We are in a strange kind of time, where the kind of liberation movements such as anti-apartheid movements and freedom struggles in India need to be reinvented. We need to retool them so that all the gains that our generation has made can be passed on to future generations.

Food is the place where you begin.

The best and most evolved technologies are those that do not destroy the very base on which we live

It is from the Himalayan forests and ecosystems that I learned most of what I know about ecology.

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.

When you don't take into account the way ecological systems work, then you do damage.

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.