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Subject: VANDANA SHIVA: Poverty & Globalization
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 23:36:56 -0500 (CDT)
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From: Bob Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Date: Sunday, May 14, 2000 8:05 PM
Subject: VANDANA SHIVA: Poverty & Globalization
People are being perceived as parasites, to be
exterminated for the "health" of the global economy.
Sharing and exchange, the basis of our humanity and
of our ecological survival has been redefined as a
crime.
We have to move from market totalitarianism to an
earth democracy.
Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 01:15:05 -0300
From: "Janet Eaton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: VANDANA SHIVA -BBC REITH LECTURE 5 Poverty & Globalization
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_2000/lecture5.stm
BBC REITH LECTURE 5 POVERTY AND GLOBALIZATION
DR. VANDANA SHIVA
Recently, I was visiting Bhatinda in Punjab because of an epidemic of
farmers suicides. Punjab used to be the most prosperous agricultural region
in India. Today every farmer is in debt and despair. Vast stretches of land
have become water-logged desert. And as an old farmer pointed out, even the
trees have stopped bearing fruit because heavy use of pesticides have
killed the pollinators - the bees and butterflies.
And Punjab is not alone in experiencing this ecological and social
disaster. Last year I was in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh where farmers have
also been committing suicide. Farmers who traditionally grew pulses and
millets and paddy have been lured by seed companies to buy hybrid cotton
seeds referred to by the seed merchants as "white gold", which were
supposed to make them millionaires. Instead they became paupers.
Their native seeds have been displaced with new hybrids which cannot be
saved and need to be purchased every year at high cost. Hybrids are also
very vulnerable to pest attacks. Spending on pesticides in Warangal has
shot up 2000 per cent from $2.5 million in the 1980s to $50 million in
1997. Now farmers are consuming the same pesticides as a way of killing
themselves so that they can escape permanently from unpayable debt.
The corporations are now trying to introduce genetically engineered seed
which will further increase costs and ecological risks. That is why farmers
like Malla Reddy of the Andhra Pradesh Farmers' Union had uprooted
Monsanto's genetically engineered Bollgard cotton in Warangal.
On March 27th, 25 year old Betavati Ratan took his life because he could
not pay pack debts for drilling a deep tube well on his two-acre farm. The
wells are now dry, as are the wells in Gujarat and Rajasthan where more
than 50 million people face a water famine.
The drought is not a "natural disaster". It is "man-made". It is the result
of mining of scarce ground water in arid regions to grow thirsty cash crops
for exports instead of water prudent food crops for local needs.
It is experiences such as these which tell me that we are so wrong to be
smug about the new global economy. I will argue in this lecture that it is
time to stop and think about the impact of globalisation on the lives of
ordinary people. This is vital to achieve sustainability.
Seattle and the World Trade Organisation protests last year have forced
everyone to think again. Throughout this lecture series people have
referred to different aspects of sustainable development taking
globalisation for granted. For me it is now time radically to re-evaluate
what we are doing. For what we are doing in the name of globalisation to
the poor is brutal and unforgivable. This is specially evident in India as
we witness the unfolding disasters of globalisation, especially in food and
agriculture.
Who feeds the world? My answer is very different to that given by most
people.
It is women and small farmers working with biodiversity who are the primary
food providers in the Third World, and contrary to the dominant assumption,
their biodiversity based small farms are more productive than industrial
monocultures.
The rich diversity and sustainable systems of food production are being
destroyed in the name of increasing food production. However, with the
destruction of diversity, rich sources of nutrition disappear. When
measured in terms of nutrition per acre, and from the perspective
biodiversity, the so called "high yields" of industrial agriculture or
industrial fisheries do not imply more production of food and nutrition.
Yields usually refers to production per unit area of a single crop. Output
refers to the total production of diverse crops and products. Planting only
one crop in the entire field as a monoculture will of course increase its
individual yield. Planting multiple crops in a mixture will have low yields
of individual crops, but will have high total output of food. Yields have
been defined in such a way as to make the food production on small farms by
small farmers disappear. This hides the production by millions of women
farmers in the Third World - farmers like those in my native Himalaya who
fought against logging in the Chipko movement, who in their terraced fields
even today grow Jhangora (barnyard millet), Marsha (Amaranth), Tur (Pigeon
Pea), Urad (Black gram), Gahat (horse gram), Soya Bean (Glycine Max), Bhat
(Glycine Soya) - endless diversity in their fields. From the biodiversity
perspective, biodiversity based productivity is higher than monoculture
productivity. I call this blindness to the high productivity of diversity a
"Monoculture of the Mind", which creates monocultures in our fields and in
our world.
