Delhi is absolutely fantastic, and I want to commend the leadership in Delhi, because I have not seen a more green city in the world.

• You may have seen there are strong environmental groups here, and it is also a city which is going through a massive infrastructure building. There are always challenges for balancing this.

This is always difficult for people in charge of management and development because you always have to make a choice. There are times when you have to cut trees and take over land for development, but it always a matter of making of right choices and finding the balance.

• You’re not fundamentalist on this issue? You don’t say don’t cut any trees?

You can’t say that. There are time when trees have to go. They also die. So it is not like you can’t sit on a desk or use wood, but it’s a matter of, as I said, finding a balance. Many people don’t have that sense of balance.

• Or maybe sensitivity?

Maybe sensitivity. In my country, I have a problem with people who lay electricity wires. Everything has to make way for the wires. There should be times when it should be diverted to allow trees in a corner.

• Or maybe put the wires higher . . .

Exactly. There’s nothing wrong with having trees along a path, close to the roads. Even when you’re making a house, you don’t have to cut all the trees in your compound. This makes it a very good environment.

• I am sorry to start this with a local issue. The whole issue of compensatory plantation. You cut a tree here and you can plant more somewhere else. Does this work?

The thing we should realise is that a certain amount of trees are necessary on land. In fact the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recommends at least 10 per cent of our landmass should be covered in vegetation like trees. So it’s a matter of you cut and replace. It is important for us to get into this mindset, and culture, if you please, to make sure that there is vegetation and trees always covering the land. Vegetation is there for fodder, firewood, for building, but also need it to protect your soil. Worldwide we are losing topsoil to the sea. It’s very tragic.

• If this tree is cut for making a highway. Can you compensate by putting more tress somewhere else?

I’m sure that we will be able to do that and I hope that is done. I also want to say that it is a matter of balance. Like here in Delhi they are considering in cutting some trees so they can concentrate on public transportation. But if you also have a lot cars on the road, then that produces too much greenhouse gases. Then we are worried about the climate change. So where is the balance? Do you find balance by reducing cars and putting more buses so more people can travel and reduce pollution. If you do that, unfortunately, a few trees will have to go.

• But they should replaced elsewhere?

They should be replaced somewhere else. This also makes you feel less bad. So you’re not cutting them but replacing them.

• Government tends to be so insensitive, and bureaucracy is inefficient and dishonest. How do you ensure they cut five trees and replace them somewhere else? Do they actually do it? Unless you call Wangari Mathaai.

That’s the challenge. We have to be honest and have to do what we say we will do. We shouldn’t just say good things so that we don’t encourage civil society to be suspicious. Civil societies are always suspicious of the government. The government says something and doesn’t carry it out. So it is very important to do what you have promised.

• You know, you speak like a scientist? Reading about you, I realised you got your PhD in biological sciences.

That’s right.

• Studying how parts of glands and the brain work?

Studying about the pineal body, it is a small gland in the brain. I was looking at it in birds. In humans, it is a dormant tissue, I think. But in birds it is very active. My professor wanted to know what role does it play in birds. So that was my masters programme.

• You became the first female (in East and Central Africa) to acquire a science PhD?

Yes, I was very lucky. A lot of people asked me how I achieved it. I was lucky because my mother rather than my father sent me to school. My father wasn’t at home. My mother wasn’t even thinking of sending me to school till my older brother asked my mother why I wasn’t going to school with them and, bless her heart. Because there was no reason why I wasn’t going to school. I was going to school when girls weren’t going to school, so that was a great opening for me. So I tell this story proudly and also to challenge parents. So that parents realise that the decision they make for their children, when they are young can make a change in their lives. We have a moral responsibility to guide our children.

• Some people would say your mother made you too independent.

She probably did.

• Your former husband said that as a charge in a court, isn’t it?

