Navdanya

Navdanya is a women-centered network of seed keepers and organic producers in India. Created in 1987 by scientist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva to ensure the protection of both biological and cultural diversity, the organization endeavors to create awareness of the dangers of genetic engineering, to safeguard indigenous knowledge from biopiracy, and to guarantee food rights in the face of economic globalization and climate change. Spread across 16 states in India, Navdanya has been instrumental in the creation of 54 community seed banks and the largest direct-marketing, fair trade organic network in the country. Over the past two decades, Navdanya has trained more than 500,000 farmers in seed sovereignty, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture.

Navdanya was created by scientist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva to protect biological and cultural diversity.

An outgrowth of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, a public interest research organization founded by Dr. Shiva to counter dominant paradigms in science and technology, Navdanya (the word refers to the nine crops that represent India's collective source of food security) began as a biodiversity conservation program to support local farmers and to rescue crops and plants that were being pushed to extinction—to conserve them and make them available through direct marketing. In the years following its inception, the network launched several campaigns, including a challenge to the patenting of the neem seed (an important ingredient in skin care creams and a natural insect repellent) and of basmati rice, and has protested against the Monsanto Corporation's creation of GMO Bt. Cotton (because of what they perceive as an effort by multinational companies to control Indian agriculture and its markets). More recently, the organization has allied itself with Slow Food International, the Center for Food Safety, the Waterkeepers Alliance, and the Dalai Lama, as well as a plethora of other organizations to, disseminate the Navdanya vision and philosophy more widely throughout the world.

A concrete manifestation of Dr. Shiva's philosophical commitment to the creation of what she has termed Earth Democracy (a living democracy committed to the defense of the rights of nature and human rights), the network's mission is to promote peace, justice, and sustainability through the conservation and renewal of nature's gifts of biodiversity to maintain them as a commons for all humanity. Members of Navdanya believe that seeds, biodiversity, and traditional knowledge must be kept in the hands of the people to generate livelihoods and provide basic needs to eradicate poverty. To that end, they advocate that the world community respect seed sovereignty (bija swaraj), food sovereignty (anna swaraj), and water sovereignty/democracy (jal swaraj). They are also committed to changing the rules of trade that they say are forced on small peasants through the [Page 1005]World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture—an accord they claim is leading many farmers into debt, destitution, and suicide.

Recipient of a Slow Food Award in 2001, Navdanya hosts interns from across India and around the world at Bija Vidyapeeth (Earth University), an educational partnership with Schumacher College in the United Kingdom that is designed to promote environmental and economic solutions rooted in deep ecology and the principles of democracy.

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