LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: The greeting is especially rambunctious because we’re traveling with the African version of Johnny Appleseed. Some call him the “Tree Bishop.”

BISHOP FREDERICK SHOO: The parish pastor has given us a copy of the report…

SEVERSON: Of all the trees they have planted…

BISHOP SHOO: Yes, showing the total number which has been planted only by this parish is 46,083.

SEVERSON: His name is Frederick Shoo and he is the Assistant Bishop of the northern diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania. He oversees 500,000 members and 164 parishes. The Bishop is on a crusade to plant trees to save the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro.

BISHOP SHOO: At the beginning it was very difficult to be understood. I remember when I spoke even among some pastors, and they were saying, instead of preaching spiritual things, now he’s talking about the environment. What does it mean? I mean, they thought I would have, maybe I was out of…maybe my senses.

SEVERSON: Today it’s not a hard sell. Maybe Tanzanians haven’t seen the NASA pictures showing the rapidly diminishing snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, but they know something’s wrong. Moses Samizi is the district commissioner.

COMMISSIONER MOSES SAMIZI: Everyone knows how the condition of our region is changing, about the global warming. It is now too hot in our region. It wasn’t like this before.

SEVERSON: Bishop Shoo says he began noticing the changes in the weather about 30 years ago.

BISHOP SHOO: It does not need a PhD to see that already people are experiencing the impact of global warming. A simple farmer in the village can tell that something is wrong with our climate.

SEVERSON: Trees are an important part of the ecosystem because they trap the moisture that helps create glaciers. Without the forest’s humidity, the winds blow dry instead of adding moisture to the mountain’s environment.

BISHOP SHOO: We used to have water full from one bank to another. Now you can see very little water remaining.

SEVERSON: In this land of wonders, of animals roaming un-caged, and ancient tribes, Africa’s highest mountain is losing its legendary shining top.

In the last 100 years, 92 percent of the glaciers atop Mount Kilimanjaro have disappeared. Some estimates predict they will all be all gone by the year 2020. And without the ice and snow, the rivers that flow down the mountain that nourish millions of Tanzanians will simply dry up.

(to Bishop Shoo): If they don’t have the water and you don’t have the rain…

BISHOP SHOO: You’re absolutely right. Then there is no life here. The people will have to move or they die.

SEVERSON: Many former local skeptics are now believers in Bishop Shoo and the church’s mega tree garden with millions of saplings waiting to be planted.

(to Mary): So these are what kinds of trees? Orange? MARY: Orange…and avocado. Avocado trees. And what do we have over here? MARY: Mango. These are mango trees over here…

SEVERSON: They take trees very seriously here. There are plans for 152 more nurseries. Even the prison sends orange-clad inmates to load up on saplings. This is Bernadette Kinabo, the municipal director of the city of Moshe, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

BERNADETTE KINABO: We set the standards that every resident should grow 80 trees, and for this year we have 1,680,000 trees to be planted during this um, rainy season.

BISHOP SHOO: Today I am very, very happy, really.

SEVERSON: On this day, the Bishop has local officials and church leaders planting trees in a clearing near downtown Moshi.

BISHOP SHOO: Yes, I like this.

SEVERSON: They’re doing this because they’re convinced that they are the victims of global warming and that it is caused by man, here and around the world. Near Kilimanjaro it’s man cutting trees, sometimes giant trees, for export, for housing, for charcoal and to make room to grow food.

COMMISSIONER MOSES SAMIZI: You’ll find that people have really disturbed the environment. There is a lot of destruction.

SEVERSON: Pastor Ndosa preaches about global warming from the pulpit.

(to Pastor Ndosa): You think mankind has caused all these problems?

PASTOR NDOSA:  Yes, it was created by human being.

SEVERSON: Who cut the trees down?

PASTOR NDOSA: We can’t tell because people just encroach and cut them.

SEVERSON: That’s why they’re now planting trees in this old cemetery. He says no one would dare cut a tree in a holy place, and that God clearly values trees.

PASTOR NDOSA: He planted trees first before creating a human being. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

BISHOP SHOO: At the beginning of the bible, in the Book of Genesis, it is well stated that God created human being and other creatures but he gave the human being the greatest responsibility to take care of the creation. When we care for creation I would say then we care for life.