The Mayan peasants in the Chiapas are characterised as unproductive because
they produce only 2 tons of corn per acre. However, the overall food output
is 20 tons per acre when the diversity of their beans and squashes, their
vegetables their fruit trees are taken into account.
In Java, small farmers cultivate 607 species in their home gardens. In
sub-Saharan Africa, women cultivate 120 different plants. A single home
garden in Thailand has 230 species, and African home gardens have more than
60 species of trees.
Rural families in the Congo eat leaves from more than 50 species of their
farm trees.
A study in eastern Nigeria found that home gardens occupying only 2 per
cent of a household's farmland accounted for half of the farm's total
output. In Indonesia 20 per cent of household income and 40 per cent of
domestic food supplies come from the home gardens managed by women.
Research done by FAO has shown that small biodiverse farms can produce
thousands of times more food than large, industrial monocultures.
And diversity in addition to giving more food is the best strategy for
preventing drought and desertification.
What the world needs to feed a growing population sustainably is
biodiversity intensification, not the chemical intensification or the
intensification of genetic engineering. While women and small peasants feed
the world through biodiversity we are repeatedly told that without genetic
engineering and globalisation of agriculture the world will starve. In
spite of all empirical evidence showing that genetic engineering does not
produce more food and in fact often leads to a yield decline, it is
constantly promoted as the only alternative available for feeding the
hungry.
That is why I ask, who feeds the world?
This deliberate blindness to diversity, the blindness to nature's
production, production by women, production by Third World farmers allows
destruction and appropriation to be projected as creation.
Take the case of the much flouted "golden rice" or genetically engineered
Vitamin A rice as a cure for blindness. It is assumed that without genetic
engineering we cannot remove Vitamin A deficiency. However, nature gives us
abundant and diverse sources of vitamin A. If rice was not polished, rice
itself would provide Vitamin A. If herbicides were not sprayed on our wheat
fields, we would have bathua, amaranth, mustard leaves as delicious and
nutritious greens that provide Vitamin A.
Women in Bengal use more than 150 plants as greens - Hinche sak (Enhydra
fluctuans), Palang sak (Spinacea oleracea), Tak palang (Rumex vesicarious),
Lal Sak (Amaranthus gangeticus) - to name but a few.
But the myth of creation presents biotechnologists as the creators of
Vitamin A, negating nature's diverse gifts and women's knowledge of how to
use this diversity to feed their children and families.
The most efficient means of rendering the destruction of nature, local
economies and small autonomous producers is by rendering their production
invisible.
Women who produce for their families and communities are treated as
`non-productive' and `economically' inactive. The devaluation of women's
work, and of work done in sustainable economies, is the natural outcome of
a system constructed by capitalist patriarchy. This is how globalisation
destroys local economies and destruction itself is counted as growth.
And women themselves are devalued. Because many women in the rural and
indigenous communities work co-operatively with nature's processes, their
work is often contradictory to the dominant market driven `development' and
trade policies. And because work that satisfies needs and ensures
sustenance is devalued in general, there is less nurturing of life and life
support systems.
The devaluation and invisibility of sustainable, regenerative production is
most glaring in the area of food. While patriarchal division of labour has
assigned women the role of feeding their families and communities,
patriarchal economics and patriarchal views of science and technology
magically make women's work in providing food disappear. "Feeding the
World" becomes disassociated from the women who actually do it and is
projected as dependent on global agribusiness and biotechnology
corporations.
However, industrialisation and genetic engineering of food and
globalisation of trade in agriculture are recipes for creating hunger, not
for feeding the poor.
Everywhere, food production is becoming a negative economy, with farmers
spending more to buy costly inputs for industrial production than the price
they receive for their produce. The consequence is rising debts and
epidemics of suicides in both poor and rich countries.
Economic globalisation is leading to a concentration of the seed industry,
increased use of pesticides, and, finally, increased debt.
Capital-intensive, corporate controlled agriculture is being spread into
regions where peasants are poor but, until now, have been self-sufficient
in food. In the regions where industrial agriculture has been introduced
through globalisation, higher costs are making it virtually impossible for
small farmers to survive.
The globalisation of non-sustainable industrial agriculture is literally
evaporating the incomes of Third World farmers through a combination of
devaluation of currencies, increase in costs of production and a collapse
in commodity prices.
