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I've just been told that Nestle has taken out patents on the making of pullao. (Pullao is the way we make our rice in India, with either vegetables or meat or whatever.) Before you know it, every common use of plants will be patented by a Western corporation.

Vandana Shiva

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Vandana Shiva
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: November 5
Author
Environmentalist
Philosopher
Politician
University Teacher
Writer
Dehra Dun
Way
Told
Rice
Make
Either
Vegetables
Taken
Plants
Whatever
Corporations
Common
Meat
Nestle
Making
Plant
Patented
Use
Western
Patents
Every
India
Corporation

More quotes by 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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The role of geo-engineering should, in a world of responsibility, in a world of scientifically enlightened decision making and ecological understanding, it should be zero. There is no role for geo-engeneering. Because what is geoengineering but extending the engineering paradigm?
Vandana Shiva
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The occupation of America (and Columbus's arrival quite clearly was an occupation, no one can deny that) meant that the entire history of the Native Americans was rendered invisible. The land could only be occupied if it was first defined as empty. So it was defined as a wilderness, even though it had been used by native people for millennia.
Vandana Shiva
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Seen from a monocultural perspective, manipulating objects is very, very clever. But seen from a multidimensional perspective, from a perspective of diversity, this is extremely crude because what we have lost out on is a cow that serves as a source of sustainable energy.
Vandana Shiva
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When you don't take into account the way ecological systems work, then you do damage.
Vandana Shiva
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We share this planet, our home, with millions of species. Justice and sustainability both demand that we do not use more resources than we need.
Vandana Shiva
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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.
Vandana Shiva
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That amazing power of being able to stand with total courage in the face of total power and not be afraid. That is stri shakti.
Vandana Shiva
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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
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Governments have a favorite phrase: “lean and mean.” But they’ve been made very, very fat for corporate interests.
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
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One particular spark was when I went back to my favorite spot in the mountains where my father always used to take us before my graduate studies in Canada and finding that the stream I had gone swimming in wasn’t there. The forest had been converted into an apple orchard with World Bank financing. The entire place, literally, had changed.
Vandana Shiva
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When it comes to owning the seed for collecting royalties, the GMO companies say, 'it's mine.' But when it comes to contamination, cross-pollination, health problems, the response is we're not liable.
Vandana Shiva
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We've moved from wisdom to knowledge, and now we're moving from knowledge to information, and that information is so partial – that we're creating incomplete human beings.
Vandana Shiva
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The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living.
Vandana Shiva
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If you are doing the right thing for the earth, she's giving you great company.
Vandana Shiva
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You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.
Vandana Shiva
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It is not an investment if it destroys the planet
Vandana Shiva
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It's a phenomenon that started in the United States in which corporations make claims on the life forms, biodiversity and innovations of other cultures by applying for patents on them.
Vandana Shiva
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Something is very, very wrong when people don’t have access to drinking water, and Coke creates its market out of that scarcity.
Vandana Shiva