Neither Monbiot nor Shiva can pass muster in my books. While both make significant critical points against modern corporate agriculture both are careless in their research and in Shiva's case she has an ignorance of Western philosophy that is astonishing. She also hijacked and still misrepresents the nature of the Chipko movement.
This is from a longer article by De Gregori at Butterfliesandwheels.com. See also the work of Meera Nanda. The Chipko "Movement" Many activists like Shiva, who are promoted in the West by the anti-globalization Greens and who receive uncritical acclaim, are often the object of very severe criticism in their own countries, a fact which goes largely unreported. After an article in a Malaysian newspaper talked about Shiva in highly flattering terms, claiming that she was a leader of the famed Chipko (tree huggers) movement in India, the Chipko local activists sent a letter of protest to the editor, arguing that the interview was based on false claims and noting that it had angered many people. Those writing the letter saw themselves as being the "real activists," who do not understand why Shiva is "reportedly publishing wrong claims about Chipko in the foreign press." Shiva uses Chipko as a model for Green ideologies from deep ecology to eco-feminism. Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, a distinguished scientist and environmentalist, examines each of these ideologies and deems them myths without any basis in fact (1999). He is an active supporter of the Chipko villages, in which he finds "a movement rooted in economic conflicts over mountain forests," and a "social movement based on gender collaboration" and not a "feminist movement based on gender conflicts" (Bandyopadhyay 1999). Chipko is but one example where external activists, even those who may be well intentioned idealists, in effect hijack a movement and use it to promote an ideological agenda. The original motivation for "participating in Chipko protests" was to gain local control of forest resources in order to create a forest-based industry which offered the Himalayan villagers the possibility that their kinsmen who had to migrate to find work, might be employed closer to home. Further, increased local access to forest resources might "have offered women the possibility of adding to their meagre incomes and insuring themselves from potential crisis if remittances ceased or became intermittent" (Rangan 2000, 199-200). Chipko is one of many cases of environmental groups in developed countries co-opting a cause like wildlife or habitat conservation, or a local movement with legitimate grievances, and then subverting them. In the case of Chipko, the co-option was initially by people from the urban elite in India, who received international acclaim as a result. As with other cases that I have examined, in places like Africa and the Americas, not only do local concerns get brushed aside, but often the locals are worse off because of the external "support." This is particularly true in case after case that I have examined for conservation projects, be they in Africa, Central America or India, where local interests are swept aside in favor of saving the environment from those who live there (DeGregori, 2004, Chapters 4, 10 & 11 and DeGregori 2002, Chapter 2). One of Shiva's Chipko women' from the Pindar Valley in Chamoli District, Gayatri Devi, bitterly states that the movement has made life worse in the valley: Now they tell me that because of Chipko the road cannot be built [to her village], because everything has become parovarian [environment] ... We cannot get even wood to build a house ... our ha-haycock [rights and concessions] have been snatched away (Rangan 2000, 42). This helps to answer the questions which Rangan raises: Why do words like environment and ecology make so many people living in the Garhwal Himalayas see red? Why do so many of them make derisive comments when the Chipko movement figures in any discussion? Why is it that in most parts of Garhwal today, local populations are angry and resentful of being held hostage by Chipko, an environmental movement of their own making (Rangan 1993, 155)? When the world community was ready to hear the claims of the Garhwal Himalayan villages, their voice in the Chipko movement had all but ceased to exist. The brief love affair between Chipko's activists and the state had resulted in the romantic ideal that the Himalayan environment by itself mattered more than the people who eked out their existence within it. Rangan adds that: if some of the communities are ready to banish their axes today, it must be seen as yet another attempt to affirm themselves and give voice to the difficulties of sustaining livelihoods within their localities (174-175). >From Agarwal and Narain, we learn that the situation has driven some to advocate practices that violate laws which the urban conservationists have imposed. "Uttarkhand, the land which gave birth to the Chipko movement, now even has a Jungle Kato Andolan (cut the forest movement). Thanks to the ministry of environment, environment' is no longer a nice word in Uttarkhand" (1991). Rangan argues that the Chipko today is a "fairy tale," a myth sustained and propagated by a few self-appointed spokespeople through conferences, books, and journal articles that eulogize it as a social movement, peasant movement, environmental movement, women's movement, Ghandian movement--in short, an all-encompassing movement (Rangan 1993, 158). --- Colin Brace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 7/23/06, Daniel Davies > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > But > > the case for strict regulation is undermined by > the fact that the anti-GM > > movement is dominated, like the anti-stem-cell > movement, by people whose > > chief problem with the stuff is that it is > science. > > This is a dubious assertion. Off the top of my head, > who do I > associate with the anti-GM movement? People like > George Monbiot, > Vandana Shiva, groups like Greenpeace, > Milieudefensie here in Holland. > Such opponents aren't driven by some kind of > irrational dislike for > technology. Similar to the anti-nuke crowd, they > simply see it as a > technology with too many liabilities. > > Aside from the potential environmental dangers or > lack thereof, one > can also oppose GM foods simply on economic grounds, > as an attempt to > increase corporate control of the food chain (cf, > the "terminator > gene"). > > -- > Colin Brace > Amsterdam >
