Shiva is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization (with Jerry Mander, Ralph Nader, and Helena Norberg-Hodge), and a figure of the anti-globalisation movement.[5] She has argued in favour of many traditional practices, as in her interview in the book Vedic Ecology (by Ranchor Prime). She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, Spain's Socialist Party's think tank. She is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society.[6]
Vandana Shiva has written and spoken extensively about advances in the fields of agriculture and food. Intellectual property rights, biodiversity, biotechnology, bioethics, and genetic engineering are among the fields where Shiva has fought through activist campaigns. She has assisted grassroots organisations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria with opposition to advances in agricultural development via genetic engineering.
In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.[12] This led to the creation of Navdanya in 1991, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade.[13] Navdanya, which translates to "Nine Seeds" or "New Gift", is an initiative of the RFSTE to educate farmers of the benefits of maintaining diverse and individualised crops rather than accepting offers from monoculture food producers. The initiative established over 40 seed banks across India to provide regional opportunity for diverse agriculture. In 2004 Shiva started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley, Uttarakhand, in collaboration with Schumacher College, UK.[14]
In the area of intellectual property rights and biodiversity, Shiva and her team at the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology challenged the biopiracy of neem, basmati and wheat. She has served on expert groups of [where?] government on Biodiversity and IPR legislation.[citation needed]
Shiva's book Making Peace With the Earth discusses biodiversity and the relationship between communities and nature. "Accordingly, she aligns the destruction of natural biodiversity with the dismantling of traditional communities—those who 'understand the language of nature'".[18] David Wright wrote in a review of the book that to Shiva, "the Village becomes a symbol, almost a metaphor for 'the local' in all nations".[18][19]
Shiva has also served as an advisor to governments in India and abroad as well as non-governmental organisations, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women's Environment & Development Organisation and the Third World Network. She chairs the Commission on the Future of Food set up by the Region of Tuscany in Italy and is a member of the Scientific Committee that advised former prime minister Zapatero of Spain. Shiva is a member of the Steering Committee of the Indian People's Campaign Against WTO. She is a councilor of the World Future Council. Shiva serves on Government of India Committees on Organic Farming. She participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.
In 2021, she advised the government of Sri Lanka to ban inorganic fertilizers and pesticides[20][21] stating "This decision will definitely help farmers become more prosperous. Use of organic fertilizer will help provide agri products rich with nutrients while retaining the fertility of the land."[22] The policy applied overnight, with the main purpose to save State foreign exchange bills on imported fertilizers,[23] caused a crisis with a significant reduction of farming output in several sectors, hitting the tea industry in particular[24][25][26] and reducing rice yields were by one third.[22] The ban was overturned seven months later.[21]
Activism
Her work on agriculture started in 1984 after the violence in Punjab and the Bhopal disaster caused by a gas leak from Union Carbide's pesticide manufacturing plant. Her studies for the UN University led to the publication of her book The Violence of the Green Revolution.[27][28][29]
In an interview with David Barsamian, Shiva argues that the seed-chemical package promoted by green revolution agriculture has depleted fertile soil and destroyed living ecosystems.[30] In her work Shiva cites data allegedly demonstrating that today there are over 1400 pesticides that may enter the food system across the world.[31]
Shiva is a founding councillor of the World Future Council (WFC). The WFC was formed in 2007 "to speak on behalf of policy solutions that serve the interests of future generations." Their primary focus has been on climate security.[32]
She supports the crime of ecocide being introduced to the International Criminal Court stating "The ideal of limitless growth is leading to limitless violations of the rights of the Earth and of the rights of nature. This is ecocide".[33][34]
Seed freedom
Vandana supports the idea of seed freedom, or the rejection of patents on new plant lines or cultivars. She has campaigned against the implementation of the WTO 1994 Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, which broadens the scope of patents to include life forms. Shiva has criticised the agreement as having close ties with the corporate sector and opening the door to further patents on life.[35] Shiva calls the patenting of life 'biopiracy', and has fought against attempted patents of several indigenous plants, such as basmati.[36] In 2005, Shiva's was one of the three organisations that won a 10-year battle in the European Patent Office against the biopiracy of Neem by the US Department of Agriculture and the corporation WR Grace.[37] In 1998, Shiva's organisation Navdanya began a campaign against the biopiracy of basmati rice by US corporation RiceTec Inc. In 2001, following intensive campaigning, RiceTec lost most of its claims to the patent.
