My mother taught that if anyone needs you, you should be available to them.

When 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.

The director of the institute where I was working apologized about these young, enthusiastic researchers when the World Bank visited because he was afraid the institute would lose the World Bank consultancies.I went back home and started the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology—an extremely elaborate name for the tiny institute that I started in my mother’s cow shed. My parents handed over family resources and said, “Put them to public purpose.” That’s how I survived.

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.

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.

Nature has gifted this rich biological diversity to us. We will not allow it to become the monopoly of a handful of corporations. We will keep it as the basis of our wealth and our sustenance.

I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy.