Showing posts with label Vandana Shiva. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vandana Shiva. Show all posts
Monday, September 1, 2014
Vandana Shiva: GMOs, Monsanto, and the Galileo Syndrome
Speaking at the launch of the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the Energy and Resources Institute, Union minister of state for environment Prakash Javadekar said: “We have not said no to science. Nobody can say no to science. Yes we have to take proper caution, we have to take proper action. But you cannot deny it. We are not living in Galileo’s times. Galileo was telling the truth and he was punished.”
With genetically modified organisms, we could be having another Galileo moment. American biotechnology corporation Monsanto and its lobbyists are today’s Church. And independent scientists speaking the truth about GMOs and their impact on society, health and environment are today’s Galileos.
GMOs are mired in controversy because their introduction is based on violation of law, democracy and science.
In India, the debate on GMOs started with the illegal introduction of Bt cotton by American biotechnology corporation Monsanto in 1998.
It intensified when Monsanto/Mahyco tried to introduce Bt brinjal in 2010. And when the then environment minister Jairam Ramesh tried to introduced a moratorium, he was removed.
The debate returned when Jayanthi Natarajan was removed as environment minister in December 2013 because she refused to sign on the dotted line with the agriculture minister Sharad Pawar to allow GMO field trials in a joint affidavit to the Supreme Court in the GMO case.
M. Veerappa Moily succeeded her. Mr Moily rushed through approvals just before the term of United Progressive Alliance-2 was nearing its end.
Under the new National Democratic Alliance government, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) approved further trials on July 18. This was contrary to what the Bharatiya Janata Party had stated in its manifesto released on April 7, 2014: “GM foods will not be allowed without full scientific evaluation on the long-term effects on soil, production and biological impact on consumers.”
In 1998, the MNC Monsanto — in collaboration with Mahyco — started illegal field trials of Bt cotton with the intention of commercialising it in India. As long as the genetic engineering is taking place in labs, the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) governs the approval. The moment trials are conducted in an open environment, as the case is with these trials, approvals should be sought from the GEAC governed by the ministry of environment and forests active under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
When Monsanto started field trials in 1998, it did not seek approval of the GEAC. So I filed a PIL on January 6, 1999. My NGO Navdanya also started a movement in August 9, 1998 with the call “Monsanto Quit India”. This is still our call because Monsanto and its GMOs can only exist in India by violating India’s democracy, laws and the independence and sovereignty of Indian science.
After a study of GMOs for over four years, the multi-party Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture had recommended for a ban on GM food crops in India stating they had no role in a country of small farmers. A PIL was filed in the Supreme Court by environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues to stop GMO field trials until independent assessment and a robust regulatory process evolved.
The Supreme Court appointed a technical expert committee (TEC) which recommended an indefinite moratorium on the field trials of GM crops till the government came out with a proper regulatory and safety mechanism, the same has not been done till date. So far, all assessments are done by the company itself and the results are cooked up. It was evident in the case Navdanya filed to challenge the illegal Bt cotton trials that pests like Aphids and Jassids were increasing, but the company reported no increase. It was clear in the case of Bt brinjal that there is impact of organ damage, but the company wrote “no impact”. That is why independent assessment is vital for biosafety.
Members of the SC/TEC include top scientists of India, who head high-level scientific institutes specialising in the diverse disciplines. Dr Imran Siddiqui of the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology, Prof. P.S. Ramakrishnan, professor emeritus at JNU, Prof. P.C. Kesavan Genetics Toxicology are a few names.
The scientific imperative demands that the recommendations of the highest scientific committee of the highest court of the land, the TEC, be implemented. The core recommendations are:
-Moratorium on GMO field trials “the examination/study of the safety dossiers, it is apparent that there are major gaps in the regulatory system. Till such time it would not be advisable to conduct more field trials.
-There should be a moratorium on field trials for Bt in food crops.
-Herbicide Tolerant Crops: The TEC finds them completely unsuitable in the Indian context and recommends that field trials and release of HT crops not be allowed in India.
-Crops in their centre of origin or diversity: The TEC recommends that the release of GM crops for which India is a centre of origin or diversity should not be allowed.
Among the GMO crops approved for field trials are rice, maize, chickpea, sugarcane and brinjal. India is a centre of diversity of all these crops except maize. The experience of GMO cotton has already shown us the high costs to farmers of GMO propriety seeds for which Monsanto collects royalties. GMOs have failed the socio-economic test.
We carried out a study on the soil impact of Bt cotton and found beneficial organisms had been destroyed. In the US, the destruction of beneficial soil organisms has led to emergence of pathogens which are leading to still births and abortions in animals that are fed GMOs as feed.
