Wangari Maathai, one of the new economics greats

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I met Wangari Maathai only once, in a lift in Birmingham at the People’s Summit – the new economics alternative to the G8 summit in 1998.

The People’s Summit was the last of the series of TOES events (The Other Economics Summit) organised by nef to showcase the new economics alongside the G7 and G8 meetings. 

It was the summit where, finally, the G8 leaders called in nef director Ed Mayo, albeit in his capacity of chair of Jubilee 2000.  After that, the G8 leaders began meeting on inaccessible islands and TOES summits became impossible.

Wangari spoke and also sang along from the main platform at our closing ceremony (Ed Mayo sang ‘The Baby has Gone Down the Plughole’, which turns out to have been a perceptive comment on the direction of the global economy).

She was not just one of the most approachable of the icons of the new economics, she was also one of the greatest – combining practical action with courageous determination and visionary power. 

Courage because of the number of times she was imprisoned by the Kenyan government – though she rose to be assistant environment minister herself. Visionary because she was among the first to see the potential impact that reviving forests and planting trees could have on local economic revival, and the core role women had to play.

Of course, she also won the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the early days of nef, Wangari’s Greenbelt Movement – along with the related Chipko movement of Uttar Pradesh – was one of the stories we told to explain what new economics meant, and the critical role that restoring the environment could have for economics, at a time when conventional economics suggested that economic success and the planet were always opposed.

She was only 71 when she died.  I don’t know how many times she was described as a ‘mad woman’ by the Kenyan government. In fact, she turned out to be one of the sanest people in the world.