Golden rice
Shiva strongly opposes golden rice, a breed of rice that has been genetically engineered to biosynthesise beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. Shiva contends that Golden Rice is more harmful than beneficial in her explanation of what she calls the "Golden Rice hoax": "Unfortunately, Vitamin A rice is a hoax, and will bring further dispute to plant genetic engineering where public relations exercises seem to have replaced science in promotion of untested, unproven and unnecessary technology... This is a recipe for creating hunger and malnutrition, not solving it."[38] Adrian Dubock says that golden rice is as cheap as other rice and vitamin A deficiency is the greatest reason for blindness and causes 28% of global preschool child mortality.[39] Shiva has claimed that the women of Bengal grow and eat 150 greens which can do the same,[40] while environmental consultant Patrick Moore suggests that most of these 250 million children do not eat much else than a bowl of rice a day.[41] In the 2013 report "The economic power of the Golden Rice opposition", two economists, Wesseler and Zilberman from Munich University and the University of California, Berkeley respectively calculated that the absence of Golden Rice in India had caused the loss of over 1.4 million lives in the previous ten years.[42]
According to Shiva, "Soaring seed prices in India have resulted in many farmers being mired in debt and turning to suicide". The creation of seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of superprofits in the form of royalties, and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures has created a context for debt, suicides, and agrarian distress. According to data from the Indian government, nearly 75 percent of rural debt is due to purchased inputs. Shiva claims that farmers' debt grows as GMO corporation's profits grow. According to Shiva, it is in this systemic sense that GM seeds are those of suicide.
Shiva plays a major role in the global ecofeminist movement. According to her 2004 article Empowering Women,[45] a more sustainable and productive approach to agriculture can be achieved by reinstating the system of farming in India that is more centred on engaging women. She advocates against the prevalent "patriarchal logic of exclusion," claiming that a woman-focused system would be a great improvement.[46] She believes that ecological destruction and industrial catastrophes threaten daily life, and the maintenance of these problems have become women's responsibility.[47]
Cecile Jackson has criticised some of Shiva's views as essentialist.[48]
Shiva co-wrote the book Ecofeminism in 1993 with "German anarchist and radical feminist sociologist"[49] Maria Mies. It combined Western and Southern feminism with "environmental, technological and feminist issues, all incorporated under the term ecofeminism".[49] These theories are combined throughout the book in essays by Shiva and Mies.
Stefanie Lay described the book as a collection of thought-provoking essays but also found in it a lack of new ecofeminist theories and contemporary analysis, as well as "overall failure to acknowledge the work of others".[50]
Indian Intelligence Bureau investigation
In June 2014, Indian and international media reported that Navdanya and Vandana Shiva were named in a leaked, classified report by India's Intelligence Bureau (IB), which was prepared for the Indian Prime Minister's Office.[51]
The leaked report says that campaigning activities of Indian NGOs such as Navdanya are hampering India's growth and development. In its report, the IB said that Indian NGOs, including Navdanya, receive money from foreign donors under the 'charitable garb' of campaigning for human rights or women's equality, but instead use the money for 'nefarious purposes'. "These foreign donors lead local NGOs to provide field reports which are used to build a record against India and serve as tools for the strategic foreign policy interests of the Western governments," the IB report states.[52]
Criticism
Investigative journalist Michael Specter, in an article in The New Yorker on 25 August 2014 called "Seeds of Doubt",[10] raised concerns over a number of Shiva's claims regarding GMOs and some of her campaigning methods. He wrote: "Shiva's absolutism about G.M.O.s can lead her in strange directions. In 1999, ten thousand people were killed and millions were left homeless when a cyclone hit India's eastern coastal state of Orissa. When the U.S. government dispatched grain and soy to help feed the desperate victims, Shiva held a news conference in New Delhi and said that the donation was proof that 'the United States has been using the Orissa victims as guinea pigs' for genetically-engineered products, although she made no mention that those same products are approved and consumed in the United States. She also wrote to the international relief agency Oxfam to say that she hoped it wasn't planning to send genetically modified foods to feed the starving survivors."[10]
Shiva responded that Specter was "ill informed"[53] and that "for the record, ever since I sued Monsanto in 1999 for its illegal Bt cotton trials in India, I have received death threats", adding that the "concerted PR assault on me for the last two years from Lynas, Specter and an equally vocal Twitter group is a sign that the global outrage against the control over our seed and food, by Monsanto through GMOs, is making the biotech industry panic."[53]David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, responded by publishing a letter supporting Specter's article.[54]
