Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - December 9, 2004
Alister Doyle

"It may be water, it may be firewood, it may be oil, it may be timber ... but it's mostly natural resources," Maathai told a news conference on the eve of collecting the prize.

Some researchers have accused the secretive Nobel committee of betraying a century-old focus on wider themes of war and conflict solving in making the award to Maathai, an environmentalist and the first African woman to win.

Maathai was honoured for her Green Belt Movement, which has planted 30 million trees in Africa.

The 64-year-old Kenyan deputy environmental minister said planting trees helped provide a source of firewood and building materials, as well as helping slow deforestation. And forests soak up rains and act as sponges to regulate the flow of rivers vital for agriculture.

She predicted the award would inspire global work to plant trees and to nurture democracy.

Maathai will collect the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.48 million) prize at a ceremony in Oslo City Hall on Friday. The award also includes a gold medal and a diploma.

"With this prize I'm very happy because now ... I know that a lot of governments will work together with us to allow us to work with civil society ... for environmental protection and the promotion of democracy," she said.

ENVIRONMENT AND DEMOCRACY

"Now the whole world is listening," she said, adding that the award has brought a deluge of letters, e-mails and requests to explain her views about how planting trees can slow deforestation and aid democracy, peace and justice.

She said her movement, mainly led by rural women, was expanding across Africa and that it had already sought in the past to cooperate with badly deforested nations like Haiti in the Caribbean.

Brushing aside controversy about past comments that AIDS might have been created in a laboratory, Maathai called the disease "devastating" but declined to elaborate on her views.

Before the prize was announced in October, she was quoted in August as calling AIDS "a tool ... designed by some evil minded scientists".

The Nobel Institute distributed a statement dated Nov. 23 in which she said: "I neither say nor believe that the virus was developed by white people or white powers in order to destroy the African people."

"Such views are wicked and destructive," she added.

The statement added she felt confident scientists would work to disprove what she called "quite widespread" theories that "the tragedy could have been caused by biological experiments that failed terribly in a laboratory somewhere".

After a news conference at which she also fielded questions about Iraq, Burma, the U.S. war on terror and the rights of indigenous peoples, she said:

"One of the problems you get (as a Nobel winner) is that you are asked about everything even when you don't know how to respond," she said.

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