I think he gets more flapping than he deserves. But I think my mother sent me to school and then to missionary school, and in those schools there were very positive aspects and some not so positive. But the positive aspects were encouraging. Like to think freely and to be independent. Also, my going to America made a lot of difference because there was more freedom than at home. I was in America when there was great turmoil. The civil rights societies were revolting on human rights for the black people. So my experience gave me the independence. But I didn’t realise that I’m acquiring an attitude or a mindset that will create a problem for me.

• It did?

Yes, it did. When I went back home, I wanted to teach in university and I found discrimination towards women. I tried to fight that. Then, when I was a wife, I was trying to push a career. I found it difficult because women were not expected to be career women but housewives. Yet I had the qualifications needed in the country. So I tried to combine the two of them, and it just put me into a little bit of trouble.

• Tell us the story of how the extra ‘a’ was added to your name. Mathai became Mathaai.

Well, it’s a long story, but to cut it short . . . when you read the book I recently released, you’ll know I had a problem with my husband. He was trying to get rid of me and I was trying to hang on, kind of. So when the divorce took place, I was very disappointed and I thought the judge was corrupt or incompetent and told him this. He threw me in jail for contempt. In the process, my husband wanted me to drop his name. In our traditional marriage system, girls never drop their father’s name. But as we are adopting the English system, I became Mrs my husband’s name. So after divorce he wanted me to drop his name. There was this problem with identity: I can’t be today this and tomorrow that. This is a bit dehumanising for a woman. So I thought I’ll add an “a” to my name so it is not his name anymore. So it’s my name.

• So you got around the judge? So what was your husband’s problem with you? If I read the book, I believe you were too independent? That’s an interesting charge in a court of law in a divorce case. . .

Actually, he didn’t charge me with that. Somehow the press has picked that . It was in course of conversations and interviews that it became the topic people are talking about. I was a professor in Nairobi University and I had accomplished a lot and I was presenting a challenge not only to my husband, but also other men . . . their wives. . . through me. Maybe he looked at me and thought, ‘I don’t want my wife to be like this.’

• She’s a bad influence?

Yeah, she has to be taught a lesson, and I was taught a very bad lesson. And the lesson was not for what I was doing, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Rather it was to discourage the girl child and woman folk from achieving. They think that once they achieve that much, women can’t be controlled.

• So you have to limit them?

Yes, you have to control them. It’s very interesting. . . for I now see that many of the conflicts we have had are because we wanted to control resources. Sometimes, in societies, we see men want to own women . . . they try to mould and control it, using power, economic power, religion, so that she can be your controlled resource.

• And traditional “family values”.

Exactly. So many things are put on women so that she can be within the constrains where men can feel they have her under control.

• Tell us Wangari, tell us all the stories of the fig tree which got you interested in trees and forests. Tell us for our viewers . . .

Many, many communities in the world respect trees, find spirituality in them, and have religious beliefs in trees. They are wonderful symbols. In my community, the Kikuyus, the fig tree is a sacred tree. I collected firewood when I was five years old, and my mother told me not to collect firewood. I asked why, and she said this tree is the tree of God. We don’t cut it and we don’t use it for fodder or building. We leave it to be. Only worship or sacrifice, we do it under that tree. When I was a child the countryside was full of these trees. Later on, unfortunately, they were cut for eucalyptus.

• We can actually see eucalyptus right here.

I don’t thin they made it here. Wherever the British went, the eucalyptus went.

• So what was the fig tree outside your house?

This tree must have been there for many years. But as my mother said, ‘It is the of God’, it kind of got transfixed in my mind. It was a huge tree and it changed my thinking towards the environment. There was also a stream near the tree. I would get water from there and we would drink the water straight from it as it was clean. But when the fig tree was cut the stream disappeared.

• Why was the tree cut?

It made way for tea plantations, and that is how I started understanding, that trees provided different services like they hold the soil. The roots go deep into the ground, they also get inside underground reservoirs. Quite often they bring springs and when it rains the water feed them. That’s the way the underground waters flow. But when the tree is cut, water flows away, causing flash floods and damage. When we cut trees in our catchment areas, we not only destroying the forest but also making it impossible to harvest rainwater and are making sure our rivers stop flowing. So the services we get from trees are life-giving.

