democracy ... begins from the ground up. Anything living grows from the bottom up. Everything dangerous, like bombs, gets dropped from the sky down.
Vandana ShivaEarth Democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation, and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict, fear and hatred.
Vandana ShivaThe problem of numbers can only be dealt with by recognizing that people have a fundamental right to economic security. If you provide them with economic and environmental security, the population will stabilize itself.
Vandana ShivaUnless the poor of the world agitate for themselves to be heard, there will be no changes in their circumstances.
Vandana ShivaThe agrarian crisis [in India] is an unnecessary tragedy, resulting directly from an economics of greed and a politics driven by the economies of greed.
Vandana ShivaI think we have reached a stage now where we need to find solutions to economic injustice in the same place and in the same ways that we find solutions to sustainability. Sustainability on environmental grounds and justice in terms of everyone having a place in the production and consumption system - these are two aspects of the same issue. They have been artificially separated and have to be put back again in the Western way of thinking.
Vandana Shiva