Farmers everywhere are being paid a fraction of what they received for the
same commodity a decade ago. The Canadian National Farmers Union put it
like this in a report to the senate this year:
"While the farmers growing cereal grains - wheat, oats, corn - earn
negative returns and are pushed close to bankruptcy, the companies that
make breakfast cereals reap huge profits. In 1998, cereal companies
Kellogg's, Quaker Oats, and General Mills enjoyed return on equity rates of
56%, 165% and 222% respectively. While a bushel of corn sold for less than
$4, a bushel of corn flakes sold for $133 ... Maybe farmers are making too
little because others are taking too much."
And a World Bank report has admitted that "behind the polarisation of
domestic consumer prices and world prices is the presence of large trading
companies in international commodity markets."
While farmers earn less, consumers pay more. In India, food prices have
doubled between 1999 and 2000. The consumption of food grains in rural
areas has dropped by 12%. Increased economic growth through global commerce
is based on pseudo surpluses. More food is being traded while the poor are
consuming less. When growth increases poverty, when real production becomes
a negative economy, and speculators are defined as "wealth creators",
something has gone wrong with the concepts and categories of wealth and
wealth creation. Pushing the real production by nature and people into a
negative economy implies that production of real goods and services is
declining, creating deeper poverty for the millions who are not part of the
dot.com route to instant wealth creation.
Women - as I have said - are the primary food producers and food processors
in the world. However, their work in production and processing is now
becoming invisible.
Recently, the McKinsey corporation said: "American food giants recognise
that Indian agro-business has lots of room to grow, especially in food
processing. India processes a minuscule 1 per cent of the food it grows
compared with 70 per cent for the U.S...".
It is not that we Indians eat our food raw. Global consultants fail to see
the 99 per cent food processing done by women at household level, or by the
small cottage industry because it is not controlled by global agribusiness.
99% of India's agroprocessing has been intentionally kept at the small
level. Now , under the pressure of globalisation, things are changing.
Pseudo hygiene laws are being uses to shut down local economies and small
scale processing.
In August 1998, small scale local processing of edible oil was banned in
India through a "packaging order" which made sale of open oil illegal and
required all oil to be packaged in plastic or aluminium. This shut down
tiny "ghanis" or cold pressed mills. It destroyed the market for our
diverse oilseeds - mustard, linseed, sesame, groundnut, coconut.
And the take-over of the edible oil industry has affected 10 million
livelihoods. The take over of flour or "atta" by packaged branded flour
will cost 100 million livelihoods. And these millions are being pushed into
new poverty.
The forced use of packaging will increase the environmental burden of
millions of tonnes of waste.
The globalisation of the food system is destroying the diversity of local
food cultures and local food economies. A global monoculture is being
forced on people by defining everything that is fresh, local and handmade
as a health hazard. Human hands are being defined as the worst
contaminants, and work for human hands is being outlawed, to be replaced by
machines and chemicals bought from global corporations. These are not
recipes for feeding the world, but stealing livelihoods from the poor to
create markets for the powerful.
People are being perceived as parasites, to be exterminated for the
"health" of the global economy.
In the process new health and ecological hazards are being forced on Third
World people through dumping of genetically engineered foods and other
hazardous products.
Recently, because of a W.T.O. ruling, India has been forced to remove
restrictions on all imports.
Among the unrestricted imports are carcasses and animal waste parts that
create a threat to our culture and introduce public health hazards such as
the Mad Cow Disease.
The US Centre for Disease Prevention in Atlanta has calculated that nearly
81 million cases of food borne illnesses occur in the US every year. Deaths
from food poisoning have gone up more up more than four times due to
deregulation. Most of these infections are caused by factory farmed meat.
The US slaughters 93 million pigs, thirty seven million cattle, two million
calves, six million horses, goats and sheep and eight billion chickens and
turkeys each year.
Now the giant meat industry of US wants to dump contaminated meat produced
through violent and cruel methods on Indian consumers.
The waste of the rich is being dumped on the poor. The wealth of the poor
is being violently appropriated through new and clever means like patents
on biodiversity and indigenous knowledge.
Patents and intellectual property rights are supposed to be granted for
novel inventions. But patents are being claimed for rice varieties such as
the basmati for which my Valley - where I was born - is famous, or
pesticides derived from the Neem which our mothers and grandmothers have
been using.
