08 November 2006

Climate Change & Poverty: Wangari Maathai wants to plant a billion trees

NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- The United Nations and Africa's Nobel laureate, environmentalist Wangari Maathai, launched a project on Wednesday to plant a billion trees worldwide to help fight climate change and poverty.

Kenya's Wangari Maathai, who in 2004 became the first African woman and first "green" activist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, urged people from the United States to Uganda to plant trees to combat global warming and to make a long-term commitment.

"Anybody can dig a hole, anybody can put a tree in that hole and water it. And everybody can make sure that the tree they plant survives," she said on the sidelines of a U.N. meeting on climate change in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

"There are 6 billion of us and counting. So even if only one-sixth of us each plant a tree, we will definitely reach the target (next year)," she told reporters.

Read the full story at CNN.com

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