Eulogy for ‘crazy’ green campaigner

An Edinburgh Green councillor and MSP has paid tribute to a former Nobel peace prize winner who died earlier this month.

Alison Johnstone said that Wangari Maathai was “an inspiration to Greens across the world”, particularly women.

Dr Maathai, who died at the age of 71, set up a radical land reform movement in Africa and won the Nobel prize in 2004.

Cllr Johnstone said: “I remember being at a Scottish Green party conference in Dundee in 2004 where we paid tribute to Dr Maathai’s winning of the Nobel peace prize.

“We might have been a small party facing a mighty challenge but the knowledge that a Kenyan colleague, once labelled a ‘crazy woman’, was with us, helped us appreciate that our own community activism was important. I cannot do justice to all that Wangari Maathai has done. But she made a difference”