Rice Tec, a U.S. based company has been granted Patent no. 5,663,484 for
basmati rice lines and grains.
Basmati, neem, pepper, bitter gourd, turmeric.......every aspect of the
innovation embodied in our indigenous food and medicinal systems is now
being pirated and patented. The knowledge of the poor is being converted
into the property of global corporations, creating a situation where the
poor will have to pay for the seeds and medicines they have evolved and
have used to meet their own needs for nutrition and health care.
Such false claims to creation are now the global norm, with the Trade
Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of World Trade Organisation
forcing countries to introduce regimes that allow patenting of life forms
and indigenous knowledge.
Instead of recognising that commercial interests build on nature and on the
contribution of other cultures, global law has enshrined the patriarchal
myth of creation to create new property rights to life forms just as
colonialism used the myth of discovery as the basis of the take over of the
land of others as colonies.
Humans do not create life when they manipulate it. Rice Tec's claim that it
has made "an instant invention of a novel rice line", or Roslin Institute's
claim that Ian Wilmut "created" Dolly denies the creativity of nature, the
self-organisational capacity of life forms, and the prior innovations of
Third World communities.
Patents and intellectual property rights are supposed to prevent piracy.
Instead they are becoming the instruments of pirating the common
traditional knowledge from the poor of the Third World and making it the
exclusive "property" of western scientists and corporations.
When patents are granted for seeds and plants, as in the case of basmati,
theft is defined as creation, and saving and sharing seed is defined as
theft of intellectual property. Corporations which have broad patents on
crops such as cotton, soya bean, mustard are suing farmers for seed saving
and hiring detective agencies to find out if farmers have saved seed or
shared it with neighbours.
The recent announcement that Monsanto is giving away the rice genome for
free is misleading, because Monsanto has never made a commitment that it
will never patent rice varieties or any other crop varieties.
Sharing and exchange, the basis of our humanity and of our ecological
survival has been redefined as a crime. This makes us all poor.
Nature has given us abundance, women's indigenous knowledge of
biodiversity, agriculture and nutrition has built on that abundance to
create more from less, to create growth through sharing.
The poor are pushed into deeper poverty by making them pay for what was
theirs. Even the rich are poorer because their profits are based on the
theft and on the use of coercion and violence. This is not wealth creation
but plunder.
Sustainability requires the protection of all species and all people and
the recognition that diverse species and diverse people play an essential
role in maintaining ecological processes. Pollinators are critical to
fertilisation and generation of plants. Biodiversity in fields provides
vegetables, fodder, medicine and protection to the soil from water and wind
erosion.
As humans travel further down the road to non-sustainability, they become
intolerant of other species and blind to their vital role in our survival.
In 1992, when Indian farmers destroyed Cargill's seed plant in Bellary,
Karnataka, to protest against seed failure, the Cargill Chief Executive
stated, "We bring Indian farmers smart technologies which prevent bees from
usurping the pollen". When I was participating in the United Nations
Biosafety Negotiations, Monsanto circulated literature to defend its
herbicide resistant Roundup ready crops on grounds that they prevent "weeds
from stealing the sunshine". But what Monsanto calls weeds are the green
fields that provide Vitamin A rice and prevent blindness in children and
anaemia in women.
A worldview that defines pollination as "theft by bees" and claims
biodiversity "steals" sunshine is a worldview which itself aims at stealing
nature's harvest by replacing open, pollinated varieties with hybrids and
sterile seeds, and destroying biodiverse flora with herbicides such as
Roundup. The threat posed to the Monarch butterfly by genetically
engineered bt crops is just one example of the ecological poverty created
by the new biotechnologies. As butterflies and bees disappear, production
is undermined. As biodiversity disappears, with it go sources of nutrition
and food.
When giant corporations view small peasants and bees as thieves, and
through trade rules and new technologies seek the right to exterminate
them, humanity has reached a dangerous threshold. The imperative to stamp
out the smallest insect, the smallest plant, the smallest peasant comes
from a deep fear - the fear of everything that is alive and free. And this
deep insecurity and fear is unleashing the violence against all people and
all species.
The global free trade economy has become a threat to sustainability and
the very survival of the poor and other species is at stake not just as a
side effect or as an exception but in a systemic way through a
restructuring of our worldview at the most fundamental level.
Sustainability, sharing and survival is being economically outlawed in the
name of market competitiveness and market efficiency.
I want to argue here tonight that we need to urgently bring the planet and
people back into the picture.
The world can be fed only by feeding all beings that make the world.