There is no consensus on safety of GMOs. Tumours, organ failure and damage to the digestive tract have been shown to be associated with GMOs by independent researchers across the world. Monsanto goes after every scientist doing independent research on safety.
Monsanto and the biotechnology industry keeps promoting illegal introduction of untested GMOs as “science”. Suppressing facts is not science. Manipulating truth is not science. Hounding scientists is not science.
Real science is based on full and independent investigations of GMOs on the socio-economic impact on small farmers, ecological impact on the environment, including biodiversity in soil, of pollinators, of plants and health impact on humans and animals. India needs to take up its own safety tests that do not need field trials and can be carried out in the lab.
I call for a moratorium on GMO trials, as recommended by the TEC appointed by the Supreme Court. All we are asking for is full scientific evaluation, in accordance with recommendations of TEC. The GMO lobby is trying to suppress the TEC recommendations. Is it an extension of the Galileo syndrome?
Monday, February 24, 2014
Destroying Planet Earth: Geoengineering is the Ultimate Hubris, without Democratic Control
Feb 23, 2014 | Global Research | Dr. Vandana Shiva
Supporters of geoengineering have proposed radical ways to alter the planet. But opposition is growing to geoengineering. We interviewed the indian environmentalist, scientist, philosopher Vandana Shiva.
Vandana Shiva, originally a theoretical
physicist, she now campaigns the world for heirloom seeds, organic
farming and local food systems instead of the chemical- and
oil-intensive large scale industrial farms that destroy the environment
and wreck local economies. She also supports Hands off Mother Earth, a
citizen-based organization that resists geoengineering .
Vandana Shiva was interviewed by Maria Heibel from NoGeoingegneria
TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW
NoGeoingegneria: So, first, thank you very much for your time because you’re an incredible woman and you always have so much time for everybody. and it’s great. We wanted to speak a little bit about geoengineering with you. It’s something that embraces everything: food and water and what is happening now in the world in a situation of climate change, and great change, and risk of collapse at every level. I saw the interview you had with Amy Goodman. So, first, what is, for you, at this moment, the role of geoengineering?
00:55 Vandana: the role of geo-engineering should, in a world of responsibility, in a world of scientifically enlightened decision making and ecological understanding, it should be zero.
There is no role for geo-engeneering. Because what is geoengineering but extending the engineering paradigm? There have been engineered parts of the earth, and aspects of ecosystems and organisms through genetical engineering: the massive dam building, the re-routing of rivers. These were all elements of geoengineering at the level of particular places and we have recognized two things: one, that when you don’t take into account the way ecological systems work, then you do damage. Everyone knows that in effect climate change is a result of that engineering paradigm. We could replace people with fossil fuels, have higher and higher levels of industrialization, of agriculture, of production, without thinking of the green-house gases we were admitting, and climate change is really the pollution of the engineering paradigm, when fossil fuels drove industrialism. To now offer that same mindset as a solution is to not take seriously what Einstein said: that you can’t solve the problems by using the same mindset that caused them. So, the idea of engineering is an idea of mastery. And today the role that we are being asked to play is a role based on informed humanity.
2:45 NoGeoingegneria: In my eyes geoengineering started in the 50s with atomic tests, because in this period they started to make geoengineering of the atmosphere of earth in a global sense, in a bigger sense, and a lot of projects in the 50s started to organize the earth, the planet, in a new way, with a new idea of engineering really the whole planet. With the power of atomic bomb scientists made a shifting in their mind, in my eyes. So in this period, in the 50′s weather modification also started very energically. It is part of geo engineering, and you have here the map of the ETC group, in the whole world, they are doing it, and you cannot do local modifications without changing the whole system. I know in India, in Thailand, and Australia weather modification maybe is more discussed, more open than in Europe. For example in Italy they made weather modification in the 80′s and people don’t know it. What do you think about the role of weather modification in a sense of geoengineering for food, for water, for the whole system?
4:21 Vandana
Weather modification is a very small part of geo engineering. Geoengineering right now is the hubris of saying: “all this climate change, and we’re living in the anthropocene age and now human beings will be the shapers of our future, that totally control the overall functions of not just our planet, but our relationship with other planets, so many of the solutions offered have been putting reflectors in the sky to send the sun back as if the sun was a problem rather than the very basis of life, or to put pollutants into the atmosphere in order to create a layer of pollution that would stop the sun from shining. But the instability of the climate that is the result of the greenhouse effect will just be aggravated by these interventions. Now weather modifications done in a narrow-minded way, to say “we are not getting rain so let us precipitate rain artificially so that agriculture doesn’t fail” is something that for example the Chinese did for the olympics. They made sure there would be no rain during the Olympics. It is a lower level of hubris than the larger project of geoengineering.