SEVERSON: At this parish, and in all those in the Bishop’s diocese, youngsters are required to plant trees before they can be confirmed. Pastor Martha Dusiri says she preaches God’s gospel and that includes caring for the environment.

MARTHA DUSIRI: And they liked it. That’s why we have planted a lot of the trees, many of them. Even in their homes. God asked us to do that, yes.

SEVERSON: Some who come here wonder what all the fuss is about. They say, hey, there are trees everywhere and there are, but not nearly as many as before, and every year far more trees are being cleared and cut down than the millions that are now being planted.

BISHOP SHOO: Of course we cannot replace the amount of tree which has been cut in this short time but I think we must begin somewhere.

SEVERSON: This is a man who loves most all living things except critters who chew on trees.

BISHOP SHOO: What do they call it? Gopher. Yeah, they eat the roots. You can see. They destroy the plants like this one. It’s been eaten by this. This is terrible. This is terrible.

SEVERSON: He is a man with a mission who is frustrated that the whole world isn’t as concerned as he is.

BISHOP SHOO: If the snow on the top of Kilimanjaro goes away then it’s going to be really big blow, not only to the people living around here, but also to the… to the humanity, I would say, because this is one of the world’s wonders, I would call it. If there is no snow there, you can imagine what it will mean.

SEVERSON: We were staying in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro for 6 days and we never got to see it because of the constant cloud cover—clouds, but not a lot of rain.

This is a wedding ceremony for a prominent local couple. Aside from the pageantry, the horn blowers wearing wildebeest headdresses, this occasion is unique in one other way – the bride and groom agreed, at Bishop Shoo’s insistence, that they plant a tree at the end of the ceremony.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This ragtag parade in northwest Thailand, in the area known as the Golden Triangle, is a celebration of sorts, but it also has a very serious purpose, and one that has had dangerous consequences.

(speaking to Thai man): How was he killed?

PIPOB UDOMITTIPONG: He was stabbed to death.

SEVERSON: You think that he was killed because of his environmental work?

UDOMITTIPONG: Of course, definitely.

SEVERSON: Why?

UDOMITTIPONG: Because there was no other reason. He’s such a nice man. If you meet in person, he’s a very amicable man. He has no enemies whatsoever.

SEVERSON: What was so unusual about the killing was that the victim held a position of great respect in Thai society. The victim was a Buddhist monk, an environmental activist.

Susan Darlington is writing a book about Thailand’s environmental Buddhism.

PROFESSOR SUSAN DARLINGTON (Hampshire College): There were 18 human rights and environmental activists who were assassinated in Thailand in a three-year period, none of whose murders were solved. So somebody was feeling threatened and had the power to push back and try to send perhaps warnings or to stop these people altogether.

SEVERSON: Sulak Sivaraksa is a noted Buddhist scholar who has written over a hundred books. He claims he knows who was pushing back against the monks who were trying to protect the forests: international corporations with financial ties to some corrupt generals in the Thai military.

SULAK SIVARAKSA (International Network of Engaged Buddhists): Unfortunately the big loggers, in cooperation with generals, they don’t care. They cut the trees, and the monks protested, and they even arrested monks. Not before in history that monks had been arrested.

SEVERSON: Darlington is a professor of anthropology and Asian studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. She says it wasn’t until the late 1980s, after whole forests had vanished, that monks became activists.

(speaking to Professor Darlington): We’re talking about whole forests, clear cutting?

DARLINGTON: Clear cutting to either get the logs—the teak forests were going at a rapid rate, other hardwoods—or cutting down forest to make room for intensive agriculture.

SEVERSON: The forests went away, and the animals, too, and then in 1988 catastrophic floods caused people to reevaluate what they had been told was progress.

DARLINGTON: Up to three hundred people were killed from the floods, and most experts pointed to this and said the flooding would not have occurred if there hadn’t been such severe deforestation.

SEVERSON: Sulak Sivaraksa founded the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. He says Buddhism’s views of the environment are both moral and spiritual.

SIVARAKSA: Buddhism believes that we are all interrelated, not only among human beings but to all sentient beings, including animals, nature, the river, the trees, the clouds, the sun, the moon, we all related. We are brothers and sisters. So if you harm any of these you harm yourself.

DARLINGTON: Buddhists’ primary motivation, primary goal is to end suffering, and destruction of the environment causes suffering on many levels. Therefore as monks it is part of our role to make people aware of this and to undertake actions to prevent this and to protect the forests that still exists.

