Waseda University granted an honorary doctorate to Ms. Wangari Maathai on February 13, 2006. (For your reference: What is an "honorary doctorate?")
The award ceremony was held at Waseda University's International Conference Center in front of a great number of students, faculty, staff and mass media people. After the conferment, Ms. Maathai gave a memorial speech to the audiences.

Dr. Maathai: Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. President, honored professors of Waseda, Ambassador Awori, Your Excellencies, students, ladies and gentlemen, I’m overwhelmed by the great honor bestowed upon me to become a member of this distinguished institution of Japan. Little did I ever dream that I would stand here in Tokyo, speaking from this platform of such a great institution and being embraced to become a part of your institution. You have greatly honored me as an institution and I am greatly and deeply humbled. And I hope that I shall live up, Mr. President and the entire community, to the expectations that you expect from one of those you have honored.

I have come back to Japan almost one year later, partly to say thank you for the great friendship and warmth which you bestowed on me and my delegation the last time we came here and also to recognize with a lot of humility the fact that when I came here I was not very sure whether I would be able to pass the message that I was trying to pass to the world here in Japan, because for both of us English is a foreign language and I did not understand any Japanese. And I knew that very few of you, if at all, would understand Kiswahili. So I was not sure how I would communicate, but as fate would have it, as sometimes things happen without our knowing, on the very day I arrived here in Japan I was given a rigorous and a most engaging interview by the Chief Editor of the Mainichi Newspaper, Mr. Kando. As we were discussing, I started telling him the campaign I was running in Kenya about the need for us in Kenya to stop using thin plastic newspaper packages that would be used once and then thrown into the environment. I said, “These thin newspapers, once they are thrown into the environment, they become excellent breeding habitats for mosquitoes.” And as you know malaria is carried by mosquitoes and malaria is one of the major killer diseases in Africa. So I kept saying, and indeed we keep saying, that by using thin plastic newspapers and throwing them into the environment we are creating literally millions of breeding habitats for mosquitoes and therefore increasing the possibility of the spread of malaria.

So I was telling the chief editor of the Mainichi Newspaper that in Kenya I was trying to preach the 3R campaign, at least as far as plastics were concerned, telling our industries that they needed to be responsible even as they make money, that they have to have a corporate responsibility towards the environment and therefore they must stop producing plastics that are used only once. Instead they should produce either biodegradable plastics or use thick plastics as packages so that we can use them over and over.

And so the Chief Editor told me in Japan that concept of using resources respectively, of not wasting resources, is known as “mottai nai.” And I thought, “What a beautiful word.” “Mottai nai,” I repeated. “That’s a good word.” So the next time, which was the following day, when I started communicating with my Japanese friends and my Japanese audience I used the word “mottai nai.” And I said, “My message is each one of us must translate that concept into a personal lifestyle, that we use it whether we are shopping, whether we eating, whether we are buying consumables. We must practice mottai nai at a personal level.” And the Japanese people understood me instantly. And I am so happy that that message was so well-received.

I must also thank the Minister of the Environment, Minister Koike, and the Prime Minister Koizumi because both of them were very appreciative. The Prime Minister was already using the words “the 3Rs.” And he said, “Well from now on I’m going to use 3R and mottai nai,” and the same with Minister Koike. Between the two of them wherever they have gone they have tried to combine those two concepts, 3R and mottai nai. The Mainichi Newspaper has helped me very much because wherever I go they follow me and they help me preach that gospel. So we have been to the United Nations. We have been to G8 meetings. We have been to Rome. We have been to New York. We have been to Nairobi. And we have been trying to tell the world that the environment can be discussed at the global level. It can be discussed in the classrooms. But in the final analysis it must be translated into our personal lifestyles. That means we must get to mottai nai at a personal level. And so I’m very, very happy to be back here in Japan.