5:47 you know this map…..?
5:49 Vandana yes of course i know Etcetera.
5:52 N: and you see that the ETC Group also published only a part, it’s only a part because everyday something else is coming out, in the whole world they are doing it, so if you make in a lot of points.
6:07 V: it’s not too much the points
6:08 N: what does it mean for weather extremes for example?
6:11 V: the first thing is it creates more instability, and we are dealing with instability, therefore we must deal more with actions that create insurance against instability, rather than aggravating the instability. It’s like I’m driving a car and I know there’s a precipice there, I should put the car in reverse and then turn into another direction. What geo engineering is doing is saying “let’s put our foot on the accelerator”. And the precipice is climate instability, climate unpredictability. And at the root of it is the false idea that these silly little actions will be able to control and regulate the weather and climate. But the second most important part of why geo engineering is so so wrong is that is ultimate expression of patriarchal irresponsibility. Patriarchy is based on appropriating rights and leaving responsibility to others. In this case the scientists who are playing these games, the who are investors financing it, are all doing it without having any consent for these experiments, any approval for these experiments, locally or globally, and worse, without thinking of the consequences or what it can lead to, and without ever ever being bound to responsibility. Therefore it is the ultimate expression of all the destructive tendencies of patriarchy.
7:50 N: Yeah, and you see you can take one name Edward Teller. He comes from the atomic bomb. He had the idea of controlling the weather by atomic bomb. He proposed the shield for sun radiation management, so the same persons, the same power structure is organizing this type of management of the planet and of space. So, you know about the intention of control ….?
8:22 V: Well for some people the intention is really one of making others suffer. And therefore aspects of geo- engineering are about links with military warfare. How do you alter the climate so that you can just make rain fall or fail in a particular area and let agriculture suffer. But in other cases, even if there isn’t that military intention of harm to the other there is an ignorance…..
8:56 N: There is also economic interest ……
8:58 V: Not all, the reason that there is such a battalion of scientists behind it…..
9:00 N: You know oil and not soil, the food and water …….
9:05 V: The people are pushing it have a money interest. The people who are pushing it have a military interest. , people are pushing to have a military interest. The players merely have the arrogance that ” I have the solution”. And it’s the combination of stupidity combined with the arrogance of the little players, and the evil projects of the ones who control it, that combination is what makes it toxic. Because if the scientific community could only recognize its responsibility to society and the planet and say “I will not be part of your games”, which is how Scientists for Social Responsibility was created, which is how the group that started to monitor the whole nuclear issue, those were all scientists. This is a marriage of stupid scientists with evil minds, and we need scientists with responsibility to be the counterforce to say this is not science, just as we need in genetic engineering. And it is as the community of scientists who really know the science start to speak more and organize better, that the stupid scientists of the biotech industry will quieten down. And biotech and geo engineering have the same mindset, of engineering, of power, of control, of mastery of nature
10:30 N: you spoke also of the dams. It’s big geoengineering also in India and in the whole world and there are now the big interests of water and here, the last time we had an interview with Pat Mooney he said that big dams, energy production, water control, and weather control, it’s one thing. So it’s not only a small intervention to have crops. It’s something more.
11:06 V: No as I said it’s the ultimate hubris, that’s what it is! Hubris on a planetary scale!
11:19 N: Uh….. what do you think about the fact they will spray nano particles? That’s the program!
11:29 V: Each of these issues has a particular aspect thats different but i think those particular aspects are very small compared to the overall damage and the overall irresponsibility. For me the first issue is, how dare you do this. How dare you. That has to be humanity’s response. Then the rest of the little thing of how nano particles can harm or have too much sulphur in the atmosphere can harm, those are specific details but this is a civilizational issue. And in civilizational issues you don’t look at the tiny details as the debate. You have to look at the big picture!
Transcript by lukinski&trishy
Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmental thinker, activist, physicist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocate, is the Director of The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. She serves as an ecology advisor to several organizations including the Third World Network and the Asia Pacific People’s Environment Network.
