the pines from the northern hemisphere and the eucalyptus from Australia. These trees are very nice, they grow tall, and they grow very fast, but as they grow they destroy all the local biological diversity. All the flora and fauna disappeared. So although we were getting commercial timber for the growing timber industry, we also destroyed our local flora and fauna.

As a result, these forests, which were the water towers, were no longer able to contain the water, so when the rains fell the water ran downstream and ended up in the lakes and oceans instead of going down into the underground reservoir so that it could come back to us in the form of rivers. One thing we noted is that not only did the rain patterns change, became less, but also the rivers started drying up. We lost our local biological diversity. So that's a lot of damage to our environment.

That is why in 1975, at the very first United Nations Conference for Women in Mexico, many of the women were saying, "We need food, we need water, we need clean drinking water, we need fodder for our animals." And I was wondering, what has happened? These are things that were there twenty years ago when I was a child. The environment had changed; and that's when I started this campaign to restore the vegetation and to restore the land and to rehabilitate the forests.

NHK Radio : What happened when you started working with the women?

W M.: Well, the first time when I told them, "Let us plant trees", the women said they did not know how to plant trees. So I asked the foresters to come and teach them, but they were very complicated-they are professionals. It became very complicated for ordinary illiterate women so I told the women, "We shall use our