Wangari Maathai planted a tree and started a revolution. The Kenyan biologist founded the Green Belt Movement, organized rural women to plant over fifty million trees across Africa, and turned environmental restoration into a vehicle for democracy, women’s rights, and resistance to government corruption. She was beaten, imprisoned, and tear-gassed — and won the Nobel Peace Prize for proving that planting trees was a political act.

This episode traces Maathai from her rural Kenyan childhood through her education in the United States, the founding of the Green Belt Movement, the confrontations with the Moi regime, and the Nobel Prize that recognized environmental activism as peacemaking.

• Maathai’s rural childhood, her American education, and her return to Kenya as the first East African woman with a PhD
• The founding of the Green Belt Movement and the idea that planting trees could empower communities
• The beatings, the imprisonment, and the confrontations with the Moi government
• The Nobel Peace Prize and the argument that environmental destruction and political oppression are the same fight