In 1993 she was the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”. A contributing editor to People-Centered Development Forum, she has also written several works include, “Staying Alive,” “The Violence of the Green Revolution,” “Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge,” “Monoculutures of the Mind” and “Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit,” as well as over 300 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. Shiva participated in the nonviolent Chipko movement during the 1970s, whose main participants were women. She is one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as the anti-globalization movement. She has argued for the wisdom of many traditional practices, as is evident from her book “Vedic Ecology” that draws upon India’s Vedic heritage. Shiva has fought for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food. Intellectual property rights, biodiversity, biotechnology, bioethics, genetic engineering are among the fields where Shiva has contributed intellectually and through activist campaigns. She has assisted grassroots organizations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria with campaigns against genetic engineering. In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. Her book, “Staying Alive” helped redefine perceptions of third world women. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as non governmental organisations, including the International Forum on Globalisation, the Women’s Environment & Development Organization and the Third World Network.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
How economic growth has become anti-life
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| 'Economic growth begins when seeds are genetically modified and patented, leading to farmers having to buy seeds every season'. Photograph: Raminder Pal Singh/EPA |
Nov 1, 2013 | The Guardian / Vandana Shiva
An obsession with growth has eclipsed our concern for sustainability, justice and human dignity. But people are not disposable – the value of life lies outside economic development
Limitless growth is the fantasy of economists, businesses and politicians. It is seen as a measure of progress. As a result, gross domestic product (GDP), which is supposed to measure the wealth of nations, has emerged as both the most powerful number and dominant concept in our times. However, economic growth hides the poverty it creates through the destruction of nature, which in turn leads to communities lacking the capacity to provide for themselves.
The concept of growth was put forward as a measure to mobilise resources during the second world war. GDP is based on creating an artificial and fictitious boundary, assuming that if you produce what you consume, you do not produce. In effect , “growth” measures the conversion of nature into cash, and commons into commodities.
Thus nature’s amazing cycles of renewal of water and nutrients are defined into nonproduction. The peasants of the world,who provide 72% of the food, do not produce; women who farm or do most of the housework do not fit this paradigm of growth either. A living forest does not contribute to growth, but when trees are cut down and sold as timber, we have growth. Healthy societies and communities do not contribute to growth, but disease creates growth through, for example, the sale of patented medicine.
Water available as a commons shared freely and protected by all provides for all. However, it does not create growth. But when Coca-Cola sets up a plant, mines the water and fills plastic bottles with it, the economy grows. But this growth is based on creating poverty – both for nature and local communities. Water extracted beyond nature’s capacity to renew and recharge creates a water famine. Women are forced to walk longer distances looking for drinking water. In the village of Plachimada in Kerala, when the walk for water became 10 kms, local tribal woman Mayilamma said enough is enough. We cannot walk further; the Coca-Cola plant must shut down. The movement that the women started eventually led to the closure of the plant.
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| Water extracted beyond nature’s capacity to renew and recharge creates a water famine'. Photograph: Joe McNally/Getty |
Nature is impoverished, biodiversity is eroded and a free, open resource is transformed into a patented commodity. Buying seeds every year is a recipe for debt for India’s poor peasants. And ever since seed monopolies have been established, farmers debt has increased. More than 270,000 farmers caught in a debt trap in India have committed suicide since 1995.
Poverty is also further spread when public systems are privatised. The privatisation of water, electricity, health, and education does generate growth through profits . But it also generates poverty by forcing people to spend large amounts of money on what was available at affordable costs as a common good. When every aspect of life is commercialised and commoditised, living becomes more costly, and people become poorer.
Both ecology and economics have emerged from the same roots – "oikos", the Greek word for household. As long as economics was focused on the household, it recognised and respected its basis in natural resources and the limits of ecological renewal. It was focused on providing for basic human needs within these limits. Economics as based on the household was also women-centered. Today, economics is separated from and opposed to both ecological processes and basic needs. While the destruction of nature has been justified on grounds of creating growth, poverty and dispossession has increased. While being non-sustainable, it is also economically unjust.
The dominant model of economic development has in fact become anti-life. When economies are measured only in terms of money flow, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And the rich might be rich in monetary terms – but they too are poor in the wider context of what being human means.
Meanwhile, the demands of the current model of the economy are leading to resource wars oil wars, water wars, food wars. There are three levels of violence involved in non-sustainable development. The first is the violence against the earth, which is expressed as the ecological crisis. The second is the violence against people, which is expressed as poverty, destitution and displacement. The third is the violence of war and conflict, as the powerful reach for the resources that lie in other communities and countries for their limitless appetites.
Increase of moneyflow through GDP has become disassociated from real value, but those who accumulate financial resources can then stake claim on the real resources of people – their land and water, their forests and seeds. This thirst leads to them predating on the last drop of water and last inch of land on the planet. This is not an end to poverty. It is an end to human rights and justice.
