Articles by Vandana Shiva

We found 128 results.


Women Ecowarriors
Prof. Vandana Shiva – Asian Age, 31 Mar 2014

26 Mar 2014 – When it comes to the sustenance of the economy, women act as experts and providers. Even though women’s work in providing sustenance is the most vital activity, a patriarchal economy treats it as non-work.

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How Economic Growth Has Become Anti-Life
Vandana Shiva – The Guardian, 4 Nov 2013

An obsession with growth has eclipsed our concern for sustainability, justice and human dignity. But people are not disposable – the value of life lies outside economic development.

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Patenting the Food Supply and the Monopolization of the Biosphere
Dr. Vandana Shiva and James Corbett - Global Research, 28 Oct 2013

As the world begins to digest the implications of intellectual property for online censorship, another IP issue threatens an even more fundamental part of our daily lives: our food supply.

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God, Move Over
Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age, 3 Jun 2013

GMO today means “god move over”. But genetic engineering in not a game of Lego in which genes can be moved around without any impact on the organism or the environment. It is time to put nature and people back in the technology narrative. It is time to see technology as a tool, and not an end that defines a new fundamentalist religion through which corporations become the new gods.

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Seeds of Suicide
Prof. Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age, 1 Apr 2013

There is a desperate attempt by Monsanto and its PR machinery to delink the epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India from the company’s growing control over cotton seed supply — 95 per cent of India’s cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto. Control over seed is the first link in the food chain because seed is the source of life. When a corporation controls seed, it controls life, especially the life of farmers.

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Tilling the Soil with Pesticides
Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age, 18 Mar 2013

The [Indian] ministry of agriculture had organised a conference on Doubling Food Production from February 1-3 [2013]. The “eminent speakers” invited were spin masters of biotechnology industry who claimed to have founded the anti-GMO movement and openly promoted it. Ecological systems of agriculture are based on care, compassion and cooperation. They enhance ecological resilience, diversity, sustainable livelihoods and health. The new paradigm of agriculture creates living economies and living cultures that increase the well-being of all.

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Our Violent Economy is Hurting Women
Vandana Shiva - Yes! Magazine, 18 Feb 2013

There is a connection between the growth of unjust economic policies and the intensification of crimes against women. The Delhi gang rape has triggered a revolution—one that we must sustain. Violence against Women Is As Old As Patriarchy

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(Italiano) La Sicurezza come Libertà
Vandana Shiva – Centro Studi Sereno Regis, 18 Feb 2013

Il movimento è la voce delle donne che reclamano il proprio diritto alla sicurezza e alla libertà, attraverso l’opposizione a ogni forma di potere partriarcale e la celebrazione dell’energia e del potere pacifico delle donne.

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Food Poisoning
Prof. Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age, 7 Jan 2013

Food is supposed to provide us nourishment and health but because of the toxins it contains, what we consume has become a major threat to our health. Some toxic substances are added to our food physically, through adulteration, while some enter our food system chemically, through pesticide residues. And some toxins enter the food chain genetically, through genetic engineering of seeds and crops. Even food packaging can be a source of toxins in food.

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Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Forest
Prof. Vandana Shiva – YES! Magazine, 10 Dec 2012

Today, at a time of multiple crises, we need to move away from thinking of nature as dead matter to valuing her biodiversity, clean water, and seeds. For this, nature herself will be the best teacher.

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Prop 37, GMOs, Food Sovereignty, and More
Vandana Shiva and Sonali Kolhatkar, Uprising Radio – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Nov 2012

A new poll conducted by the University of Southern California and the LA Times has found that Proposition 37, the GMO labeling initiative, has slipped a whopping 17 points since the last poll in September [2012]. Now, one of the world’s most renowned scientists and environmental activists, Vandana Shiva, is speaking out. Long a thorn in the side of Monsanto, Dr. Shiva has taken on big bio-tech and agribusiness companies in her home country of India and works with farmers groups all over the world to protect their right to farm using their traditional methods and seeds.

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Giant Walmart vs the Small Farmer
Prof. Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age, 22 Oct 2012

Any trader who mediates in the distribution of goods between producers and consumers is a middleman. Walmart is neither a producer nor a consumer. Therefore, it is also a middleman; with global muscle. That is how it has become the world’s biggest retailer, carrying out business of nearly $480 billion… The more the government pushes policies towards monopolies and monocultures, the more committed I become to defend our economic democracy and diversity as a saner, more sustainable, more just alternative to the disease of giganticism.

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Myths about Industrial Agriculture
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Sep 2012

Reports trying to create doubts about organic agriculture are suddenly flooding the media. The food revolution is the biggest revolution of our times, and the industry is panicking. So it spins propaganda, hoping that in the footsteps of Goebbels, a lie told a hundred times will become the truth. But food is different.

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Designing Food Systems to Protect Nature and Get Rid of Hunger
Vandana Shiva – Al Jazeera, 10 Sep 2012

Industrialisation of agriculture creates hunger and malnutrition, destroying the food web to which we all belong. Hunger and malnutrition is manmade. It is in the design of the industrial chemical model of agriculture. And just as hunger has been created by design, producing healthy and nutritious food for all can be designed through food democracy.