Cases of plagiarism have been pointed out against Shiva. Birendra Nayak noted that Shiva copied verbatim from a 1996 article in Voice Gopalpur in her 1998 book Stronger than Steel,[55] and that in 2016, she plagiarised several paragraphs of an article by S Faizi on the Plachimada/Coca-Cola issue published in The Statesman.[56]
Journalist Keith Kloor, in an article published in Discover on 23 October 2014 titled "The Rich Allure of a Peasant Champion", revealed that Shiva charges $40,000 per lecture, plus a business-class air ticket from New Delhi. Kloor wrote: "She is often heralded as a tireless 'defender of the poor,' someone who has courageously taken her stand among the peasant farmers of India. Let it be noted, however, that this champion of the downtrodden doesn't exactly live a peasant's lifestyle."[57]
Stewart Brand in Whole Earth Discipline described some of Shiva's statements as pseudo-scientific, calling her warnings about "heritable sterility" (Stolen Harvest, 2000) a "biological impossibility" but also plagiarism from Geri Guidetti, owner of the seed supplier company Ark Institute, and a "distraction" created by inflating the potential of terminator genes based on a single 1998 patent granted to a US company.[58] Brand also criticised the position of anti-GMO activists, including Shiva, who forced Zambia's government to reject internationally donated corn in 2001-02 because it was "poisoned", as well as during the cyclone disaster in India. On the latter Shiva argued, "emergency cannot be used as market opportunity", to which Brand responded, "anyone who encourages other people to starve on principle should do some of the starving themselves". In 1998 Shiva was also protesting against Bt cotton program in India, calling it "seeds of suicide, seeds of slavery, seeds of despair", claiming she was protecting the farmers. Restrictive laws established in India under anti-GMO lobbying, however, led to widespread grassroots "seed piracy" where Indian farmers illegally planted seeds of Bt cotton and Bt brinjal, obtained either from experimental plantations or from Bangladesh (where they are planted legally) due to increased yield and reduced pesticide usage.[58] As of 2005 over 2.5 million hectares were planted with "unofficial" Bt cotton in India, of which Noel Kingsbury said:
Shiva's "Operation Cremate Monsanto" had spectacularly failed, its anti-GM stance borrowed from Western intellectuals had made no headway with Indian farmers, who showed they were not passive recipients of either technology or propaganda, but could take an active role in shaping their lives. What they did is also perhaps more genuinely subversive of multinational capitalism than anything GM's opponents have ever managed.
—Noel Kingsbury, Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding (2009)
In India, farmers planting GM crops illegally eventually formed the Shetkari Sanghatana movement, calling for reform of the restrictive laws created under anti-GMO lobbying and as of 2020 an estimated 25% of cotton farmed is GM.[59]
Science as legacy of exploitation
Shiva has repeatedly gone on record characterizing science as "a very narrow, patriarchal project" that has been around only "for a short period of history" and argued that "we name 'science' what is mechanistic and reductionist." She condemns the "kind of science" that "Bacon, Descartes, and others, who are called 'fathers of modern science', have created," because scientists, as she claims, "declare nature as dead" and then use a "mechanistic mode" to analyze it. Shiva assigns the so-called scientific progress of the last centuries to the advance of capitalism, a time when the new exploitation needed a knowledge that would justify it.[60] In her 8 March 2017 speech to the European Parliament, Shiva stated that the "rise of masculinist science with Descartes, Newton, Bacon, led to the domination of [a] reductionist mechanistic science and a subjugation of [the] knowledge systems [that are] based on interconnections and relationships," a knowledge, she argued, that "includes all indigenous knowledge systems, and women’s knowledge."[61][62]
Film
Vandana Shiva has been interviewed for a number of documentary films including Freedom Ahead, Roshni;[63]Deconstructing Supper: Is Your Food Safe?,The Corporation,Thrive,Dirt! The Movie, Normal is Over, and This is What Democracy Looks Like (a documentary about the Seattle WTO protests of 1999).[64][65] and Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs Planet of the Humans.[66]
On the topic of genetically modified crops, she was featured in the documentary Fed Up! (2002), on genetic engineering, industrial agriculture and sustainable alternatives; and the documentary The World According to Monsanto, a film made by the French independent journalist Marie-Monique Robin.
2007, Democratizing Biology: Reinventing Biology from a Feminist, Ecological and Third World Perspective, author, Paradigm Publishers ISBN978-1-59451-204-9
2007, Cargill and the Corporate Hijack of India's Food and Agriculture, Navdanya/RFSTE, New Delhi
2018, Oneness Vs. The 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom, Women Unlimited, ISBN978-93-85606-18-2
2019, Vandana Shiva (2019). "Foreword". In Extinction Rebellion (ed.). This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. Penguin Books. pp.5–8. ISBN9780141991443.
