Dr. Vandana Shiva, trained in Physics with a dissertation on Quantum Theory; born in Dehradun, India, the daughter of a forest conservator and a farmer, is one of the great ecologists of our time. She has written over 20 books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization; Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge; Monocultures of the Mind; and The Violence of the Green Revolution.
Vandana Shiva has challenged for decades GMO corporations such as Monsanto, large hydro dam builders, and governments, including her own, on issues of agriculture, genetic engineering, deforestation, abuses of science and technology, and globalization. She has started a movement from her birthplace in the foothills of the Himalayas and is dedicating her life and creative energy and huge knowledge to what may seem the most humble of tasks, the protection of the seed and the practice of non chemical, non-pesticide and absolutely non genetic modified agriculture.
Navdanya means nine crops. They represent India’s collective source of food security. She founded the organization Navdanya in 1991 and it has grown into a national movement. The main aim of the Navdanya’s biodiversity conservation program is to support local farmers, rescue and conserve crops and plants that are being pushed to extinction and make them available through direct distribution. They are fighting the theft of people’s knowledge by biopiracy and protect food rights in the face of globalization. Navdanya has helped set up 110 seed banks across India.
During her September 2013 visit to the US Shiva spoke in several places. This is the only recording of her talk, on September 10, to a small group at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in the mountains north of Petaluma, CA. IONS was founded in 1973 by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)