SEVERSON: To protect to the forests, one monk did something radical, just as they are doing here now. He started tying orange robes around trees, in effect ordaining the trees.

DARLINGTON: He was called crazy, and a national newspapers called for him to disrobe from the sangha [community or order], that this was not appropriate behavior for a monk, he’s misusing the religion. But meanwhile other monks began to do tree ordinations as well. “You can’t ordain a tree. What does that mean?” So people started debating, what does it mean to ordain a tree?

SEVERSON: To the monks, it meant making the forests sacred, off limits to exploitation. The idea has caught on with some villagers, like these. The forests rangers with the guns are not official rangers. They’re volunteers who patrol the mountainside looking for timber poachers. Senior monk Anek took us to an area near his village that was clear-cut in the dark of the night. August 21st there was a forest here. August 22nd it was gone. Three acres of prized hardwood disappeared overnight. Anek says he doesn’t think monks’ robes wrapped around trees would have prevented this.

INTERPRETER (translating senior Buddhist monk Anek): He says it might not deter them because they are investors from outside, they have no respect for the culture, they have no respect for the tradition. He’s saying that he feels sad because it took them many years to preserve this.

SEVERSON: Anek says he still gets threats for ordaining trees but not as many as before and not as severe. He doesn’t think this area was clear cut for the trees, but instead for the land, which foreign companies are using for huge farming operations, like the tangerine plantations that stretch for miles along rolling hills that were once covered with pristine forests. Unfortunately for the locals, the companies are hiring cheap labor from nearby Burma. So they’re losing the land and their ability to live off it. In the middle of the plantations there is a Buddhist monastery that acts as a buffer against development. The senior monk here is also an environmental activist. His name is Abbot Kittisap.

(speaking to Buddhist abbot): But you’re not fearful?

Because of his activism, and because he is testifying in the trial of the murdered monk who was his friend, Abbot Kittsop has 24-hour-a-day police protection, the gentlemen you see here. The abbot says he is still fearful for his safety, but his conscience keeps him going. Even though it’s been four years since the controversial killing, no one has been convicted of the crime, and recently the chief investigator confirmed many people’s suspicions when he accused the police of tampering with the evidence. Many here don’t think justice will ever be served, but Susan Darlington says that doesn’t mean the monks have not made progress. The Thai government, for instance, has cracked down on illegal logging.

DARLINGTON: I think the role of Buddhism in protecting the environment has come a long way. These monks really do, they put a moral standard into the environmental movement that makes people really stop and think. It brings a spiritual element to it.

SEVERSON: Others like Sulak say spirituality also requires action.

SIVARAKSA: Spirituality is not merely personal contemplation, not only meditation, that you feel peaceful and then you feel “I’m alright, Jack.” I think that’s is dangerous. It’s escapism.

SEVERSON: Sulak Sivaraksa, who received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize, says many Westerners and many Buddhists alike do not understand the meaning of engaged Buddhism.

SIVARAKSA: In fact, meditation only helps you to be peaceful. But you must also confront social suffering as well as your own personal suffering, and people suffer now because of the environment.

SEVERSON: The generals and the developers still have the upper hand, but the battle for the land, and the hearts and mind of the people is not over. Ordinary people are now beating a drum for the monks.

For Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, I’m Lucky Severson north of Chang Mai, Thailand.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a profile today of the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize for peace. Wangari Maathai is a conservationist whose movement has caused the planting of 30 million trees in Kenya and also helped lead to free elections. Recently, Maathai visited Chicago, as Judy Valente reports.

JUDY VALENTE: Wangari Maathai of Kenya has been called fondly Mama Miti, Swahili for Mother of Trees. Since winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, she has become an international ambassador for care of the environment.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I want to thank you for coming to this program, because it means a lot to my school and to the community.

VALENTE: She preaches a gospel of conservation wherever she goes, like this school on Chicago’s struggling west side where students recently named a garden in her honor.

Dr. WANGARI MAATHAI (Founder, Green Belt Movement, speaking to students): Wow. Thank you very much that even before we met, you thought that you would associate me with a lovely garden such as this.

VALENTE: Her message is simple, but urgent.

Dr. MAATHAI (speaking to students): We cannot live in peace with each other if we do not manage our environment responsibly and accountably.

VALENTE: Trained as a biologist, and the first black woman in East Africa to earn a PhD, Maathai began in the 1970s speaking out against the rapid deforestation of Kenya’s once rich woodlands. The destruction of trees had led to a shortage of topsoil and fresh water. She sought international funding to put Kenya’s women to work cultivating trees. The project became known as the Green Belt Movement. Maathai says she drew inspiration for her movement from the Bible.

Dr. MAATHAI: The Book of Genesis came to mean much more to me than just a book on how God created. It helped me understand that the creation is how God has made it possible for us to live on this planet, that we need to be very grateful for what he gave us, and we need to take care if it. God would have wanted us to be his custodians, rather than dominion.

VALENTE: Maathai grew up in a village at the foot of Mount Kenya. Her family was Christian, but as a child she took to heart the spiritual beliefs of her Kikuyu ancestors who revered Mount Kenya for the fresh water it provided. They considered some trees sacred.

Dr. MAATHAI (speaking at Trinity United Church of Christ): I want to urge you that as we leave church today you look at the trees and the green vegetation with a special respect, and you thank them. You see a tree, you see a bush, you thank them for taking care of the carbon dioxide you breathe out.

The actual process of planting a tree is very, almost very spiritual. So you’re almost repeating the acts of God. There is something about touching the soil and going down on your knees. It’s almost like you are humbling yourself to the wonders of creation.

VALENTE: Maathai was educated by Irish and Italian missionary nuns and converted to Catholicism as a teen. Through a Kennedy family scholarship, she was able to attend Mount St. Scholastica, now Benedictine College, in the Midwest.

Dr. MAATHAI (speaking to students): I was recommended as one of 300 students who came to the United States in 1960, and I ended up in Kansas, where I picked up this accent. Sister Thomasita, come here, Sister Thomasita!

VALENTE: She rarely misses an opportunity to acknowledge the Benedictine sisters who encouraged her interest in science, provided support over the years, and recommended her for the Nobel Prize.

Dr. MAATHAI (with Sister Thomasita Homan on school steps): These are the sisters that are responsible for my being here for four years in Atchison, the four most wonderful years of my life. Thank you, Sister.

In Kansas, I stayed for four years with those nuns. They were like my mothers, my sisters, my family, and one of the greatest things that people still ask me is, “Why do you do what you do?” And in a light touch I like to tell them that, “That’s the nun in me.”

Sister THOMASITA HOMAN, OSB (Benedictine College): She has listened to people. She has heard their pain. She has listened to the planet and heard the planet’s pain. And she has carried that Benedictine value of listening to a point that’s worldwide. She’s said yes, by my actions the world is my community.

VALENTE: In her 2006 autobiography, UNBOWED, Maathai describes how her environmental work led her to seek democratic reforms and greater human rights in Kenya under a repressive regime. She was at various times placed under house arrest, beaten, and thrown into jail.

Dr. MAATHAI (addressing crowd at Al Raby School): We need to govern ourselves in a way that we promote human rights and promote the rule of law. We promote democracy and we promote inclusiveness, so that everybody in the community will feel that they are a part of that community.

VALENTE: Today, as a member of Kenya’s parliament and her government’s assistant minister of environment, she makes a strong case that caring for the environment is also a path to peace.

Dr. MAATHAI: I realized that when the environment becomes degraded and resources become scarce, people will fight over them, people who would normally call each other brothers and sisters suddenly are quite willing to confront each other. Psalm 23 is, for me, a wonderful psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want,” and of course when the psalmist talks about that the Lord lets me lie on green pastures, I mean how wonderful that is to lie on green pastures and to drink from waters that never go dry.

VALENTE: The divorced mother of three grown children, Maathai usually travels with her daughter, Wanjira. At 67, the Nobel laureate has embarked on an ambitious new project, the planting of a billion trees worldwide.

Dr. MAATHAI: We need at least 10 trees to take care of our own carbon dioxide, and so if you don’t have 10 trees somewhere where you can say “these are my trees,” you are using somebody else’s tree, and you ought to get up and plant your own.

VALENTE: When she tires these days from her many speeches and world travels, Maathai often takes comfort from a hymn which she first learned to sing in her native Kikuyu tongue.

Dr. MAATHAI singing “Amazing Grace” in Kikuyu and English.

VALENTE: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Judy Valente in Chicago.