2022, Terra Viva: My life in a biodiversity of movements, CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING CO, ISBN 9781645021889
Bioprospecting is the exploration of natural sources for small molecules, macromolecules and biochemical and genetic information that could be developed into commercially valuable products for the agricultural, aquaculture, bioremediation, cosmetics, nanotechnology, or pharmaceutical industries. In the pharmaceutical industry, for example, almost one third of all small-molecule drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 1981 and 2014 were either natural products or compounds derived from natural products.
The Monsanto Company was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best-known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in the 1970s. Later, the company became a major producer of genetically engineered crops. In 2018, the company ranked 199th on the Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue.
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is a comprehensive international agreement in harmony with the Convention on Biological Diversity, which aims at guaranteeing food security through the conservation, exchange and sustainable use of the world's plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA), the fair and equitable benefit sharing arising from its use, as well as the recognition of farmers' rights. It was signed in 2001 in Madrid, and entered into force on 29 June 2004.
Golden rice is a variety of rice produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesize beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, in the edible parts of the rice. It is intended to produce a fortified food to be grown and consumed in areas with a shortage of dietary vitamin A. Genetically modified golden rice can produce up to 23 times as much beta-carotene as the original golden rice.
In agriculture and gardening, seed saving is the practice of saving seeds or other reproductive material from vegetables, grain, herbs, and flowers for use from year to year for annuals and nuts, tree fruits, and berries for perennials and trees. This is the traditional way farms and gardens were maintained for the last 12,000 years.
An heirloom plant, heirloom variety, heritage fruit, or heirloom vegetable is an old cultivar of a plant used for food that is grown and maintained by gardeners and farmers, particularly in isolated communities of the Western world. These were commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but are not used in modern large-scale agriculture.
Genetically modified crops are plants used in agriculture, the DNA of which has been modified using genetic engineering methods. Plant genomes can be engineered by physical methods or by use of Agrobacterium for the delivery of sequences hosted in T-DNA binary vectors. In most cases, the aim is to introduce a new trait to the plant which does not occur naturally in the species. Examples in food crops include resistance to certain pests, diseases, environmental conditions, reduction of spoilage, resistance to chemical treatments, or improving the nutrient profile of the crop. Examples in non-food crops include production of pharmaceutical agents, biofuels, and other industrially useful goods, as well as for bioremediation.
Genetic use restriction technology (GURT), also known as terminator technology or suicide seeds, is designed to restrict access to "genetic materials and their associated phenotypic traits." The technology works by activating specific genes using a controlled stimulus in order to cause second generation seeds to be either infertile or to not have one or more of the desired traits of the first generation plant. GURTs can be used by agricultural firms to enhance protection of their innovations in genetically modified organisms by making it impossible for farmers to reproduce the desired traits on their own. Another possible use is to prevent the escape of genes from genetically modified organisms into the surrounding environment.
Genetically modified food controversies are disputes over the use of foods and other goods derived from genetically modified crops instead of conventional crops, and other uses of genetic engineering in food production. The disputes involve consumers, farmers, biotechnology companies, governmental regulators, non-governmental organizations, and scientists. The key areas of controversy related to genetically modified food are whether such food should be labeled, the role of government regulators, the objectivity of scientific research and publication, the effect of genetically modified crops on health and the environment, the effect on pesticide resistance, the impact of such crops for farmers, and the role of the crops in feeding the world population. In addition, products derived from GMO organisms play a role in the production of ethanol fuels and pharmaceuticals.
In the early 1960s, an interest in women and their connection with the environment was sparked largely by Ester Boserup's book Woman's Role in Economic Development. Starting in the 1980s, policy makers and governments became more mindful of the connection between the environment and gender issues. Changes regarding natural resource and environmental management were made with the specific role of women in mind. According to the World Bank in 1991, "Women play an essential role in the management of natural resources, including soil, water, forests and energy...and often have a profound traditional and contemporary knowledge of the natural world around them". Whereas women were previously neglected or ignored, there was increasing attention to the impact of women on the natural environment and, in return, the effects the environment has on the health and well-being of women. The gender-environment relations have ramifications in regard to the understanding of nature between men and women, the management and distribution of resources and responsibilities, and the day-to-day life and well-being of people.
The Green Revolution was a period that began in the 1960s during which agriculture in India was converted into a modern industrial system by the adoption of technology, such as the use of high yielding variety (HYV) seeds, mechanized farm tools, irrigation facilities, pesticides, and fertilizers. Mainly led by agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan in India, this period was part of the larger Green Revolution endeavor initiated by Norman Borlaug, which leveraged agricultural research and technology to increase agricultural productivity in the developing world. Varieties or strains of crops can be selected by breeding for various useful characteristics such as disease resistance, response to fertilizers, product quality and high yields.
