The primary threat to nature and people today comes from centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability, justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.

The people who see the population explosion in the Malthusian way - as a geometric progression - forget that population growth is not a biological issue. People are not increasing in numbers out of stupidity and ignorance. Population growth is an ecological phenomenon linked very intimately to other issues, such as the usurpation of the resources which allow people to live.

You cannot insert a gene you took from a bacteria into a seed and call it LIFE. You have not created life, instead you have only polluted it.

I think we will become disenchanted with the glamour of globalization.

The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living.

Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.

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