On October 8, 2004, Wangarĩ Maathai, a Kenyan woman from the Kikuyu ethnic group, became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai was an environmentalist who founded the Green Belt Movement to reforest her country.

Maathai's groundbreaking work went beyond the scope of traditional environmentalism. She bridged the environmental movement with the peace movement, famously arguing that protecting the environment is, fundamentally, "peace work."

When accepting her Nobel Prize, she beautifully summarized this philosophy by stating that the Norwegian Nobel Committee was sending a message that "protecting and restoring the environment contributes to peace; it is peace work."

Below, her acceptance speech at the UN: