OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai has received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to combat deforestation and to promote democracy and women's rights.
Maathai, who is Kenya's deputy environment minister, received a gold medal and a Nobel diploma at a ceremony on Friday in Oslo City Hall to applause from about 1,000 guests.
She will separately collect a cheque for 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.48 million). Maathai is the first African woman to win and the 12th female peace laureate since the award was first made in 1901.
In a speech Maathai, the first African woman to win the prize named after Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel since it was first awarded in 1901, urged democratic reforms and an end to corporate greed.
Sweeping changes to the world order, she said, were needed to restore a "world of beauty and wonder" by overcoming challenges ranging from AIDS to climatic instability.
"Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated," Maathai, founder of a campaign to plant 30 million trees across Africa to slow deforestation, said.
"Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system," said Maathai, who is Kenya's deputy environment minister.
"I call on leaders, especially in Africa, to expand democratic space and build fair and just societies that allow the creativity and energy of their citizens to flourish," she said.
"Further, industry and global institutions must appreciate that ensuring economic justice, equity and ecological integrity are of greater value than profits at any cost," she said.
Grassroots citizens' movements should be encouraged to promote change, she added.
"We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own," she said.
Her tree-planting movement, led mostly by women, aims to produce everything from firewood to building materials and also slow desertification. It also works for women's rights, democracy and peace.
She said that "destruction of ecosystems ... climatic instability and contamination of soils and waters" all contributed to poverty.
Maathai, 64, said a stream where she used to see tadpoles as a child 50 years ago had now dried up. "The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder," she said.
Maathai also said the environment was a barometer of a nation's health. Some critics have said environmentalism has too little to do with peace to warrant the Nobel accolade.
"The state of any country's environment is a reflection of the kind of governance in place, and without good governance there can be no peace," she said.
She said the world was facing a "litany of woes" including corruption, violence against women and children and diseases like AIDS or malaria.
She did not refer to her controversial views of AIDS -- she has suggested the virus might have been the result of a laboratory experiment gone awry.
She has, however, denied that she thinks Western governments might have developed the virus to wipe out Africans.
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