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The Green Belt Effects on Urban Development
With the deterioration of the environmental situation in cities, especially in metropolises, the preservation and improvement of the Green Belt play an essential role from the ecological, sanitary-hygienic, and aesthetic sides. The Green Belt is an area of forests, agricultural and unused land, specially preserved in the cities’ territories. In the postwar period, they were created in various countries to stop urban sprawl, protect the environment and provide comfortable living conditions. The Green Belt around megalopolises is the way to a new quality of life in cities.
The concept of Green Belts was first applied in Great Britain. Urban planners in many countries believed that the best way to stop environmental degradation was to rigidly separate rural spaces from downtown development (Vernet & Coste, 2017).
Firstly, it should contain the process of urban sprawl – the uncontrolled territorial expansion of the city through the growth of low-rise suburbs, as it happened in the United States. Secondly, the Green Belt was to preserve forests and agricultural land. Thirdly, it was supposed to provide urban dwellers with access to recreational areas and spaces of unspoiled nature. Fourth, the mission of the Green Belt was to protect the historical heritage of London’s satellite cities and prevent them from merging with the metropolis. In addition, this policy was to improve the ecological situation: purify the air, and water, and regenerate the land.
However, the artificial restriction of London’s development created many social, environmental, and economic problems and also showed its ineffectiveness. Its results were a significant increase in housing prices caused by limited land supply and the uncontrolled sprawl of satellite cities, whose residents are forced to commute to work in the metropolis. Therefore, in recent decades, the concept of the Green Belt has been heavily criticized and is no longer seen as the only solution to urbanization problems.
An important aspect is the possibility of incorporating the Green Belt concept into U.S. legislation. However, given the adverse effects, this should be done with some changes. First, to avoid a housing crisis, green space planning should identify areas where growth is possible and areas where it is strictly forbidden. Second, special attention should be paid to the development of suburban transport. Thirdly, instead of creating only Green Belts that severely limit the growth of cities, it can be considered the concept of Green Wedges, following the example of the Scandinavian countries. They allow for more efficient urban transportation infrastructure, do not alter the space for town expansion, and do not contribute to higher housing prices.
In today’s rapidly developing metropolises, creating green areas, parks, and squares takes center stage in solving a livable ecological situation. The primary function of correcting this kind of problem of the city environment in modern urban planning is assigned to the Green Belts. It is necessary to conduct a site analysis to determine the overall structure of the immediate suburbs so that a program of development in Green Belt areas in the United States can be implemented. Cities and their suburbs need to develop; they cannot be permanently confined to a particular line. The law should provide for the possibility of changing the boundaries to the exclusion of some territories, with mandatory compensation at the expense of the inclusion of others. This policy should be flexible and adapted to the infrastructure of the town and the needs of its inhabitants.
Vernet, N., & Coste, A. (2017). Garden cities of the 21st century: A sustainable path to suburban reform. Urban Planning, 2 (4), 45-60. Web.
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ORDINARY PEOPLE. EXTRAORDINARY IMPACT.
Meet the 2024 Goldman Prize winners and watch the award ceremony.
The green belt movement: 40 years of impact.
March 21, 2018
For Women’s History Month, we’re highlighting the powerful work of female Goldman Environmental Prize winners. This blog is a guest post by the Green Belt Movement , an organization founded by Prize winner Wangari Maathai (Kenya, 1991) that empowers communities, especially women, to protect the environment.
In Africa, as in many parts of the world, rural women deal with multiple stresses as an integral part of their daily lives. This is because they are in charge of most of the domestic and livelihood activities and most of their time is spent on tasks like looking for food, water, and collecting firewood.
Increased deforestation has not only meant increased desertification, but it has also meant that women have had to travel further afield in order to collect firewood. This in turn has meant less time around the home, tending to crops, and looking after their children. Responding to these challenges, Professor Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, primarily working with women in environmental conservation and community empowerment in Kenya.
Starting with seven seedlings on World Environment Day in 1977, the Movement soon began a widespread tree-planting strategy in which over a thousand seedlings were planted in long rows to form green belts of trees, thus marking the very beginning of the Green Belt Movement.
Looking back over the 40 years, the journey has by no means been easy, with efforts to repress the Green Belt Movement between 1989 and 1999. Starting in 1989, the Green Belt Movement’s advocacy efforts thwarted a 60-story development from being built in Uhuru Park, a 34-acre public green space in the heart of Nairobi. In 1992, just after the project was abandoned, Uhuru Park became the site of a hunger strike to secure the release of political prisoners, at which Professor Maathai was beaten unconscious by police. Again, in January 1999, leading a protest against the privatization of Karura Forest in Nairobi, members of the Movement were beaten bloody by private guards hired to prevent them from entering the forest.
“Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it, and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You’re just talking.” — Wangari Maathai
Despite these and numerous other hurdles along the way, the Green Belt Movement persevered and, to date, hundreds of thousands of women have become involved and over 5,000 nurseries have been established. More than 51 million trees have been planted—on farms, in schools and churches, along rivers, and in the countryside.
Over the years, the Green Belt Movement and its founder have received numerous accolades for the key role of environmental rehabilitation and linking sustainable development, peace, and democracy through tree planting. Professor Maathai was one of six individuals worldwide to be honored with the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1991 and, to crown it off in 2004, received the Nobel Peace Prize “for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”
Today, the Green Belt Movement’s work has continued to evolve, with the goal of furthering our efforts across our four thematic areas of work: tree planting and watersheds, gender livelihood and advocacy, climate change, and mainstream advocacy.