In giving food to other beings and species we maintain conditions for our
own food security. In feeding earthworms we feed ourselves. In feeding
cows, we feed the soil, and in providing food for the soil, we provide food
for humans. This worldview of abundance is based on sharing and on a deep
awareness of humans as members of the earth family. This awareness that in
impoverishing other beings, we impoverish ourselves and in nourishing other
beings, we nourish ourselves is the real basis of sustainability.
The sustainability challenge for the new millennium is whether global
economic man can move out of the worldview based on fear and scarcity,
monocultures and monopolies, appropriation and dispossession and shift to a
view based on abundance and sharing, diversity and decentralisation, and
respect and dignity for all beings.
Sustainability demands that we move out of the economic trap that is
leaving no space for other species and other people. Economic Globalisation
has become a war against nature and the poor. But the rules of
globalisation are not god - given. They can be changed. They must be
changed. We must bring this war to an end.
Since Seattle, a frequently used phrase has been the need for a rule based
system. Globalisation is the rule of commerce and it has elevated Wall
Street to be the only source of value. As a result things that should have
high worth - nature, culture, the future are being devalued and destroyed.
The rules of globalisation are undermining the rules of justice and
sustainability, of compassion and sharing. We have to move from market
totalitarianism to an earth democracy.
We can survive as a species only if we live by the rules of the biosphere.
The biosphere has enough for everyone's needs if the global economy
respects the limits set by sustainability and justice.
As Gandhi had reminded us: "The earth has enough for everyone's needs, but
not for some people's greed".
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR</B>
Sujata Gupta, the Tata Energy Research Institute:</B> I'd like to hear your
views on sustainable use of scarce inputs like water for agriculture. What
I gathered from your lecture was total condemnation of the market system.
Vandana Shiva:</B> Let me first respond by saying - I love markets. I love
my local market where local "subgees" are sold, and one can chat with the
women. The tragedy really is that the market is being turned into the only
organising principle for life, and Wall St is being turned into the only
source of value, and it's the disappearance of other markets, other values
that I am condemning. In terms of water, the solution to water conservation
and scarce water management is not putting it in the hands of those who can
afford to buy the last drop, but to put it in the hands of the community,
to use it sustainably within the limits of renewal. The water must be
returned to the communities and managed as a commons - it has to be taken
beyond the marketplace.
Professor Marva, University of Delhi:</B> Can there be sustainable
development without sustainable population?
Vandana Shiva:</B> I think non-sustainable population growth is a symptom
and product of non-sustainable development. It's not that population grows
by itself as a separate phenomena - you look at the data - Indian
population had stability till 1800 - colonisation, dispossession of land
started to make our population grow. Highest growth rates of population in
England is after the enclosures of the commons. It's the loss of resources
of the people that generate livelihood and the replacement of resources by
labour to be sold on markets in an uncertain daily wage market that
triggers population growth. Population growth is a result of
non-sustainable development.
Bhoopinder Singh Hooda, member Legislative Assembly from Haryama:</B> I
belong to a farmer family and myself am a farmer. Farmers were exploited
even when there was no globalisation. And I totally agree with you
globalisation is going to lead (to) neocolonisation, but we can't be out of
globalisation. WTO is a ground reality - no country can get out of it like
you have suggested.
<B>Vandana Shiva:</B> WTO rules are written on pieces of paper - as I
mentioned in my lecture they're not God given. And therefore they are not
ground reality in the way the soil and the Ganges are ground realities that
can't be changed. These are rules that need to be changed - that was the
message of Seattle and the way to change them is to bring consideration of
people's livelihoods, sustainable use of resources at the heart of every
step of trade decisions, and to ensure that trade rules reflect
sustainability and the right of people to have security.
<B> Bhoopinder Singh Hooda:</B> In India farmers are getting negative
subsidy - there's no subsidy for farmers, so how can unequal competitors go
for globalisation?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> That's precisely the issue - that we were told we'd
have a level playing field - we were told when the WTO rules come into
place we would have a fair market for Indian farmers - that was the single
most important reason why India justified signing on to the GATT treaty
after the Uruguay round. It turns out we have a very unlevel playing field
- - the northern countries or OECD countries are giving 343 billion dollars
of subsidies and these subsidies have actually doubled since the completion
of the Uruguay round - meantime India's giving a negative subsidy of 25
billion. Now one could keep arguing about how the north is giving very high
subsidies - I think the argument needs to shift to how can we ensure that
small farmers in every country and the soil and water and biodiversity in
every country be protected and how can we ensure that trade rules as they
are written by totally fallible trade ministers and trade secretaries
should be rewritten to ensure that this unequal playing field does not
destroy the Earth and her producers.
