Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shivais an Indian scholar, environmental activist and anti-globalization author. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than twenty books...
jobs ecosystems growth-hormones
If you want a cow to be not just a cow but a milk machine, you can do a very good job at that by creating new hormones like the Bovine Growth Hormone. It might make the cow very ill, it might turn it into a drug addict, and it might even create consumer scares about the health and safety aspects of the milk. But we've gotten so used to manipulating objects and organisms and ecosystems for a single objective that we ignore the costs involved. I call this the "monoculture of the mind."
mother agriculture giving
In traditional agriculture, the soil is the mother. She's the mother who gives, to whom you must give back.
independence spinning firsts
The spinning wheel became the symbol of Indian independence. So we always say, "if the spinning wheel was the symbol of our first independence, then the seed is the symbol of our second independence."
war moving ecosystems
The reductionist measure of yield is to agriculture systems, what GDP is to economic systems. It is time to move from measuring yield of commodities, to health and well-being of ecosystems and communities. Industrial agriculture has its roots in war. Ecological agriculture allows us to make peace with the earth, soil and the society.
mistake healing diversity
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.
justice environmental sincere
The environmental movement can only survive if it becomes a justice movement. As a pure environmental movement, it will either die, or it will survive as a corporate 'greenwash'. Anyone who's a sincere environmentalist can't stand that role.
diversity balance culture
Diversity creates harmony, and harmony creates beauty, balance, bounty and peace in nature and society, in agriculture and culture, in science and in politics.
economy currency
In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life.
humanity earth next
The liberation of the earth, the liberation of women, the liberation of all humanity is the next step of freedom we need to work for, and it's the next step of peace that we need to create.
foundation source source-of-life
Seed is not just the source of life. It is the very foundation of our being.
fun creativity mean
We have to build movements in the face of trade retaliation on the basis of people's democratic rights, on the basis of an ancient heritage of collective innovation. We work from the grassroots all the way to the national government and the World Trade Organization. It basically means being very multidimensional in our campaigns. And that is where part of the fun is. It involves both resistance and creativity. It involves constructive action, while at the same time saying "no."
theoretical-physics environmental nuclear
I started out in nuclear physics. But after I became more sensitized to the environmental and health implications of the nuclear system - I was being trained to be the first women in the fast-breeder reactor in India (and was in it when it first went critical) - I didn't feel comfortable with it. So I went into theoretical physics.
fun fighting thinking
I do have fun. Even when I’m fighting I’m enjoying it: I think there’s nothing as exhilarating as protecting that which you find precious.
web-of-life whatever-happens happens
Whatever happens to seed affects the web of life.