We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all.

We have a very old conservation movement, particularly in the United States, which has focused on campaigns to protect endangered species: the spotted owl, the old-growth forest. But usually it stops there. To me, biodiversity is the full spectrum. Species conservation is not only about wilderness conservation. It’s also about protecting the livelihood of people even while changing the dominant relationship that humans have had with other species. In India, it’s an economic issue, not just an ecological one.

A single, one-dimensional way of thinking has created a monoculture of the mind. And the monoculture of the mind has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the root of why we have pitted equity against ecology and sustainability against justice.

We must occupy the food system to create food democracy.

I've just been told that Nestle has taken out patents on the making of pullao. (Pullao is the way we make our rice in India, with either vegetables or meat or whatever.) Before you know it, every common use of plants will be patented by a Western corporation.

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.

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