Video:Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai

The seemingly simple quest to help women in her native Kenya have access to firewood led Wangari Maathai to begin planting trees in her own backyard. 

Three decades and 35 million trees later, Maathai is now known the world over as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, making her the first environmental activist - and the first African woman - to receive the award.

But the path from her backyard to the global stage was rarely, if ever, easy. Under the dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi, Maathai's efforts to promote environmental stewardship and economic rights among Kenyan women was deemed a subversive act, leading to her arrest and imprisonment as well as to beatings that left her unconscious. Through it all, Maathai maintained her core conviction that the onus of action lay with those who understood the complex ways in which democracy, warfare and human rights intertwined with the environment. 

Maathai's luminous presence is at the heart of this dramatic and occasionally harrowing story, one that documents her pivotal role in the Green Belt Movement, her abiding commitment to grassroots work and the changes that her efforts are creating well beyond Kenya's borders.

Watch the Taking Root trailer now!