<B> Dr. Sandhya Tiwari, Confederation of Indian Industry:</B> Dr. Shiva is
it really the job of the farmer to preserve germ plasm and biodiversity, to
grow plants that are less productive? Shouldn't this job be left to the
specialists?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> Well - I'm talking about leaving it to the
specialist, which is the women farmers. So far if we have biodiversity
available to us it is because biodiversity experts who happen to be women
by gender, happen to be on small farms in poorer parts of the world, have
continued to conserve biodiversity because it is more productive for them
from their perspective. It might not be productive for a single monopoly
trading house that wants to have every farmer grow corn in a region or
every farmer grow cornola in a region, but it is highly productive and very
efficient use of land, water - to feed the family, to have a little surplus
to sell on the local market, to send your child to school and it is in fact
that community which will save these resources for us. We cannot trust them
in anyone else's hands.
<B> Gulgit Choudhury, Ram Organics:</B> I have worked earlier with
Monsanto. I have a simple question to ask you. Suppose you were given the
opportunity to develop parameters of a social governance which ensures
sustainability - what would you suggest for countries like India.?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> We are in fact involved for the last few years -
generating the kind of criteria through participatory democracy building -
through ensuring that people at every level have the information, through
ensuring that communities are organised, to manage collectively the
resources that can only be sustained collectively. If I have the money and
power to drill a deep tube well I can make dry my neighbour's shallow well
and she will usually be a very poor woman. And therefore the only way a
village can conserve its ground water is to do what the "Paani Panchayath"
did in Harash - ensure that water is used within limits. Systems of
governance have to begin with where people feel the impact, and therefore
we do require the rebuilding of decentralised direct democracy. I do not
see growers as isolated individuals because the consequences of their
action are felt by their neighbours. If I am growing b.t. corn on my field
I kill the monarch butterfly of my neighbour's field. Communities,
collectives are cohesiveness of societies are important to talk about not
individual growers, and that is the bottom rung of decision making to which
both which corporations as well as governments need to be accountable -
that is the experiment that started after Seattle and that experiment in
accountable localisation to ensure that decisions are made at appropriate
place and production is carried out at the appropriate level is really the
new enterprise of democracy that societies are involved in around the
world, even while globalisation threatens our lives.
<B> Host, Kate Adie:</B> Thank you - we'll have some time for more
questions from our audience here at the Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi in
just a moment. First I'd like to read some of the e-mails sent to the BBC's
Reith 2000 website. From Bangladesh Alimgihia Haque says he finds himself
in sympathy with both Vandana Shiva and the Prince of Wales on the issue of
GM foods. Thank God he says that the people of Britain made their voices
heard and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair had to listen.
A contributor from Malaysia who signs himself Yong is critical of his own
country's leaders. He says they condemn globalisation on the one hand and
on the other give approval for dams and other environmentally destructive
activities.
Chris Whitehouse, who sent his e-mail from Nepal questions whether more
roads, more fridges, more water greedy flush toilets will make people in
developing countries any happier? Every society he says should decide its
own vision of development.
Zeb Phibbs from Britain says eating meat has got a lot to answer for. 70%
of everything grown is used to feed animals which are then killed to feed
us. Use the land grow food directly for people and we can easily feed
everyone. Being Vegan is easy - completely cruelty free and sustainable.
What more do you need?
Finally, we had this from last year's Reith lecturer Anthony Giddens -
addressing you Vandana he says - "I congratulate you on your challenging
presentation. I have to say though I don't agree with much of it. Isn't it
a contradiction in terms to use the global media to put a case against
globalisation?"
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> I don't think BBC is a product of the economic
globalisation regime that the World Trade Organisation gave us or the new
recent trade liberalisation has given us. I think it was created in l922
and international integration, international communication is not what
economic globalisation is about. Corporate concentration, corporate control
is what recent economic globalisation is about and in fact the BBC is a
counter-example to that because the real example of globalised media and
communication is Time Warner, now bought up by American on Line, Disney,
and the News Corporation.