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(Italian) Rio+20: La Grande Inversione a U
Vandana Shiva – Centro Studi Sereno Regis, 9 Jul 2012

Rio de Janeiro è una città di inversioni a U. Il segnale stradale più frequente è “Retorno”, inversione. E Rio+20 ha seguito quello schema. E’ stato una grande inversione a U in termini di responsabilità umana di proteggere i processi che proteggono la vita sul pianeta.

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Eco Warriors, Arise to Rio’s Earth Summit!
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jun 2012

A paradigm shift is desperately needed. And it will not come from those who have created the crisis and who are looking for new ways to extend the life of the greed economy by commodifying and privatising all life on earth. They will come to Rio+20 to paint the “greed economy” green, and call it the “green economy”. And they will have powerful governments on their side.

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The Politics of Science and Democracy in India
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Apr 2012

In an interview with the journal Science, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh chose to focus on two hazardous technologies – genetically engineered seeds and crops, and nuclear power – as vital to the progress of science in India and the “salvation for finding new development pathways for developing our economy”. He also identified NGOs as blocking this “development”, and said “foreign hands” were at work. The prime minister’s interview saddened me.

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The Seed Emergency: The Threat to Food and Democracy
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Feb 2012

Patenting seeds has led to a farming and food crisis – and huge profits for US biotechnology corporations. The seed is the first link in the food chain – and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve and exchange, they have no seed sovereignty – and consequently no food sovereignty. The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, and the erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty.

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No Therapy in Retail
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Jan 2012

Firstly, rising prices are driven by the commodification of food and speculation on food commodities. Industrialisation and globalisation of food and agriculture has transformed food from a source of life into a commodity, and as a commodity, food is divorced from its sources – the seeds, the soil, the farmer – and from its end use as nourishment for our bodies.

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(Castellano) Es Hora de Parar la Guerra Contra la Tierra
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TeleSur, 5 Dec 2011

Un puñado de empresas y de potencias busca controlar los recursos de la Tierra y transformar el planeta en un supermercado en el que todo está en venta. Quieren vender nuestra agua, genes, células, órganos, conocimientos, culturas y nuestro futuro.

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The Lies of Free Market Democracy
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Nov 2011

Freedom in our times has been sold as “free market democracy”. “Free markets” mean freedom for corporations to exploit whom and what they want, where they want, how they want. It means the end of freedom for people and nature everywhere. “Free market democracy” is in fact an oxymoron which has deluded us into believing that deregulation of corporations means freedom for us.

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Resisting the Corporate Theft of Seeds
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2011

But the biggest threat we face is the control of seed and food moving out of the hands of farmers and communities and into a few corporate hands. Monopoly control of cottonseed and the introduction of genetically engineered Bt cotton has already given rise to an epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India.

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(Italian) Il Grande Furto Dei Semi
Vandana Shiva – Come Don Chisciotte, 5 Sep 2011

Il seme, la fonte della vita, l’incarnazione della nostra diversità biologica e culturale, il collegamento tra il passato e il futuro dell’evoluzione, la proprietà comune del passato, delle generazioni passate, presenti e future delle comunità agricole che sono state le produttrici di semi, oggi è stata derubata ai contadini e ci viene rivenduta come semi “di proprietà” da multinazionali come Monsanto.

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The Great Land Grab: India’s War on Farmers
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2011

Land, for most people in the world, is Terra Madre, Mother Earth, Bhoomi, Dharti Ma. The land is people’s identity; it is the ground of culture and economy. The bond with the land is a bond with Bhoomi, our Earth; 75 per cent of the people in the Third World live on the land and are supported by the land. The Earth is the biggest employer on the planet: 75 per cent of the wealth of the people of the global south is in land.

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Climate Change and Agriculture: Biodiverse Ecological Farming is the Answer, not Genetic Engineering
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Feb 2011

The claim to increased yield is false because yield, like climate resilience is a multi–genetic trait. Introducing toxins into a plant through herbicide resistance or Bt. Toxin increases the “yield” of toxins, not of food or nutrition. Even the nutrition argument is manipulated. Golden rice genetically engineered to increase Vitamin A produces 70 times less Vitamin A than available alternatives such as coriander leaves and curry leaves.

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Time to End War against the Earth
Vandana Shiva – The Age, 15 Nov 2010

When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits – limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration. A handful of corporations and of powerful countries seeks to control the earth’s resources and transform the planet into a supermarket in which everything is for sale. They want to sell our water, genes, cells, organs, knowledge, cultures and future.

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Resisting Hegemony
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Sep 2010

Excerpt of TRANSCEND member Prof. Vandana Shiva speaking about ‘food and seed sovereignty’ at the International Meeting on Resisting Hegemony held 2-5 August 2010 in Penang, Malaysia.

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The Killing Fields of Multi-National Corporations
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Jul 2010

Pesticides, Pollution and the Economies of Genocide. The Bhopal gas tragedy was the worst industrial disaster in human history. Twenty-five thousand people died, 500,000 were injured, and the injustice done to the victims of Bhopal over the past 25 years will go down as the worst case of jurisprudence ever.

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