rural households in Kenya have access to electricity, and more than 90% of the rural population depends on firewood for cooking and heating (and will for the next fifty years). For the foreseeable future, therefore, Kenya will need access to sustainable sources of firewood, charcoal, and other forest products at a massive scale, if our forest ecosystems are to remain intact. Bamboo is showing great promise as both a fuel and cash crop: its rapid growth, high income potential, source of firewood and easy conversion to charcoal make it one to watch. The Bamboo Project, a partnership between GBM and Waterstone Norway, is on the cutting edge of moving this discussion forward. We are promoting the planting of indigenous bamboo to demonstrate that it can serve multiple roles: conservation, climate mitigation, fuel (firewood and charcoal) as well as offer economic opportunities in the crafting of bamboo products. I was amazed to learn that from the same acreage, bamboo yields four and a half times more biomass than eucalyptus! The rapid turnover and consequently high production of biomass makes bamboo suitable as a feedstock for clean cooking stoves. I am grateful to the visionary Board of Directors of GBM for agreeing to allocate five acres of GBM owned land for this exciting bamboo pilot project in Murang’a. Today, we are more determined than ever to keep the legacy of our founder alive and to continue to push boundaries in search of transformative change. I will always be grateful to the many friends and partners who stood by us and encouraged us to soldier on, that peace will come in time and that GBM will begin to rise again. It has! Thank you for your continued encouragement and support. They have meant a lot to us over the past two years. I am honoured to provide the strategic leadership to an organization I know has such enormous promise and potential. Drawing on our strong roots and looking firmly toward the future, I believe that for GBM the best is yet to come. Sincerely, WANJIRA MATHAI, CHAIR The Green Belt Movement Board www.greenbeltmovement.org | 3 our story Green Belt Movement (GBM) has been engaging women in environmental conservation and community mobilisation for climate change adaptation and mitigation for over three decades. During this time over 51 million trees have been planted and thousands of lives have been impacted. GBM has supported more than 4,000 community groups in Kenya forming the grassroots network that is the backbone of GBM’s work. When it was founded in 1977, GBM sought to respond to the needs of rural Kenyan women who reported that their streams were drying up, their food supply was less secure, and they had to walk further and further to get firewood for fuel, building and fencing. GBM encouraged them to work together to grow seedlings and plant trees to bind the soil, store rainwater, provide food and firewood and receive a small monetary token of appreciation for their work. Shortly after beginning this work, Professor Maathai saw in Community Education and Empowerment (CEE) to that behind the everyday hardships faced by populations encourage individuals and communities to analyze why — poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation, they lacked agency to change their political, economic water scarcity, deforestation and food insecurity — were and environmental circumstances and what they could deeper issues of disempowerment, disenfranchisement, do to change the status quo that had betrayed them political and economic mis-governance, inequities and their aspirations. On the other hand, even those and loss of ethics, values and traditional practices that in the community were undermining and sabotaging had previously cushioned and enabled communities their own lives by not working with their environment to protect their livelihoods, work together for mutual and for failing to manage their natural resources wisely benefit of all, and to do so both selflessly and honestly and in accordance to the rules of nature. As a result for the common good. The Green Belt Movement, they suffered drought related famine, soil erosion and then an independent organisation, instituted seminars dwindling water supplies. Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies Hosting the wPOWER Hub The U.S. Department of State launched the Partnership on Women’s Entrepreneurship in Renewables (“wPOWER”) in January 2013 at the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies founded by Professor Wangari Maathai in partnership with the Green Belt Movement. wPOWER aims to empower more than 8,000 women clean energy entrepreneurs across East Africa, Nigeria and India who will deliver clean energy access to more than 3.5 million people over the next three years. 4 | the green belt movement Annual Report 2013 The CEE seminars remain a cornerstone of the Green Belt Movement’s success seeking to facilitate the process of self-empowerment and inspiring individuals in communities to find their agency and take action. With time, the movement experienced that working with women who had gone through this empowerment process engendered community transformation. This was because when women are empowered economically, psychologically or with the necessary tools and skills to change their circumstances, they often always invest in bettering their families and communities. OUR VISION “ This stream dried sometimes back, A values-driven society of people who consciously work for continued improvement of their livelihoods but from the time we planted trees and a greener, cleaner world. with Green Belt Movement, it no longer dries, it should be called OUR MISSION Green Belt, now I believe trees We strive for better environmental management, bring rain.” community empowerment, and livelihood improvement using tree planting as an entry point. — MIRIAM WAMBUI Donduri forest, Nakuru County To reach this goal, the U.S. Department of State solutions; hold Trainers of Trainers workshop; facilitate and USAID have teamed up with the MacArthur Africa/India women entrepreneur and leadership Foundation, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, exchanges to build a network of women climate CARE International, Solar Sister, Swayam Shikshan leaders and build public awareness. Prayog and the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace The wPOWER hub will partner with GBM’s 4,000 and Environmental Studies. Under the leadership of community groups. This will further expand wPOWER Wanjira Mathai, wPOWER Project Director and GBM networks of clean energy entrepreneurs and introduce Board Chair, the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace new livelihood opportunities to GBM’s grassroots & Environmental Studies is playing a critical role as women leaders. the host of the wPOWER Hub. The Hub will build the evidence base on women, energy access and climate www.greenbeltmovement.org | 5 KEY 2013 ACHIEVEMENTS tree planting The Green Belt Movement has aligned four and a half times more biomass than eucalyptus. The rapid turnover and consequently high production its strategy with Kenya’s Vision 2030, of biomass makes bamboo suitable as feedstock for which aims to transform Kenya into a middle- cooking stoves. Bamboo is renewable and can be used on degraded land. It also lends itself to larger scale income economy by 2030. The environment propagation for energy.
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