Vandana Shiva Quotes
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When the forest is destroyed, when the river is dammed, when the biodiversity is stolen, when fields are waterlogged or turned saline because of economic activities, it is a question of survival for these people. So our environmental movements have been justice movements.
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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.
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It is from the Himalayan forests and ecosystems that I learned most of what I know about ecology.
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Although two thirds of our planet is water, we face an acute water shortage. The water crisis is the most pervasive , most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth.
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In traditional agriculture, the soil is the mother. She's the mother who gives, to whom you must give back.
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We must occupy the food system to create food democracy.
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The spinning wheel became the symbol of Indian independence. So we always say, "if the spinning wheel was the symbol of our first independence, then the seed is the symbol of our second independence."
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Soil, not oil, holds the future for humanity.
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Amory Lovins has said that the only reason Americans look efficient is that each has 300 energy slaves. Those 300 energy slaves will now be reproduced among the elite of India.
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That amazing power of being able to stand with total courage in the face of total power and not be afraid. That is stri shakti.
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My personal background is actually very unusual for the kind of career I chose. I didnt meet anyone who had ever done physics in my life. I grew up in the Himalayan forests. My father was a forest conservator, which meant that if I wasnt in school I was in the forests with him. That has been very largely responsible for my ecological inclinations.
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If you read Wall Street's reports, they don't talk of soya bean as originating in China. They don't talk of soya bean as soya bean. They talk of Monsanto soya. Monsanto soya is protected by a patent. It has a patent number. It is therefore treated as a creation of Monsanto, a product of Monsanto's intelligence and innovation.
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The reductionist measure of yield is to agriculture systems, what GDP is to economic systems. It is time to move from measuring yield of commodities, to health and well-being of ecosystems and communities. Industrial agriculture has its roots in war. Ecological agriculture allows us to make peace with the earth, soil and the society.
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Seen from a monocultural perspective, manipulating objects is very, very clever. But seen from a multidimensional perspective, from a perspective of diversity, this is extremely crude because what we have lost out on is a cow that serves as a source of sustainable energy.
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Patriarchy is based on appropriating rights and leaving responsibility to others.
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Population control is not an issue involving contraceptives for third world women. It is an issue of ecological justice.
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The agrarian crisis [in India] is an unnecessary tragedy, resulting directly from an economics of greed and a politics driven by the economies of greed.
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I do sculpting sometimes when I have the time, and the first thing I sculpted was a bust of [Albert] Einstein. It still sits on my table and still inspires me. He was a person who triggered my imagination and my ideas.
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Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.
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It is not an investment if it destroys the planet
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Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use.
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The abuse of the Earth is the ecological crisis.
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The art of teaching is clarity and the art of learning is to listen.
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We have managed to make the celebration of diversity our mode of resistance.