Nobel-prize winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen have admitted that GDP does not capture the human condition and urged the creation of different tools to gauge the wellbeing of nations. This is why countries like Bhutan have adopted the gross national happiness in place of gross domestic product to calculate progress. We need to create measures beyond GDP, and economies beyond the global supermarket, to rejuvenate real wealth. We need to remember that the real currency of life is life itself.
• Vandana Shiva is a guest of the Festival Of Dangerous Ideas, Sydney Opera House, this weekend.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Monsanto and the Bio-Rape of India
Monsanto and the Bio-Rape of IndiaMay 27, 2013 | Green Med Info | Sayer Ji
Earlier this year, Vandana Shiva generated quite a stir within the blogosphere after comparing GMOs to rape in a Twitter post:
Despite the outrage evoked by her tweet, the metaphor is quite fitting, especially when one considers the technical definition of the word rape:
Rape: the unlawful compelling of a person [replace 'person' with 'organism'] through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.Because many GMO crops are wind and insect pollinated, their pollen (and the transgenes they carry) easily evade containment and are capable of traveling great distances. For instance, if pollen from genetically modified corn reaches a receptive non-GMO corn plant, transgenes will be forcibly integrated (through sexual reproduction) into the germline of their offspring, rendering them and all their future offspring permanently GMO. This could therefore be defined as a form of 'bio-rape.'
The farmer whose non-GMO crop is contaminated with GMOs is also violated. First, his ability to make a living is compromised, as his formerly organic crop has now been rendered non-organic. Second, Monsanto can legally suit that farmer for 'patent' infringement for having his crop contaminated by their seeds, essentially accusing him of criminal activity for being a victim of their biopollution!
It is one thing for GMO crops to contaminate adjacent organic land within a country which has already weighed the risks and benefits and approved that GMO product, but another for a multinational corporation's seeds to illegally contaminate a country who has not yet approved their use due to biosafety concerns. The latter case describes the long and abusive history of Monsanto vis-Ã -vis the Indian people, beginning in 2001 with the discovery of a Monsanto-patented Bt gene within fields planted with conventional, non-GMO seeds in the western state of Gujarat. Monsanto, who discovered their gene in these fields, claimed that the Gujarat farmers were guilty of seed piracy, when in fact they were victims of either bio-pollution (i.e. contamination via cross pollination with GMO plants), or had been coerced into using illegal Monsanto Bt-containing seeds before they were officially approved.1
Widespread Illegal Use of Monsanto GM Cotton Across India.
A new report published on Down To Earth, Science and Environment Online, documents the spread of illegal Monsanto GM cotton across India.According to the author of the May 22nd report, Latha Jishnu, Monsanto's Roundup Ready Flex seeds are being grown in at least three Indian states without biosafety clearance, repeating the Bt cotton saga that began in 2001, when reports surfaced in Gujarat of thousands of farmers starting the illegal cultivation of Bt cotton before regulators could approve its commercial use.
Jishnu stated
In 2013, history is repeating itself as herbicide-tolerant GM cotton known as Roundup Ready Flex (RRF) spreads illegally in at least three states. Roundup Ready Flex, first reported to be in use in Gujarat last season, has since spread to Punjab and Maharashtra although the regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, has not cleared the technology. This is being field-tested by Monsanto's Indian partner, the Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company better known as Mahyco.Jishnu also voiced concern over the connection between the spread of GM seeds and the concerning number of farmer suicides that follow their failure to live up to promised yields and financial gains:
Farmers' organisations in Maharashtra, particularly those in Vidarbha, have become alarmed by the spread of the illegal Roundup Ready Flex. The region is notorious for the huge numbers of suicides by primarily cotton farmers in the past 15 years and farmers' lobbies have been blaming the use of GM technology or Bt cotton as it is known for the spate of suicides.The report goes on to explain the implications of the discovery of the illegal GM cotton
In India, the spread of Roundup Ready GM cotton is matter of serious concern since GEAC [Genetic Engineering Approval Committee] had called for additional tests by Mahyco. Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), a farmers' advocacy group that is fighting to safeguard the sustainability of agriculture in drought-prone Vidarbha, says herbicide-tolerant Bt cotton is being openly sold at Rs1,500/ per packet of RRF (450 gm) "which is highly objectionable because RRF is yet to receive approval".Is the Biotech Industry Guilty of Bio-Rape?
GEAC sources say Mahyco has been asked to provide detailed data on the use of RRF and its impact on the environment and approval for its commercial release is some way off.
Over the past 12 years, India has been the victim of the illegal release of Monsanto's GM products on numerous occasions. The forceful and illegal insertion of a transgenic crop into the biosphere of a region is an irreversible transgression, i.e. you cannot 'recall' a transgene like it were a defective car part. Not only are a country's and their people's sovereign laws violated, but insofar as these transgenes produce biopesticides known to have unintended adverse health effects to non-target organisms (including mammals), such as the recently reported Bt toxin leukemia link, the transfer is a violent act that will carry onward infinitely, rendering all plant progeny that now possess the 'biopollution' genetically modified as well. Some of these genes may even carry over horizontally to the bodies of those who consume them, violating their own genetic integrity. Is this not a form of bio-rape? Especially when done surreptitiously, illegally, without informed consent, and for one motive only: profit of those who own the seed patent, seed manufacturing or distribution rights
References
- 1Non-GM-Famers.com, India farmers claim Monsanto is spreading piracy rumors to cover crop failure. 21 June 2003
Sayer Ji is an author, researcher, lecturer, and advisory board member of the National Health Federation.
He founded Greenmedinfo.com in 2008 in order to provide the world an open access, evidence-based resource supporting natural and integrative modalities. It is internationally recognized as the largest and most widely referenced health resource of its kind.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
GM Seeds and the militarization of food - and everything else
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© Kai Markell
Vandana Shiva in Hawaii. |
Feb 27, 2013 | Truthout | Jon Letman
Indian physicist and philosopher, activist and ecofeminist pioneer Vandana Shiva talks with Truthout in Hawaii about GMO, the militarization of agriculture, the politics of occupation and the primacy of biodiversity.
Foot soldiers in the battle against corporate globalization and the privatization of commons like land and water have long been aware of Indian physicist and philosopher Dr. Vandana Shiva. An ecofeminist pioneer, today she is best known as an outspoken opponent of the GMOs (genetically modified organisms) being developed by transnational biotechnology and chemical corporations like Monsanto and Dow.
Shiva disputes the notion that patenting genes and controlling the world's seeds, and thus much of its food supply, will better serve humanity. Biotech companies claim their genetically engineered (GE) crops are able to withstand threats from insects, disease, and man-made pesticides and herbicides while making a serious contribution to feeding an increasingly hungry world.
Such claims are straight-up fabrications - lies - according to Shiva. GMOs, she says, destroy the natural web of life, threaten biodiversity and the environment, and are a scourge for human health and society.
Raised by conservation-minded parents (her father was a forest conservator, her mother a farmer) in the foothills of the Himalayas, Shiva was at the heart of the original "tree hugger" Chipko movement.
After earning a Ph.D. in "hidden variables and non-locality in quantum theory," Shiva branched out from science and academia to environmental activism and helping small farmers in India and around the world save seeds - a practice that puts her in direct conflict with biotech giants who insist their GE seeds are protected by patents.
It was at a biotechnology conference at which Shiva had been invited to speak that a representative from the chemical firm Ciba-Geigy (which later merged with other companies to become biotech giant Syngenta) told her that its goal was to control health and food by the turn of the 21st century.
"That's the day I decided I was going to start saving seeds," Shiva says.
Since then Shiva has founded Navdanya, a network of seed keepers and organic farmers that offers an alternative vision of a GMO-free future.
As an author, activist and advocate for the protection of human and earth rights, and a globally respected philosopher famous for articulating the nature of complex human, scientific, ecological and ethical issues, Shiva has received numerous awards including the 1993 Right Livelihood Award, also called the "alternate Nobel Prize."
In January, Shiva traveled from India to Hawaii at the invitation of Hawaii SEED, a coalition of grassroots groups that opposes GMOs and open-air testing conducted by "the big five" biotech firms (Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, Dupont Pioneer and BASF) for which Hawaii has proven fertile testing ground.
After addressing audiences at the University of Hawaii and for the opening day of the Hawaii state legislature's 2013 session, Shiva traveled to the island of Kauai, where she spoke before some 1,800 people on the same day as the 120th anniversary of the US military overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Asked later if she thought the timing was coincidental, she said, "I think it's coincidental in the human scale but not in the cosmic scale. The universe," she said, "conspires in its own way to make things meet at the right moment."
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© Kai Markell
Anti GMO demonstration in Hawaii. |
Jon Letman for Truthout: The Hawaiian Islands are one of the most heavily militarized places on the planet. They're also an epicenter for GMOs. Can you talk about the connection between military and GMO testing in these islands?
