Population control is not an issue involving contraceptives for third world women. It is an issue of ecological justice.
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 ShivaIf India is an emerging economy with millions of new consumers, sell them the Volvo. Sell them the Cielo car. Sell them whatever you can, hamburgers and KFCs. Its the middle classes who have moved into being able to own a car, a refrigerator. For them there is this mantra that the General Electric refrigerator is better than some other model, that the Cielo car is fancier than the Ambassador.
Vandana ShivaThe 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 ShivaThe first issue that compelled me was a very strange split between India being highly development scientifically (we were the third biggest scientific manpower in the world then) and yet at the same time struggling with amazing poverty. The linear equation that says that modern science equals progress and the reduction of poverty did not apply to India. It wasn't working.
Vandana Shiva