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 Dr. Vandana Shiva in St. Louis, MO
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Vandana Shiva
"The primary threat to nature and people today comes from centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability, justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative." - Vandana Shiva
"A leading thinker who has eloquently blended her views on the environment, agriculture, spirituality, and women's rights into a powerful philosophy."--Utne Reader
"Vandana Shiva is a burst of creative energy and intellectual power."--The Progressive
"One of the world's most prominent radical scientists."--The Guardian
"The South's best known environmentalist."--New Internationalist
"Shiva has devoted her life to fighting for the rights of ordinary people in India. Her fierce intellect and her disarmingly friendly, accessible manner have made her a valuable advocate for people all over the developing world."--Ms. Magazine
Vandana Shiva is one of the world's most dynamic and provacative thinkers. A physicist, ecologist, and activist, she won the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi, India, and is an Associate Editor of The Ecologist magazine. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India's leading physicists. Her books include:
- Water Wars
- Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
- Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
- Ecofeminism with Maria Mies
- The Violence of the Green Revolution : Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics
- Monocultures of the Mind : Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology
- Biopolitics : A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology, editor with Ingunn Moser
- Biodiversity : Social and Ecological Consequences
Profile of Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva completed her Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science in 1978. After that she did research at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore until 1982, when she left to set up her Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in her home town of Dehra Dun in the foothills of the Himalaya.
Shiva's record over the last 10 years has been that of the totally committed, very productive and effective activist- advocate-intellectual. As an activist she has co-ordinated, supported and learned from grassroots networks on a wide range of issues across India. As an advocate, especially in international fora, she has proved one of the most articulate spokespersons of counter-development in favour of people- centred, participatory processes. As an intellectual she has produced a stream of important books and articles which have done much both to form and address the agenda of development debate and action.
Her Foundation is an informal network of researchers working in support of people's environmental struggles, part of the objective of which is the articulation and justification of people's knowledge. In the last 20 years the Foundation has done important work in a number of areas, including:
Agriculture and genetic resources. Shiva's critical analysis of the effects of the Green Revolution, and looking beyond it to the impacts of the 'second' Green Revolution powered by genetic engineering, is of pioneering importance. For more than 15 years, she has been a campaigner on the ethical and ecological impacts of genetic engineering. She has led campaigns on bio- safety and built citizens' responses to the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture.
Biodiversity. She started her work on biodiversity with the Chipko Movement in the 1970s. As with forestry and water, her contribution has gone beyond critique with the launch of a 'people's programme on biodiversity'. In the past 10 years she has built a new movement called Navdanya for the conservation of indigenous seeds. Shiva sees biodiversity as intimately linked to cultural diversity and knowledge diversity. She has campaigned nationally and internationally against 'biopiracy' – the patenting of indigenous knowledge. Her latest book on the subject, Biopiracy, deals with the emerging corporate monopolies on the living resources of the poor.
World Bank and WTO Campaigns. Shiva has been an important figure in putting pressure on the World Bank, which the Bank has been forced to take increasingly seriously. She represented 'Nature' at the People's Tribunal on the World Bank and IMF in Berlin in 1988 and was on the steering group of the People's Forum which coincided with World Bank meetings in 1991. Shiva has also initiated major movements in India on World Trade Organisation (WTO) issues, especially on intellectual property and agriculture. She is a founding Board member of the International Forum on Globalisation, the citizens' group dedicated to monitoring and intervening on the impact of globalisation. She is currently leading an International Campaign on Food Rights, for people's right to knowledge and food security.
Ecology and gender. Her book Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival (Zed, 1989) has had an international impact. She was a co-chair of the 1991 World Congress on Women and Environment, and she directed a dialogue on 'Women, ecology and health' with the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, leading to a volume of Development Dialogue edited by her. Most recently Shiva has launched a global movement called Diverse Women for Diversity, for the defence of biological and cultural diversity.
“Shiva … has devoted her life to fighting for the rights of the ordinary people of India … her fierce intellect and her disarmingly friendly, accessible manner have made her a valuable advocate for people all over the developing world.”—Ms. Magazine
“A leading thinker who has eloquently blended her views on the environment, agriculture, spirituality, and women's rights into a powerful philosophy.”—Utne Reader
“One of the world's most prominent radical scientists.”—The Guardian
Born in India in 1952, Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997), Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992), and Staying Alive (St. Martin's Press, 1989).
Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin. She addressed the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, 1999, as well as the recent World Economic Forum in Melbourne , 2000. In 1993, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award). The founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds, she also set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India .
Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India ’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics.