Shiva, Vandana

Preservation of All Lifeforms

The author of more than 300 papers in scientific and technical journals, Shiva has also written several books, including Soil Not Oil (2008), Earth Democracy (2005), Water Wars (2002), Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (2000), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (1997), Monocultures[Page 1343]of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology (1993), and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (1988). In these works, she argues for the wisdom of many traditional practices in agriculture. She also promotes the ideals of partnership and cooperation and believes that other definitions of freedom, knowledge, and progress are needed to liberate both women and the environment from the restrictive definitions held by Western cultures since the Enlightenment period. She asserts that women's liberation will not take place unless there is a simultaneous struggle to preserve and liberate all lifeforms on earth from the dominant patriarchal and capitalist structures.

In her mission to put her ideas into practice, Shiva founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in 1982. Nine years later, she started Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a farm and organization whose mission is to save seeds, protect indigenous knowledge, and promote diversity while empowering women and children. With the creation of Bija Vidyapeeth (“Seed University”), an organic farm and center for holistic living, Shiva inaugurated a series of month-long courses to disseminate knowledge and initiate dialogue about holistic living. Through her assistance to grassroots organizations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria with campaigns against genetic engineering, she has also contributed intellectual and activist support to contemporary essential debates about intellectual property rights, biodiversity, biotechnology, bioethics, and genetic engineering.

Awarded the Right Livelihood Award (more commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”) in 1993 and the Global 500 Award of the United Nations Environment Program, Shiva is one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization and the ecology advisor to several organizations, including the Third World Network and the Asia Pacific People's Environment Network. She also serves on the boards of many organizations, such as the World Future Council and Slow Food International. Through her efforts to create a new paradigm for scientific research and to work in novel ways with communities, Shiva has had a profound effect on contemporary environmentalist thought and action.

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