Maathai founded the Kenyan Green Belt Movement in the late 1970s to mobilize rural women to plant around 40 million trees over three decades. She won the Nobel in 2004 for environmentalism and social activism.
“You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them,” she once said, according to Kenya’s Capital FM News, which reported her death at a Nairobi hospital.
She was the first African woman to win the prize and was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn her doctorate.
"We mourn a global icon who has left an indelible mark in the world of environmental conservation," Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki said in a statement, according to AFP.
