The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania have awarded Professor Wangari Maathai, 2004 NobelPeace Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement the University's Distinguished Medal for Achievement by the University's President, Dr. Amy Gutmann, at a ceremony on the University's campus in Philadelphia.

In her speech presenting the medal, Dr. Gutmann, adapting a quote from the sociologist Max Weber, called Dr. Maathai "an exemplary prophet" for her work over three decades to protect the environment and promote democratic governance, sustainable development, and peace.

The citation to Dr. Maathai accompanying the medal reads in part: ". . . a Renaissance woman for ourmodern times, you are a scientist, professor, sustainable developer, parliamentary minister, and advocate for women's rights, human rights, democracy, and peace....

You exemplify the enormous good that can come from academic leadership as well as the necessityof thinking and acting beyond one's academic discipline. You have helped all of us embrace what it means to lead a truly engaged life."

Commenting on receiving the medal, Dr. Maathai said: "It is a great honor to receive such a beautiful medal". She also commended the University for encouraging volunteers to work to keep the city green and the former White House official and the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Environment, Kathleen McGinty, for supporting those initiatives.

Environmental conservation was everybody's business, she said. "It is important to get away from the belief that it is only the city government that must be responsible for cleaning up and greening our environment. We all have a role to play. When adults do it, children can learn from them. It's also possible for adults to learn from the children."

After receiving the medal, Dr. Maathai gave a speech to an audience of nearly a thousand University of Pennsylvania students, faculty, administrators and members of the Philadelphia community in the  University's Irvine Auditorium.

She described her work with the Green Belt Movement, noting, "I wasn't planning to start a movement that would last thirty years. I had planned only for an initiative."

Dr. Maathai then laid out her vision of a world where resources are managed sustainably and equitably, where minorities have a true voice in their societies, democratic space is widened and deepened, and the tensions underlying conflicts-often desires to control and use resources-are acknowledged and diffused before violence erupts.

Continuing the theme of the University's "Growing Greener Cities Symposium," sponsored by the University's Institute for Urban Research, at which she had spoken earlier in the day, Dr. Maathai described her successful struggle in the late 1980s into the early 1990s to stop the construction of a 62 story office building in Nairobi's main public green space, Uhuru (Freedom) Park (which is documented in her just-published memoir Unbowed).

Dr. Maathai also urged those in attendance to do all they could to reduce the amount of resources they used, recycle wherever they can, and reuse materials and goods instead of throwing them away.

She acknowledged the urgent problems facing the planet, but also indicated her sense of hope that things are changing.

She cited the growing awareness of the problem of global warming and commended former Vice President Al Gore for his work to draw attention to the issue through his film and book.

 An Inconvenient Truth. "It is difficult to change the human mindset," she said, "and we are all on a journey." "I certainly hope none of you will go home the way you came here tonight."