Dr. Vandana Shiva: War and agriculture came together when the chemicals that were produced for chemical warfare lost their markets in war, and the industry organized itself to sell those chemicals as agrochemicals. Then, when gene splicing was worked out as a technique in public systems, the corporations realized here was something that would work wonderfully for them. Not only would they get to sell more chemicals, but now, by genetically modifying seed, they could for the first time say, "We are creators and inventors of plants," and redefine seed as an invention covered by patents and therefore collect rents and royalty. If every farmer, every year has to buy seed - which is the main reason for pushing GMOS - it's huge profits.
The techniques themselves are militarized, come from war, including the fact that the only way you can move a gene that doesn't belong to an organism and you have to cross the species barrier - which can't be crossed by reproduction - you can only do it by using a gene gun, which is war at the genetic level, or infecting a plant with cancer, which is biological warfare. So the war mentality is at the heart of the technology.
And then the industry that grew powerful and rich through wars (Monsanto and Dow Chemical both manufactured Agent Orange) is its final step of the militarized mindset, the militarized world coming together, is that imposing these toxins, the GMOs - an agriculture that nobody wants, food that nobody wants - can only go the next step by an absolute militarized society, where police states are created to police farmers.
JL: So military testing and GMO testing in Hawaii is . . .
VS: . . . is a continuum. It's a continuum in terms of the personalities involved; it's a continuum in the world view involved; and it's a continuum in the implications.
JL: In Hawaii, what vulnerabilities, unknown or under-known, do you think the biotech companies and military have?
VS: I think the first vulnerability the seed companies and military have is they've violated every natural law. I became a physicist because I really believe the laws of nature are how we should live. The laws of nature I studied were the laws of quantum theory; the laws of ecology are laws of nature. Every violation of the laws of nature is a violation. Therefore the more we can point this out, the more people realize this is illegal from the perspective of nature, it's illegal from the measure of people. I really do believe the vulnerability comes from the fact that the [GMO] industry and the military have set their own rules as if there was no higher law. That is their vulnerability.
JL: Geographically, culturally, historically, Hawaii shares much with other Pacific islands, and yet it's very different because it is governed as an American state. What do you think Hawaii has to teach other island nations, and what can and should it learn from them?
VS: I think the most important thing Hawaii has to teach other island states is how, when the master takes over - the military is here; GMOs are here - how that is an occupation. And anytime anyone is told "We'll bring you money; we'll bring you employment," when they bring you death and destruction; the intensity of the GMO seed production, as well as the intensity of the militarization of Hawaii, can teach.
Now, they can't make up what's the new empire, and they keep saying, "Oh, the center is shifting to Asia." And they keep talking about an Asia that is doing all the dirty work for the old empire. All the pollution, all the destruction of workers' rights, all the pollution of the rivers, the killing of our farmers. That's not Asia. Asia is diverse; it's pluralistic, and when you describe the Polynesian islands, it's a continuum from Asia. Christ, Buddha, Sikhism, every religion of the world started in Asia, but we butchered up Asia and said "it's Middle East, Southeast, Far East, Indochina, South Asia . . ."
In this continuity from Asia to Polynesia to Hawaii is the other way of thinking about ourselves everywhere, including in Hawaii - that we are an interrelated part of a beautiful planet which organizes herself, and that is the Gaia theory.
I think these militarized borders and militarized takeovers, those who have practiced it for the last century think it's going to be the way of the next century. It's not going to be the way of the next century. The way of the next century has to be making peace with the earth.
JL: Hawaii is so biologically rich, and we have so many rare plants. How can preserving Hawaii's native plants - the native biodiversity - how can that help ensure a healthier, more diverse agricultural crop community?
VS: We were repeatedly told diversity is a luxury - industrial monoculture, chemically fed and now genetically modified - is the way we get our food. Nothing could be a bigger lie. When food becomes a commodity, it goes where profits can be made, and if there are more profits in biofuel, that's where it will go. If there are more profits in animal feed, that's where it will go. So we have to reclaim our sources of food and our sources of food are biodiversity. The work I've done over the last 25 years with protecting biodiversity shows that the more intensive the biodiversity, the more food you'll have and the less you have to hurt the earth.
There are no wars between the domesticated biodiversity and a wild biodiversity. If I grow a native plant as my food, I am encouraging native species to weave the web of life. There are that many butterflies; there are that many bees. There is that much more pollen available. And we've done studies that show that native rices support so many more species than the chemically-fed rice, where all soil organisms, all pollinators, all beneficial insects are killed.