• So that is what made you start save and plant trees?

Yes, and I realised there is too much cutting and no understanding. Fortunately, I had studied biological sciences, so I knew how the vegetation and biological systems worked. I realised that we too are part and parcel of this ecosystem. We are not only undermining our ecosystem but also our lives. So that is the message I’m trying to give to the world: that we are not different from the ecosystem.

• The other connection you have made, which many environmentalists don’t, is preserving the environment, democracy, and freedom.

That is an important message the world has to understand. The tree is a very good symbol of resources. All resources, like land, minerals, trees, are all needed by human beings. As it is limited, we compete for them. So those who have power can access them and decide who can and can’t use them. Those who feel they are not given the opportunity, they react and seek justice. They are being denied human rights, and this is how conflicts, and eventually, wars start. So I’m trying to tell the world that if you want to live peacefully, we must manage these limited resources. We must share them and not too many should feel they are being excluded. We need a governance that respects the rule of law and human rights and that of minorities, who don’t have the political power to defend themselves.

• All this must be tough in Africa, especially under the Moi regime.

Exactly. That’s why I was persecuted and thrown in jail. I was trying to take out this linkage that resources are not to be exploited by those who have power, technology, at the expense of the rest of the people. That leads to conflicts. Think of the conflicts in Africa over minerals, gold, diamonds, land, timber. Right now everyone is making a noise over Zimbabwe. Everyone is concerned. But the bedrock problem is the unequal distribution rather equitable distribution of land. This is a very important message. People should stop looking at conflicts and start looking at causes.

• When you were fighting your corrupt system, the Nobel must have been a great help.

I didn’t have a Nobel then, but when it, came it was a help. People turned, listened and reassessed the message I have been trying to spread. Now, there is a lot of acceptance to my message and the challenge is to be able to reach the people who want to be part of the campaign, especially in Africa.

• Politically, you’re not very friendly with the west. Now, you see the west reaching out to you. The British are putting up a 50 million pounds fund which they want you to oversee. It’s interesting.

I am very happy with this. Especially, for the climate change, as it is very important to save Congo forests. I have been talking about Congo forests, Amazon forests and South East Asia forests. These are very important for climate change. I’m very grateful to the British government.

• I can’t let you go before talking about a controversial topic — AIDS. You don’t see it in the way other people do. You come from the part of the world which is particularly a victim of it.

Immediately after I got the Nobel prize, many people accused me of criticising scientists. I was completely misquoted.

• The allegation was that the AIDS virus was formed in a western lab. A conspiracy.

It was a complete misrepresentation. What I would like to say, and people interested should check my website, greenbeltmovement.org. They can read my statement. HIV is a major catastrophe in Africa. It is partly the vulnerability of Africans. They are poor. More than 60 per cent live below the poverty line because of the mismanagement of our resources by the leaders. As a result this disease has found Africans vulnerable. Many suffer from poor health and this devastates them. What can we do? Many people have done a lot. Bill Gates has donated a lot of money, so has Bill Clinton.

• So you don’t believe it is a conspiracy.

Of course I don’t believe it is. I don’t know how that statement came (to be attributed to me).

• But it stuck somehow.

I think some people like to stick an opinion on a voice that’s being listened to. Winning a Nobel prize is a blessing, but also a curse. People put their issues in a way that shows that I also believe in it.

• Well Wangari, you’ll never mince your words. You are a blessing, and it’s a blessing to converse with you. I know you have planted 30 million trees already in Africa.

Forty million and counting. We have a 10 billion campaign worldwide and I hope everybody everywhere will plant a tree. I know people have already pledged 600 million, but it’s easier to pledge now that we have to plant.

• I hope you’re successful, and we need you, and I hope you find time to come back here. We also need a billion trees.

If every Indian plants a tree, there will be a billion trees.

• We won’t let you go. Thank you so much.