with the environment so they can develop appropriate ways of interacting with that environment. Such development and awareness can only nurture and further heighten their humanness—their utu.
Maathai defined and situated “the source,” ever present in the environment, as a place of knowledge and awareness, which should inform how human beings as individuals and collectives interact with their environments (Maathai 2010, 21–22). In this conceptualization, the association between the environment and the human is sacred and symbiotic. In Maathai’s view, “if we can’t or won’t assist in the earth’s healing process, the planet might not take care of us either” (24). In the books Replenishing the Earth, Unbowed: A Memoir (2007), and The Challenge for Africa (2009), she stressed that the relationship between humans and their environment, across cultures, has always had deeply spiritual dimensions. Thus, interfaces with nature provide symbiotic healing on two levels and connect human beings to their physical and spiritual selves, whatever they define those to be, and, as a consequence, their humanity and all humanity. According to Maathai, for environmental and human rescue to be activated, individuals must meet their responsibility to their environments for themselves, their communities, and future generations locally and globally. Maathai’s philosophy of environmentalism, therefore, is rooted in a universal utu (Maathai 2010a, 16–17), which triggers and sustains holistic thinking. Below, I outline the changes in perspectives she conceptualized to inform this way of being and knowing.
Maathai proposed a tridimensional approach to understanding the environment, which combined application of the big-picture perspective (thinking universally) and the long-view perspective (considering the environment over time), working in tandem with a consideration for the small and the local. She rationalized the big-picture perspective’s capacity to “open up deeper inquiries as to our relationship to the planet, and force us to ask questions about our attitude toward it and activities upon it—questions that, in the rush of our day-to-day lives, where we do not see our effect on the whole, we may not be able to grasp the significance of” (Maathai 2010a, 61). Maathai was quick to elaborate that the big picture can be realized at different layers beyond the individual space and person, from one’s local space to the earth as a whole. The long view’s vertical perspective of space and horizontal perspective of time “offer only more wonder and astonishment: at the magnitude of created existence, and the awesome responsibility we humans have in not only comprehending it, but protecting what we can” (64).
Losing sight of the big picture and the long view has had significant ramifications (Maathai 2010a, 64–67). Maathai described a dissonance in experiential understanding across generations, which compromises possibilities for collective action to save the environment as well as cross-generational passing-on of environmental knowledge and history. Using the example of central Kenya, she observed that her generation was able to recognize the degradation that had occurred to the environment with the loss of the thick forests and functioning waterways and the ecosystems they supported. On the other hand, to the youth, the dense tea and coffee plantations signal healthy, thriving environments—this is the central Kenya of their lifelong experience, and so even the drying streams are acceptable as part of this backdrop because this has always been the limit of their experience with their environment (64–65). Failing to recognize the big-picture and long-view perspectives also causes short memories in relation to changing environmental conditions. For example, after long, devastating droughts, as soon as the rains fall, communities appear to have collective amnesia about the drought, and so little effort is put toward preventing a recurrence. This leads to another consequence of not operationalizing these perspectives, which is that human beings are caught in a cycle of reacting to crises and fail to correct the root causes of the crises for long-term benefits. Applying these two perspectives develops shared consciousness for individuals and appreciation for how their actions affect their immediate environment as well as the global one, and other human beings, further activating their utu.
Maathai clarified that while the big- and long-view perspectives direct us toward effective far-reaching solutions and concrete practices, it is equally important to focus on the small perspective (Maathai 2010a, 67). In considering “the small,” her call was not just for people to focus on their immediate environments in a general sense but also the individual parts that make up those ecosystems. It is necessary to consider the particularities and with that the interconnectedness of the parts of the small as well as of one small ecosystem to another. Maathai said, “It is also an infinitely subtle and intricate network of biomes that are full of microorganisms, bacteria, insects, plants, and other forms of life that are the bedrock of the larger ecosystems on which . . . more consumptive species such as our own depend” (68). She elaborated, saying, “Part of acknowledging the small and its connectedness is simply in noticing individual distress and the chain reaction it could stimulate” (69). Like the big picture, the small exists on different scales. A stream or pond is small in relation to the stretch of land on which it exists, which in turn is small in relation to the village. The village is small in relation to a district, which then scales up to a county, a country, and so on.
Seeing the big and small picture forces humans to become aware of the sources of things, which allows them to experience more of their humanness. Recognizing the sources of things provides an understanding of the interconnected needs and contributions of different components of ecosystems. Maathai, citing James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, promoted the idea of seeing the earth as one self-sustaining organism, with human beings as just one part of what makes up that organism (Maathai 2010a, 61–64). Being a part of an organism indicates that their true nature, humanness, is locked into how the rest of the body performs. Indeed, to disrespect or degrade the organism is to do the same to the self.
With the erasure of respect for the sources of things, human beings have constructed a false reality and belief in their absolute dominion over nature (Maathai 2010a, 71–73). Maathai shed light on how this misstep has compromised the capacity of human beings to appreciate their dependency on their environments and so interrupted their efforts to preserve those ecosystems. Underscoring human beings’ vulnerability and dependency on the other parts of the organism that is the earth, she wrote, “It is a sobering thought that if the human species were to become extinct, no species I know of would die out because we were not there to sustain them. Yet if some of them became extinct, human beings would also die out. That should encourage us to have respect for the other forms of life and indeed for all of creation. We should demonstrate our gratitude for the way they sustain us” (2010a, 71). Recognizing this susceptibility humanizes the human in enhanced ways and also underlines human beings’ communion and their reliance on each other and on nature, the essence of the philosophy of utu.
Applying these three perspectives, Maathai located human beings as occupying the summit as well as the base of the pyramid—in other words, as the ones most likely to influence trends of nature and maximize usage from their environments but also as the most vulnerable entities within their ecosystems. A close reading and analysis of this position reveals an unstated proposition that locates humans in relation to the need to protect the environment. She called for a continued quest for biological and other forms of knowledge about the environment (Maathai 2010a, 73–75), explaining that even science has barely cracked the surface of all there is to know about the environment. Clear in this position is not just a sense of wonder about the environment and a rationalization for further studies of the environment but also, more significantly, the lesson that it is too early to dismantle the environment or to reengineer it. If in fact human beings have a limited understanding of the environment, they cannot fully comprehend the ramifications of destroying it. Thus, it would be suicidal to destroy or reengineer the environment because there is no full understanding of it that would support its re-creation should the need arise. Additionally, failure to fully understand the environment and its ecosystems is hampering humans’ understanding not just of their world but also of themselves and their capacities as part of that organism. Thus, as highest located and also most vulnerable, the human being does in fact have the greatest stake in seeing the environment protected and should bear the biggest burden in ensuring its defense.
In summary, Maathai suggested that human beings should be on a constant quest
