Earth Democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation, and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict, fear and hatred.

My father had been a forester and I had grown up on those hills. I had seen forests and streams disappear. I jumped into Chipko movement and started to work with the peasant women. I learned from them about what forests mean for a rural woman in India in terms of firewood and fodder and medicinal plants and rich knowledge.

My personal background is actually very unusual for the kind of career I chose. I didn’t meet anyone who had ever done physics in my life. I grew up in the Himalayan forests. My father was a forest conservator, which meant that if I wasn’t in school I was in the forests with him. That has been very largely responsible for my ecological inclinations.

The system of technological production that we have today has been justified in terms of creating more goods to feed more people and to meet more needs. But it actually destroys more of the resources that we need in order to meet those multiple needs. If we shift to an ecological perception, a diversity perception, we realize that some of the instruments of which we are very proud are actually extremely primitive for dealing with nature. To me that is the great lesson of ecological awareness at the turn of the millennium.

I'm a woman, born the daughter of a feminist and the granddaughter of a feminist grandfather. I don't think I could have avoided working on women's issues. I don't do it as a career or profession; it's my very essence as a human being.

When you control seed, you control food.

Seed is not just the source of life. It is the very foundation of our being.