This thesis explores interorganizational cooperation as a tool for grassroots expansion. It focuses on the importance of grounding development work in grassroots perspectives, while acknowledging the structural and practical limitations to this that exist inherently in the organization of the international system and in the nature of development actors. In order to address these limitations, it analyzes the resources, methods, and missions of development actors. It uses this analysis to demonstrate how coordination maximize resources and enables actors to increase their impact. Through a structural analysis of international, national, and local actors and development practices, this paper assesses where there is room in the international system for cooperation. To measure this question it lays out the underlying nature of the international system and the implications it inherently has that complicate interorganizational cooperation and grassroots expansion. Through the case of the Green Belt Movement, this paper investigates the potential for grassroots expansion. This case study demonstrates where there is room for cooperation by illustrating relevant collaborative projects. The Green Belt Movement specifically examines the potential for coordination in Kenya for climate justice, women’s rights, and community empowerment.

The effects of the colonial project in Kenya created multi-faceted damages to the land and indigenous people-groups. Using the lens of ecofeminism, this study examines the undergirding structures that produce systems such as colonization that oppress and destroy land, people, and other beings. By highlighting the experience of the Kikuyu people within the Kenyan colonial program, the innovative and ingenious response of Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement proves to be a relevant and effective counter to women's disempowerment and environmental devastation in a post-colonial nation. The approach of the Green Belt Movement offers a unique and accessible method for empowering women, restoring the land, and addressing loss of cultural identity, while also contributing a theoretical template for addressing climate change.