One of the movements we have developed is to say that, just as intellectual property rights protect the inventions of individuals, common rights are needed to protect the common intellectual heritage of indigenous peoples. These are rights that are recognized through the Convention on Biological Diversity. We are working to make sure that they become foundations of our jurisprudence.
Vandana ShivaItยs not that Monsanto is making money out of the blue. Itยs making money by coercing and literally forcing people to pay for what was free. Take water, for instance. Water has always been free. Weยve never paid for drinking water. The World Bank says the reason water has been misused is because it was never commercially priced. But the reason itยs been misused is because it was wasted by the big usersยindustry, which polluted it.
Vandana ShivaWe could replace people with fossil fuels, have higher and higher levels of industrialization, of agriculture, of production, without thinking of the green-house gases we were admitting, and climate change is really the pollution of the engineering paradigm, when fossil fuels drove industrialism. To now offer that same mindset as a solution is to not take seriously what Einstein said: that you can't solve the problems by using the same mindset that caused them.
Vandana ShivaNature has given us this for free, it was meant to sustain us, we will not allow it to become a monopoly to finance the Imperial Army.
Vandana ShivaIn traditional agriculture, the soil is the mother. She's the mother who gives, to whom you must give back.
Vandana ShivaIf 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 ShivaThe people who see the population explosion in the Malthusian way - as a geometric progression - forget that population growth is not a biological issue. People are not increasing in numbers out of stupidity and ignorance. Population growth is an ecological phenomenon linked very intimately to other issues, such as the usurpation of the resources which allow people to live.
Vandana Shiva