<B> Prof. Vinod Chowdhury, reader in economics at St. Stephen's
College:</B> It strikes me as very extraordinary that Vandanaji should have
such a one sided approach. And I'm saying that with due respect to the
sheer vivacity of her presentation. Vandanaji seems to believe that there
are two clearly antithetical paradigms. One is a paradigm that essentially
is based on decentralisation, democratisation - all the good things in life
- - - women are cared for, poor people are cared for - this, that and the
other. And other is terribly evil. Everything's wrong with it. Now surely
life cannot be like that Vandanaji may I plead with you to please consider
third paradigm, where we take bits and pieces from here and there and get
an eclectic, practical approach, and I support Boopinder Singh Hooda - the
President of the Haryama Congress who asked you - and you didn't answer
that - what is the alternative at a time when no country can opt out of the
WTO - it's not a piece of paper madam - it is a commitment that countries
have to make or they will be paraiah countries and we cannot afford to be a
paraiah country - please react?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> I did react to him. And I said rewriting those rules
- - rewriting those rules that are one sided. In fact it's the WTO rules
that
are totally one sided because they really only protect the interest of one
sector of the global community which is the global corporations, not in the
local industry, not even local retail business, not small farmers anywhere,
not in the north and not in the south. And those rules can be rewritten.
That is the point I'm trying to make. Do not treat WTO rules in the Uruguay
Round Treaty as the final word on how trade should be carried out. Those
rules are being reviewed. What we have called for in Seattle is a more
democratic input in what sustainable and just rules would look like for
agriculture on intellectual property rights, in the area of services, in
the area of investments, the four new areas which were brought in. Before
that - no-one had problems with the GATT. The old GATT was about real trade
in real products beyond national boundaries. The new GATT with the Uruguay
round - is about invading in every space of our everyday lives ... and if
you are a woman you do have a somewhat different point of view. That's why
we talk of gender. If you are poor, you will have a different point of view
from the rich. To have different points of view because of differences in
location in society is not a problem. It is opportunistic though to take a
little element of the perspective of the rich , a little element of the
perspective of the poor and put it into a little jigsaw of opportunistic
statements. Societies live by coherent principles, organisational systems,
values and world views. And what we are calling for is to balance out that
one sided idea that we live by commerce alone.
<B> Rovinder Raki, student:</B> You seem to eulogise the fairness and
efficiency of traditional agricultures, societies and production patterns.
But the reality is that the farmers were exploited in these societies by
moneylenders and feudal lords. With the market reaching these societies
that exploitative social system certainly declines. Now what I have to ask
you is what restrains you from appreciating this sanitising effect of the
market?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> Well the sanitising affect of the market does end up
treating people like germs. Wipe them out. And it is that view of
dispensability, the disappearances of the small that I was trying to draw
attention to in my lecture. There has always been exploitation, and I agree
with Mr Hooda, but no exploitation before this period of current, economic
globalisation, ever organised itself in ways that it could totally dispense
with the exploited. Even the slave system needed the slave. Even the worst
of British rule which created the Bengal famine, and led to the "Faybehaga"
movement to rise against the exploitation, it needed to keep the peasants
alive For the first time we have a system where no-one needs the peasants,
unless we realise as societies we need them, that we've reached a period
where people are actually talking in India, in other countries that you can
get rid of small producers. It's assumed that everything, real growth, real
prosperity is going to come out of cyber space, but as you can see, you can
have the best of IT technologies floating above the carcasses of people
dying in Rajisthan and Gujerat right now -- and it will not help them out.
We have to pay attention to the ecological base of our survival and the
needs of all. I personally am committed to feeling and believing that the
smallest of species and the smallest of people have as much a right to live
on this planet with dignity as the most powerful corporation and the most
powerful individual.
<B> Anurag Jacob:</B> I'm a card-carrying member of India's nascent dot-com
economy. Dr. Shiva I just was very disturbed by your omission of any
reference to education. Communities in today's world cannot grow in vacuum
- - they need to have tools to evaluate the evils of globalisation with the
good of localisation. Why is that you omitted to talk about education?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> For the simple reason that the Reith lecture only
allows me 25 minutes. But in any case I don't disagree with the
characterisation of IT driven society as the only knowledge society. I
believe the women working in the fields conserving biodiveristy, producing
our food, cooking the food also have a knowledge society and it's that
denial of knowledge in other ways through other domains that is the basis
of the work we do against biopiracy, the work I do against monocultures of
the mind, the work I do against reductionism in science and technology, and
I think there is a real need for our future to recognise knowledge in all
its diverse forms among all the different creators of knowledge.
