Somalia, a desert country the size of Texas, has only 2 percent arable land. With the ever-present threat of devastating droughts, protecting the environment is a must. This is where Fatima Jama Jibrell, 54, the founder and executive director of Horn of Africa Relief and Development Organization of Somalia, steps in. For her efforts, she is now a winner of the San Francisco-based 2002 Goldman Environmental Prize, the largest award for grass-roots environmentalists.
For Jibrell, stability in Somalia is primarily undermined by ordinary Somalis, who—during a decade without stable government—have hastily stripped their country of its few resources in pursuit of fast profits. “Because African political leaders have delegated their economic planning to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,” Jibrell explains, “they no longer have the power to protect their citizens or environment from being exploited by the First World.” Jibrell alerts Somalis to lucrative alternative markets, like solar energy. She is fighting against unrestricted charcoal production—Somalia’s main export to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States—and the massive desertification of acacia trees, which are being harvested for charcoal. Her efforts have brought results: She has pushed through a ban on the export of charcoal, and thus brought an end to the massive logging of these old-growth trees.
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Our Maakhiri women, follow in her footsteps
