This Day in History: 2004-10-08

Wangari Maathai wins the Nobel Peace Prize as leader of Africa’s Green Belt Movement, an environmental organization focused on conservation, tree planting and womens rights. The movement is in part a response to the fuel wood crisis that plagues rural residents in developing countries. Maathai has also been active in Kenyan politics, at one point in 1992 targeted for political assassination by the one-party government. Following reforms in the 1990s, Maathai became a minister of parliament and founded the Mazingira Green Party of Kenya.