One of the most inspired green visionaries of our time, last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, is promulgating a timely message: Protecting the environment is a path to peace – not just peace in the ethereal sense, but real-world geopolitical stability. Maathai is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, responsible for rallying thousands of Kenyan women to plant a grand total of 30 million trees in their country over the last three decades.

The effort helped the women create an important energy resource (wood), improve air quality and soil fertility (tree roots retain ground water moisture), and fill their communities with the shade and beauty trees offer. The empowerment of women and local economies through this effort gave way to a regime change in her nation. “A degraded environment leads to a scramble for scarce resources and may culminate in poverty and even conflict,” she said in her Nobel acceptance speech.

To read more on the relationship between resource conservation and conflict, check out Resource Wars, by oil expert Michael Klare.

Photo credit: WangariMaathai.com