I have long been a fan of Wangari Maathai and the astonishing work she has done with Kenya's Green Belt Movement. More Nobel peace prizes should be given out for this sort of thing - it seems plainly obvious to me that ensuring people have more sustainable sources of food and energy results in less conflict overall.

This book is an overview of the first years of the GBM - what Maathai calls Phase I. It's more a how-to policy book than a narrative, and I think what stands out most here is the emphasis on community involvement, how necessary it is, and how difficult it can be. The words "persistence" and "patience" come up over and over, but while there's often a sense of frustration here (particularly directed at unhelpful governments) there's also a strong sense of optimism: the certainty that BGM could work, and that people would respond to it eventually. Both these things proved true, of course. I'd be interested to read a follow-up volume, because this only really covers the period up to 1999 and that was nearly quarter of a century ago. I grabbed Maathai's autobiography from the library along with this, though, so maybe more information will be there.