<B> Anurag Jacob:</B> I'm not saying the knowledge that indigenous
community has is rubbish. But when a farmer is faced with the prospects of
using what you call white gold as opposed to his traditional seeds, the
farmer opted for the white gold because he did not know how to evaluate his
own local seed against genetically modified foods. Therefore don't you
think we do need to educate our people so that they can evaluate what they
need to do?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> I actually referred in the response to the person
who used to work in Monsanto - that part of democracy is to have public
education, and full public awareness. I agree with you that technologies
need to be assessed and that is why for the last 13 years we have been
trying to build this system of assessing genetic engineering, the
bio-safety protocol under the convention on biological diversity, that
finally after a decade of subversion is now in place and was completed in
January in Montreal. We need people to make decisions on the basis of
having the knowledge of what the technologies are, and having processes to
actually participate. That's the basis of our plea - in the supreme court
on the Monsanto trials - that we need more knowledge dissemination, more
participation, more accountability. And finally, there are situations in
which we will be ready with the production technology long before we are
ready with the capacity to assess its impact. That is when we call for the
precautionary principle. Know the risks before you deploy technology. The
result we have a precautionary principle today is because we put out DTT -
gave it Nobel prizes, now we want to withdraw it. We put out fossil fuel
now we're worried about climate change. With GM crops you can't deploy them
because there's no call back. In any case the climate change phenomena is
becoming so life threatening that people are calling for the fact that you
will never have the final ultimate deterministic linear prediction -
therefore on the basis of complex assessment, take care, take caution
before you deploy technologies on a very large scale that could be
absolutely devastating for the planet.
<B> Rukmini Paya Naiur - professor at the Indian Institute of
Technology:</B> Some would argue (my institute) is exclusively focused on
what you call the dot com route to success. Listening to your strong
emphasis on biodiversity, it struck me that there was an unseen shadow twin
of biodiversity which is recyclability or reusability in our cultures.
India is said to be a great recycling culture - we recycle everything
including souls...I wanted to ask you whether this shadow twin recycling
had something to contribute to the notion that the materials of the whole
universe are in fact reusable and that we have something to actually offer
the world in this sort of expertise?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> We have been a civilisation that lived on the basis
of recycling and that's why when we today are burdened with plastic and
plastic packaging now compulsory, now required by law, people still treat
that plastic bag as if is a little banana leaf that will disappear. And
even the cows are in the habit of thinking plastic is like a banana leaf
they can eat up. Some products don't disappear. Some products don't get
recycled and that's part of the crisis that as a culture which has had such
sensitive ways of ensuring that our ecological footprint is very light on
the planet - last year a scientist from Canada sent me his data on
ecological footprint and his data on resource use, and ability of
eco-systems to absorb outputs and waste was that there were only 3
countries with surpluses in resources - Canada, Sweden - at that time
India. That was India before the race to "plastic" itself, globalise
itself. Today what we need is a way to make a fit into those systems that
we have evolved so sophisticatedly, recycling organic matter to ensure we
get out of the chemical tread mill because chemicals do not get recycled.
They just bio-accumulate.
<B> P.D. Kayra from Delhi:</B> While one would appreciate that biodiveristy
and systems like that do help in production, but I'm more concerned with
the farmer who today I find is disenchanted and is less and less motivated
and becoming totally indifferent to his way of life and that maybe
biodiversity by itself will not be able to explain?
<B> Vandana Shiva:</B> In the areas where monocultures have taken over,
where external inputs and chemicals are forcing farmers to spend the little
bit of income they have to buy those useless and costly inputs - farmers
are disenchanted both because of the negative economy I talked about - and
no production can take place over time on the basis of a negative economy -
as well as the fact that the entire set of technologies in industrial
agriculture are careless technologies. They are technologies that
substitute care with carelessness. You can just spray urea - you don't have
to do composting. You don't have to weed at the right time - the few tiny
weeds that might come up, spray the herbicide and that technology of
carelessness eventually creates disenchanted people because they have no
meaning, no role. In the areas where we work through our movement called
"Navdanya", for conserving biodiveristy and we now have seed banks in seven
states, eleven community seed banks have been started - every region where
after a while the farmers have replaced external inputs with internal
inputs to produce food organically, where they have managed to get rid of
their debts - a threefold increase in incomes just by saving on expenditure
- - they are excited, they're enthused, they are absolutely on the verge of
a
whole new determination and I invite some of you to come and visit those
regions.
<><><><><><><><>
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