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 wasnยt there. The forest had been converted into an apple orchard with World Bank financing. The entire place, literally, had changed.
Vandana ShivaWater must be free for sustenance needs. Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.
Vandana ShivaWe've moved from wisdom to knowledge, and now we're moving from knowledge to information, and that information is so partial โ that we're creating incomplete human beings.
Vandana ShivaWe have a very old conservation movement, particularly in the United States, which has focused on campaigns to protect endangered species: the spotted owl, the old-growth forest. But usually it stops there. To me, biodiversity is the full spectrum. Species conservation is not only about wilderness conservation. Itยs also about protecting the livelihood of people even while changing the dominant relationship that humans have had with other species. In India, itยs an economic issue, not just an ecological one.
Vandana ShivaThere is now a patent restricting the use of an herb called philantis neruri for curing jaundice. An even more blatant example is the use of turmeric for healing wounds, which is something every mother and grandmother does in every home in India. Now the Mississippi Medical Center claims to have "invented" the capacity of turmeric to heal wounds.
Vandana ShivaWhen you take the entire system into account, ways of developing more of something in one dimension can actually create scarcities in another. If we say we have to increase production because people need more food, more housing, more meat, or more milk, we can make one thing grow in a certain way. But by doing that we create externalities so that there are scarcities in other related things.
Vandana ShivaWhen the wilderness movement emerged, it emerged separate from the issue of social inequality and the economic problems of survival. It was a preservationist ecology movement created by an occupying culture. Clearly, a wilderness movement started by Native Americans would not have had the same roots.
Vandana Shiva