Those chemicals that were designed to kill human beings and are designed to kill certain pests end up killing beneficial insects, destroying the web of pest-predator balances which then creates more insect pest attacks. You spray more; you get emergence of resistance, and you are on a chemical treadmill.
The harm of pesticides doesn't stay on farms alone. The highest ocean pollution is coming from fertilizer runoff creating dead zones. All of those pesticides being sprayed on the seed farms of Monsanto and Syngenta and BASF are running down and killing the fish life because nature is integrated at every level - plant, insect, soils, marine.
JL: Can you clarify the connection between climate change and GMOs?
VS: GMOs are part of the package of industrial agriculture that is chemically intensive, loaded with toxins, loaded with pesticides. Now if you do an analysis of fossil fuel use, whether it is fossil fuel use for the making of chemical fertilizer or the fossil fuel used in transporting food - 90 percent of the food of the Hawaiian islands comes from outside -and then shipping these toxic GM seeds thousands of miles away, we are talking about 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions coming from an industrial model of farming.
In our work we have seen two things. One, the more biodiverse any system is, the more it can survive a drought, a flood, unseasonal rain, cyclones - so diversity is a cushion in times of climate change. But not just any old diversity, native diversity even more. Why does native diversity exist where it is? Because over millions of years it had the capacity to adapt. It had the capacity to change with change.
I have watched farms using green revolution methods fail 100 percent with one drought. I have watched after the tsunami and the cyclones and the salt water came, only local species that were salt tolerant were able to bounce back. So native species are vital for climate adaptation, a connection that still needs to be made in a serious way.
JL: Around the world we see horrific violence by people against one another. Every week we seem to reach a new low. My question is simple: What is wrong with people today?
VS: I don't think it's people who are the source of these cycles of violence. They're caught in them. It isn't that violence hasn't existed before our times - it has. But it was always localized. I think the violence in our times is global in scope - because the military and the economy are now globally organized, and they feed on each other, and the military has become the last economy.
Those wars in Iraq and Iran are not just wars; they are not just wars. They are about control over resources. They are about giving contracts. They are about opening up Iraq to the GMO seeds of Monsanto. There was an Iraqi Order 81 that [L. Paul] Bremer passed making it illegal for Iraqi farmers, who are the heart of the source of agriculture, the Mesopotamian Civilization: They could not use and save their own seeds. And in the big seed freedom report we have prepared - and anyone can download it from the Navdanya website - we have a contribution by a journalist who found out that Abu Ghraib, the jail from which all the scandals came, used to be the seed bank of Iraq, and Abu Ghraib the name came from one of their most precious wheat varieties. Now, a changing of a name that was a wheat variety, a place that held the biodiversity heritage of a civilization into a jail for torture, that mutation is what we must understand to understand the deepening violence.
We have had a gang rape of a girl in Delhi, which has hit the news all over and protests haven't died. I am asking myself why is it getting more and more frequent and why is it becoming more brutal? It's a bit like climate change - it's not that we haven't had storms before, but the Katrinas and the Sandys are new in terms of their impact. We have had drought before, but the drought that is wiping out such a large bit of the corn and soy supply of the US and killing the animals is a new intensity. And it's that intensity and scale that is changing.
I think we need to ask today why are people who live peacefully side by side, killing each other? Why did the Arab Spring become the Arab Nightmare? I think there are a number of causes. That first trigger of the Arab Spring was a young man who wasn't able to sell vegetables. Now, if you push people to such a corner there are only two things they can do: either rebel to change it and say I will get justice; I will have work, whether I am a Shia or Sunni, and we will stand side by side and we will sell vegetables. I will have work whether I am a Hindu or Muslim, and we will work together, or the system that has hijacked a Democracy and turned representative Democracy into "of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations," must win its votes on basis of divide: "You know the real threat is the immigrant; the real threat are those Christians; the real threat are those Hindus," and you create a ground for insecurity and hatred of a volatile nature.
There is actually a huge economy in selling arms and dividing people, and it needs people fighting each other.
I remember Syria before the way it's gone. There was a year of drought, and I'm just saying if those farmers had been given the kind of seeds that could survive the drought, they'd have been doing farming. They were displaced; they were angry; they were protesting. Before you knew it, they became sectarian protests; before you knew it, different sides started to arm, and American arms are everywhere.
So I think it's all of these convergences that are brutalizing, particularly the men, who are now just finding one place to find an identity: how to be the more vicious killer. We won't be able to reclaim our humanity through narrow identities. We can only reclaim it through a very broad universal human identity and even broader earth identity. That's why I talk of Earth Democracy.
The challenge is really reclaiming our humanity to be able to live in peace with each other.
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