WUNRN
by Vandana Shiva*
March 26, 2014 - Over the last four decades, I have served the Earth and grassroots ecological movements, beginning with the historic Chipko Movement (Hug the Tree Movement), in the Central Himalaya. Every movement in which I participated, I noticed that women were the decision-makers — they decided the course of action and even were unrelenting in protecting the land and the sources of their sustenance and livelihoods.
Women who were a
part of the Chipko movement were protecting forests because deforestation and
logging in Uttarakhand led to floods, draughts, landslides and other such
natural disasters. It led to scarcity of fuel and fodder. It led to the
disappearance of springs and streams, forcing women to walk longer and further
for water.
The dominant paradigm of forestry is based on
monocultures of commercial species where forests are seen as timber mines that
produce timber and generate revenue and leads to profits. The women of the
Chipko Movement taught the world and me that timber, revenue and profits were
not the real products of the forest; the real products were soil, water and
pure air.
Today, science refers to these as ecological functions of
ecosystems. Illiterate women of the Garhwal Himalaya were four decades ahead of
the scientists of the world. By 1981, the government was compelled to stop
logging in the Central Himalaya.
On April 22, 2002, which is
recognised as Earth Day, I was invited by women from a small hamlet named
Plachimada in Palghat, Kerala, to join their struggle against Coca Cola which
was mining 1.5 million litres of water a day and polluting the water that
remained in their wells.
Women were forced to walk 10
kilometres every day in search for clean drinking water. Mylamma, a tribal
woman leading the movement, said they would not walk further for water. Coca
Cola must stop stealing their water. These women decided to set up a satyagraha
(struggle for truth) camp opposite the Coca Cola factory. I too joined them in
solidarity and over the years supported them. In 2004, Coca Cola was forced to
shut down.
In 1984, a terrible disaster
caused by a leak from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal killed 3,000
people immediately. Still thousands of children are born with disabilities.
Union Carbide is now owned by Dow, which refuses to take ownership of
responsibility for justice. In 1984, as a response to the Bhopal disaster, I
started a campaign, “No more Bhopals, plant a Neem”.
The women of Bhopal were also
victims of the disaster. But they did not let their hopes and fight for justice
wane. For example, Rashidabi and Champadevi Shukla continued their struggle for
justice. They also provide rehabilitation to the children born with
disabilities. They have set up a Chingari Trust to honour women fighting
corporate injustice. In 2012, they invited me to give the Chingari award to the
women fighting against the nuclear power plant at Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu.
In 1994, I came to know that the
use of neem to control pests and diseases in agriculture has been patented by
US department of agriculture and multinational WR Grace. We launched a neem
campaign to challenge the biopiracy. More than 100,000 Indians signed to
initiate a case in the European Patent Office. I joined hands with Magda
Alvoet, the president of the European Greens and Linda Bullard, president of
International Foundation for Organic Agriculture to fight the case for 11
years. On March 8, 2005, on International Women’s Day, the European patent
office struck down the biopiracy patent.
"When
it comes to the sustenance of the economy, women act as experts and providers.
Even though women’s work in providing sustenance is the most vital activity, a
patriarchal economy treats it as non-work."
Why there’s a trend of women
leading ecology movements against deforestation and pollution of water, against
toxic and nuclear hazards? I partly believe that in the division of labour, it
is women who have been left to look after sustenance — providing food, water,
health and care.
When it comes to the sustenance
of the economy, women act as both experts and providers. Even though women’s
work in providing sustenance is the most vital human activity, a patriarchal
economy which defines the economy only as the economy of the marketplace,
treats it as non work.
The patriarchal model of the
economy is dominated by one figure, the gross domestic product, which is
measured on the basis of an artificially created production boundary (if you
produce what you consume, you do not produce).
When the ecological crisis
created by an ecologically blind economic paradigm leads to the disappearance
of forests and water, spread of diseases because of toxics and poisons, and the
consequent threat to life and survival, it is women who rise to wake up the
society to the crisis, and to defend the Earth and lives. Women are leading the
paradigm shift to align the economy with ecology. After all, both are rooted in
the word “oikos” — our home.
Not only are women experts in the
sustenance economy. They are experts in ecological science through their daily
participation in processes that provide sustenance. Their expertise is rooted
in lived experience and not in abstract and fragmented knowledge, which cannot
see through the connectedness of the web of life.
The rise of masculinist science
with Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Bacon led to the domination of reductionist
mechanistic science and a subjugation of knowledge systems based on
interconnections and relationships. This includes all indigenous knowledge
systems and women’s knowledge.
The most violent display of
mechanistic science is in the promotion of industrial agriculture, including
genetically modified organisms as a solution to hunger and malnutrition.
Industrial agriculture uses chemicals developed for warfare as inputs. Genetic
engineering is based on the idea of genes as “master molecules” giving
unidirectional commands to the rest of the organism. The reality is that living
systems are self-organised, interactive and dynamic. The genome is fluid.
As these issues move centrestage
in every society, it is women who bring the alternatives through biodiversity
and agroecology that offer real solutions to the food and nutrition crisis. As
I have learnt over 30 years of building the Navdanya movement, biodiversity
produces more than monocultures. Small family farms based on women’s
participation provide 75 per cent of the food eaten in the world. Industrial
agriculture only produces 25 per cent, while using and destroying 75 per cent
of the Earth’s resources.
When it comes to real solutions
to real problems faced by the planet and people, it is the subjugated knowledge
and invisible work of women based on co-creation and co-production with nature
that will show the way to human survival and well being in the future.
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*Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She is the founder/director of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network.