Navdanya is an Indian-based non-governmental organisation which promotes biodiversity conservation, biodiversity, organic farming, the rights of farmers, and the process of seed saving. One of Navdanya's founders, and outspoken members, is Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist, physicist, and author. Navdanya began in 1984 as a program of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), a participatory research initiative founded by the environmentalist Vandana Shiva, to provide direction and support to environmental activism. "Navdanya" means "nine crops" that represent India's collective source of food security.
The genetically modified brinjal is a suite of transgenic brinjals created by inserting a crystal protein gene (Cry1Ac) from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis into the genome of various brinjal cultivars. The insertion of the gene, along with other genetic elements such as promoters, terminators and an antibiotic resistance marker gene into the brinjal plant is accomplished using Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation. The Bt brinjal has been developed to give resistance against lepidopteron insects, in particular, the Brinjal Fruit and Shoot Borer (FSB) by forming pores in the digestive system. Mahyco, an Indian seed company based in Jalna, Maharashtra, has developed the Bt brinjal.
The World According to Monsanto is a 2008 film directed by Marie-Monique Robin. Originally released in French as Le monde selon Monsanto, the film is based on Robin's three-year-long investigation into the corporate practices around the world of the United States multinational corporation, Monsanto. The World According to Monsanto is also the title of a book written by Robin.
Pamela Christine Ronald is an American plant pathologist and geneticist. She is a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and conducts research at the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis and a member of the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. She also serves as Director of Grass Genetics at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, California. In 2018 she served as a visiting professor at Stanford University in the Center on Food Security and the Environment.
Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). Ecofeminist theory asserts a feminist perspective of Green politics that calls for an egalitarian, collaborative society in which there is no one dominant group. Today, there are several branches of ecofeminism, with varying approaches and analyses, including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism. Interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought include ecofeminist art, social justice and political philosophy, religion, contemporary feminism, and poetry.
GMO OMG is a 2013 American pseudoscientific documentary film which takes a negative view towards the use of genetically modified organisms used in the production of food, in the United States. The film focuses on Monsanto, a multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation, and their role in the food industry alongside the effects of GMOs and how they are generated.
Guy Kastler is a French peasant farmer, philosopher, activist for the rights of farmers and peasants, and documentary director. He is a representative of the European chapter of la Via Campesina and at French Réseau semences paysannes.
Biopiracy is the unauthorized appropriation of knowledge and genetic resources of farming and indigenous communities by individuals or institutions seeking exclusive monopoly control through patents or intellectual property. While bioprospecting is the act of exploring natural resources for undiscovered chemical compounds with medicinal or anti-microbial properties, commercial success from bioprospecting leads to the company's attempt at protecting their intellectual property rights on indigenous medicinal plants, seeds, genetic resources, and traditional medicines.
Sosamma Iype is an Indian animal conservationist from Niranam, Pathanamthitta district, Kerala. She was the former Head of the Department of Genetics and Animal Breeding at the Kerala Veterinary University and was awarded the Padma Shri for the year 2022 by the Government of India for her services to conserve the Vechur cow, a native breed of cattle. She has devoted her life to the conservation of the Vechur cows and is often called "Vechur Amma," literally meaning mother of Vechur cows.
1 2 Wright, David (December 2014). "Making Peace With the Earth". Australian Journal of Environmental Education. 30 (2): 274–275. doi:10.1017/aee.2015.4.
↑ Shiva, Vandana (2014). Making Peace with the Earth: Beyond Resource, Land and Food Wars. North Melbourne: Spinifex Press. pp.274–275. ISBN9781742198385.
↑ Father of the Green Revolution – He Helped Feed the World! ja "Determining the Number Norman Borlaug – The Green Revolution", ScienceHeroes.com Tohtori Amy R. Piercen mukaan useimmat lukuisista arvioista yli miljardista ihmishengestä perustuvat ennustettuihin nälänhätiin, jotka jäivät toteutumatta, ja ovat epävarmoja. Piercen mukaan silti vaikutus kuolleisuuteen oli todella näin suuri, koska ravitsemus vaikuttaa niin voimakkaasti lapsikuolleisuuteen ja elinikään.
↑ Cecile Jackson: Radical Environmental Myths: A Gender Perspective, 1995
1 2 Utzeri, Mounia (2017). "Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour". Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism. 15– via SAGE Publications.
↑ Lay, Stefanie (1994). ""Ecofeminism" by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva". Institute of Race Relations. 36.
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