Vandana Shiva (born 5 November 1952) is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, and alter-globalization author. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than twenty books.
It is only with local [agriculture] that we can manage the complexity and care that sustainability requires.
Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use.
The people who see the population explosion in the Malthusian way - as a geometric progression - forget that population growth is not a biological issue. People are not increasing in numbers out of stupidity and ignorance. Population growth is an ecological phenomenon linked very intimately to other issues, such as the usurpation of the resources which allow people to live.
Seen from a monocultural perspective, manipulating objects is very, very clever. But seen from a multidimensional perspective, from a perspective of diversity, this is extremely crude because what we have lost out on is a cow that serves as a source of sustainable energy.
Nature has gifted this rich biological diversity to us. We will not allow it to become the monopoly of a handful of corporations. We will keep it as the basis of our wealth and our sustenance.
Seed is not just the source of life. It is the very foundation of our being.
Given that I was interested in physics, I think it was easier for me to do physics in India.
I still can't figure out what inspired me to do physics. But since I was nine or ten years old, I wanted to be like [Albert] Einstein. He was my hero. I knew no physicists. I knew no scientists. I had nobody around me. And I went to a convent that didn't even have higher mathematics and physics. I taught myself these subjects in order to get into university.
We have a very old conservation movement, particularly in the United States, which has focused on campaigns to protect endangered species: the spotted owl, the old-growth forest. But usually it stops there. To me, biodiversity is the full spectrum. Species conservation is not only about wilderness conservation. Its also about protecting the livelihood of people even while changing the dominant relationship that humans have had with other species. In India, its an economic issue, not just an ecological one.
I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential.
Globalisation has in effect made the citizen disappear, and it has reduced the state into being a mere instrument of global capital.
It is time to learn from the mistakes of monocultures of the mind and the essentialising violence of reductionist thought. It is time to turn to diversity for healing.
Its not that Monsanto is making money out of the blue. Its making money by coercing and literally forcing people to pay for what was free. Take water, for instance. Water has always been free. Weve never paid for drinking water. The World Bank says the reason water has been misused is because it was never commercially priced. But the reason its been misused is because it was wasted by the big usersindustry, which polluted it.
Uniformity is not nature's way; diversity is nature's way.
Amory Lovins has said that the only reason Americans look efficient is that each has 300 energy slaves. Those 300 energy slaves will now be reproduced among the elite of India.
When it comes to owning the seed for collecting royalties, the GMO companies say, 'it's mine. ' But when it comes to contamination, cross-pollination, health problems, the response is we're not liable.
Gandhis idea of swadeshithat local societies should put their own resources and capacities to use to meet their needs as a basic element of freedomis becoming increasingly relevant. We cannot afford to forget that we need self-rule, especially in this world of globalization.
Water must be free for sustenance needs. Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.
Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence.
democracy. . . begins from the ground up. Anything living grows from the bottom up. Everything dangerous, like bombs, gets dropped from the sky down.