Yet now the industrialized world is moving away from fossil fuels and moving towards renewable sources of energy. And because we have not invested so much into education, we don't have the technology and sometimes we don't even have the capital to buy this technology.

The women of the Green Belt Movement have learned about the causes and the symptoms of environmental degradation. They have begun to appreciate that they, rather than their government, ought to be the custodians of the environment.

Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking.

Do not be naive. AIDS is not a curse from God to Africans or the black people. It is a tool to control them designed by some evil-minded scientists, but we may not know who particularly did it.

Resources on the planet are limited, and limited resources can come to an end. But there are also a lot of resources that are renewable. A lot of land, for example, can be reclaimed from the encroaching deserts.

The living conditions of the poor must be improved if we really want to save our environment

I have seen a lot of men, for example, who will make a will and include their daughters whether they are married or not. And perhaps the greatest change of attitude is that today, at least in Kenya, if you don't send your child to school - unless it's a matter of poverty or religion, and it is not that there no schools - then people wonder, "why the hell don't you send your children to school?" Now that's a very big jump from when I was going to school and educating girls was an exception to the rule.