Founded in 1977 by Professor Wangari Maathai, the Green Belt Movement (GBM) has planted over 51 million trees in Kenya. GBM works at the grassroots, national, and international levels to promote environmental conservation; to build climate resilience and empower communities, especially women and girls; to foster democratic space and sustainable livelihoods.
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Unbowed , written by Wangari Maathai , is a memoir of the Kenyan politician and environmental activist who founded the Green Belt Movement. In 2004, Maathai became the first African woman and environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
First published in 2006, the memoir describes Maathai’s path to activism, which was fueled by a familiarity with and fondness for the Kenyan landscape of her childhood, as well as an early awareness of social injustice. Maathai was born in 1940, in the small Kenyan village of Ihithe. She was born into a polygamous family and a Kenya that was still under British colonial rule.
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Maathai and her family later moved to the farm where her father worked, near the provincial town of Nakuru. She describes the social hierarchy of towns like these, with their British administrators, Indian store owners, and African subjects. She also discusses the oral storytelling culture of her own Kikuyu community, which she explains is “the most populous” ethnic group in Kenya (1). She writes about growing up helping her family on their farm, describing how peaceful and meditative she found this work: “Nothing is more beautiful than cultivating the land at dusk […] As you remove the weeds and press the earth around the crops you feel content, and wish the light would last longer so you could cultivate more” (47).
As a young girl, Maathai was sent away to attend two Catholic boarding schools. Maathai acknowledges the cultural imperialism the European nuns taught; nevertheless, she became close to many of her teachers and converted to Catholicism. She also appreciated the opportunity to go to school at all, which was rare for Kenyan girls at that time.
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Maathai continued her studies in the United States, through an American scholarship program for African students sponsored by John F. Kennedy—then a senator—known as the Kennedy Airlift. She first attended Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas and then continued with graduate studies in biology at the University of Pittsburgh.
The United States exposed Maathai to dramatic changes in weather and landscape, along with unfamiliar racial and religious tensions: “An African has to go to America to understand slavery and its impact on black people—not only in Africa but also in the diaspora” (78). While Maathai was in the States, her own country was impacted by the Mau Mau movement, an uprising of the Kenyan people against colonial rule. One key figure in the movement, Jomo Kenyatta, was to become Kenya’s first President.
Maathai returned to an independent Kenya in 1966. Though thrilled about her country’s new status, she soon learned that Kenya was still far from being an open or democratic society. Maathai encountered sexism and tribalism both personally in her marriage and professionally in her career as a professor of zoology at the University of Nairobi. As a university professor, she had to fight to have the same health and housing benefits as her male co-workers; as a wife, she had to mute her own ambitions to further those of her husband, Mwangi Mathai , an executive and aspiring politician who later became a Parliamentary minister.
Maathai’s marriage ended in a painful divorce. After contesting the divorce in court and losing the court battle, Maathai publicly questioned the judge’s motives and was jailed (for three nights) for slander. This difficult period culminated in the loss of her teaching job; she quit so she could make a bid at a Parliamentary chair. Upon losing the election, she tried to go back to her job and was told that she had been immediately replaced.
The final chapters of the memoir describe the Green Belt Movement, which began as a volunteer organization and has since become Maathai’s life’s work. In addition to empowering rural Kenyan women to plant trees and take back their own land, the movement has served to educate people about democracy, activism, and human rights. Maathai describes battles with an increasingly repressive Kenyan government and details her growing network of international sympathizers and fellow activists. Maathai helped to raise public awareness of the need for a multi-party system, and in November 2002 was elected as a minister to Parliament, this time winning 98% of the vote. Her election coincided with the election of President Kibaki, who succeeded the corrupt President Moi.
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- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies
- Environmental degradation is one of the most prevalent and devastating issues in our contemporary world. As discourses on how to curb increasing environmental deterioration continue to emerge, it has become clear that the Earth’s ecosystems cannot thrive in tandem with hyper-modernization projects pursuing Western conceptions of development. As the ramifications of environmental degradation become more apparent in our daily lives, it is also evident that Southern women are disproportionately affected by ills brought about by the destruction of ecosystems. In light of our current gendered environmental crisis, this article offers a historical exploration of how the Green Belt Movement (GBM)—an organization founded in Kenya in 1977—engaged in programs and advocacy to empower rural women and conserve the environment. The GBM’s activities were particularly groundbreaking due to their occurrence at a time when conversations surrounding environmental protection were not mainstream and took the backseat to development goals evoked by modernization theory. To contextualize the GBM’s emergence, the article explores how agrarian policies in colonial and post-colonial Kenya led to deforestation and natural resource depletion. The article then offers gender and development (GAD) and intersectionality literature as ways to better understand the GBM’s interventions to restore natural habitats. The GBM’s tree planting, education, and advocacy programs are underlined as being instrumental in encouraging authentic design within communities, challenging hyper-modernization in Kenya, and shifting rural women’s gender roles. The article ultimately aims to highlight the importance of indigenous knowledge and local activism in creating a sustainable future.
- conservation
- intersectionality
- gender and development
- environmental degradation
- https://doi.org/10.17615/z431-9a94
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- Global Africana Review
- Global Africana Review Volume 6, Issue 1
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