What is the significance or importance of planting trees?
WM: Well, for me planting a tree is a very doable thing. It’s not complicated, it doesn’t require technology, it doesn’t require much knowledge, but it can be a very important entry point into communities understanding how they destroy their own resources, but how they can also restore those resources, and not wait for their government or international agencies to come and help them. And you can educate people therefore to understand how they can preempt their own conflict. And how they need to not only protect their resources themselves, but also demand that their government, which is supposed to be custodians of these resources, should take care of them. So quite often when people hear about our work, they only think about the actual action of planting a tree. But a tree for us is a symbol, it’s an entry point, and once you are into the communities then you help the communities to try and understand the linkages and to try to mobilize them for action. MS: The Green Belt Movement seem
