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It is from the Himalayan forests and ecosystems that I learned most of what I know about ecology.

Vandana Shiva

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Vandana Shiva
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: November 5
Author
Environmentalist
Philosopher
Politician
University Teacher
Writer
Dehra Dun
Learned
Needs
Himalayan
Ecosystems
Ecology
Forests

More quotes by Vandana Shiva

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In the seed and the soil, we find the answers to every one of the crises we face. The crises of violence and war. The crises of hunger and disease. The crisis of the destruction of democracy.
Vandana Shiva
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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.
Vandana Shiva
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I saw brilliant ideas coming out of the [Chipko] movement that needed better articulation, that needed elaboration and systematic analysis. I just followed that and it's been very exciting.
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The system of seeds based on monoculture is wrong and inappropriate. The biodiverse system has produced more food, and biodiversity means that seeds must be in the hands of farmers.
Vandana Shiva
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It is often too late by the time the government reacts.
Vandana Shiva
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It is not an investment if it destroys the planet
Vandana Shiva
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For us, not cooperating in the monopoly regimes of intellectual property rights and patents and biodiversity - saying no to patents on life, and developing intellectual ideas of resistance - is very much a continuation of Gandhian satyagraha. It is, for me, keeping life free in its diversity.
Vandana Shiva
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I'm a woman, born the daughter of a feminist and the granddaughter of a feminist grandfather. I don't think I could have avoided working on women's issues. I don't do it as a career or profession it's my very essence as a human being.
Vandana Shiva
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It's worse than slave trade because what is being traded is the very knowledge that makes survival possible for 80 percent of the people of this world. These 80 percent live on the biodiversity and the knowledge they have evolved as part of a rich collective heritage involving the use of seeds for growing crops and medicinal plants for healing.
Vandana Shiva
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Today the environmental movement has become opposed to issues of justice. You can see this in the way issues are framed. It's a permanent replay of jobs-versus-the-environment, in nature-versus-bread. These are extremely artificial dichotomies.
Vandana Shiva
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We are in a strange kind of time, where the kind of liberation movements such as anti-apartheid movements and freedom struggles in India need to be reinvented. We need to retool them so that all the gains that our generation has made can be passed on to future generations.
Vandana Shiva
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Although two thirds of our planet is water, we face an acute water shortage. The water crisis is the most pervasive , most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth.
Vandana Shiva
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Ecofeminism is a good term for distinguishing a feminism that is ecological from the kind of feminisms that have become extremely technocratic. I would even call them very patriarchal.
Vandana Shiva
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I like to live my life so that my loved ones give me the things I need as gifts and I give them the things they need. Frankly a society built around consumerism is hell
Vandana Shiva
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If you see cattle as a source of organic manure, animal energy, as well as milk products, then Indian cattle are not inferior. It is only when you measure them as milk machines that they become inferior. What if we measured the dairy cows of America or Jersey or the Swiss Alps in terms of their work functions? They would be terribly inferior.
Vandana Shiva
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In civilizational issues you don't look at the tiny details as the debate. You have to look at the big picture!
Vandana Shiva
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If you read Wall Street’s reports, they don’t talk of soya bean as originating in China. They don’t talk of soya bean as soya bean. They talk of Monsanto soya. Monsanto soya is protected by a patent. It has a patent number. It is therefore treated as a creation of Monsanto, a product of Monsanto’s intelligence and innovation.
Vandana Shiva
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The Chipko activists have always been close to my parents, since my father was among the few forestry officials who supported them within the bureaucracy. And I was involved with the Chipko movement in my student days.
Vandana Shiva
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A single, one-dimensional way of thinking has created a monoculture of the mind. And the monoculture of the mind has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the root of why we have pitted equity against ecology and sustainability against justice.
Vandana Shiva
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Gandhi’s idea of swadeshi—that local societies should put their own resources and capacities to use to meet their needs as a basic element of freedom—is becoming increasingly relevant. We cannot afford to forget that we need self-rule, especially in this world of globalization.
Vandana Shiva