Earth Day 2022: “We are not power in destructive form, we are power in creative form” – An interview with Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva is an Indian activist who received the 1993 Right Livelihood Award for “placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse.” On the occasion of International Mother Earth Day, we asked her which actions are needed in order to build a prosperous and more equitable future. Read our inspiring conversation below.

Q: You once said, “It is not an investment if it is destroying the planet.” Which kind of investment would you consider adequate in order to tackle the issues deriving from the climate crisis, and to ensure the conservation of biodiversity?

The word ‘invest” was never related to the money until colonialism. The Latin root of the word “invest” meant “making something beautiful” and was related to farming. With globalisation, the word “invest” took the meaning of “making money out of money.” Nature and biodiversity were reduced to assets. We are still locked with this understanding, and we do not realise that it is impossible to make something beautiful out of money. As what makes something beautiful is the quality of care and giving, we must rescue the word “invest” from the money-making machine.

The current economy has nothing to do with the planet’s health, this green machine is looking for new ways to make money out of the crisis. For example, industrial carbon capture is replacing ecological carbon capture. We should not build massive metal structures which do the same work as forests. Forests do not imply steel mining, the displacement of indigenous communities, or the reliance on corporate rules. We should invest in care; we should invest in the growing of plants.

The concept of investing in our planet could result in rejuvenating and rehabilitating the planet or it could be instrumentalised by the billionaires who centre the fight against climate change always on the same ideas: net zero, geoengineering, fake meat. They do not have any imagination left. International Mother Earth Day is related to Earth democracy that allows everybody to see beyond the guidelines offered by the money makers, and to imagine new solutions.

Q: As the founder of Navdanya, you proved the importance of investing in the enhancement of Indigenous knowledge. What role do you believe can be played by small businesses and local communities in the transition towards sustainable development?

Over the course of my career, I have analysed a phenomenon that I call epistemic apartheid: the belief that one kind of knowledge is superior to another one. This is due to the difference in availability of resources, only the knowledge of those holding the majority of resources should be recognised. Indigenous knowledge overcomes this concept.

What is it that Indigenous people, small businesses, and local farmers can teach us? No small business offers just one option. As they need to provide the local community with all the necessary resources, they will have to specialise in biodiversity. Indigenous people invest in diversity, systems-thinking, and circular thinking. Indigenous knowledge is about honesty, it is about being in a place and understanding it through observation. Knowing the value of Indigenous communities, we need to decentralise and invest in the local economy.

Q: You have been able to conduct successful campaigns that put pressure on the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). How would you consider grassroots movements to be essential to the fight for a just and equitable development?

You used the term grassroots movements, what does the root do in communicating with the soil? What does the grass do in covering the soil? Grassroot movements have the ability to understand the causes of the destruction of nature.

When the WTO was founded, the narrative was that everybody would have had more food because it would have been cheaper and more accessible. They were saying that thanks to globalisation, the world would have been united. The reality is that in the current world there is more hate and more division. Globalisation took people’s lives, livelihoods, and resources, engendering fears and hatred amongst people. Politicians have since exploited those fears, creating enemies and putting people against each other. We, as grassroots movements, decided to tell the truth and we became the International Forum on Globalisation, following a bottom-up approach, rather than a top-down one.

Q: How would you implement a gendered perspective into the model of sustainable investment?

Francis Bacon, the father of modern science and author of The Masculine Birth of Time, initiated a new time where men dominated over nature. All the systems of knowledge that had been partnered with nature were effeminate and needed to be wiped out. In the same period, the inquisition of England was condemning womanly knowledge, excluding women, and killing the “witches”. The colonial system was excluding women from the economy as well. Even their bodies were reduced to unthinking bodies, they were considered objects, like the earth, objects to be abused, used, and owned.

A gendered perspective can be involved by stopping the exclusion of women from the creative processes of investment in the earth, by redefining the economy as an economy centred on what women do. Women are not silent; they are claiming their rights through strong women nets and ecology movements. As I recently read, “We are the witches you did not kill.”

Q: Finally, how, in your opinion, do we achieve a more just, peaceful, and equitable world for current and future generations?

We need to take into account those systems that allowed humanity to live in peaceful conditions. For example, in Australia, Aboriginal people were called bushmen or fauna and flora, as they were not even considered human beings. The reality shows that they were among the most sophisticated farmers. They produced enough food and originated enough dreams for their future generations. Their main goal was living a “good life”, a concept far from inequality and exclusion.

The first principle of a just and sustainable world is to work according to the law of nature. Secondly, the earth has produced enough, we need to learn to share and get used to co-existence with other beings. That’s what we do at Navdanya. We need to create abundance not in the metrics of GDP, but in the metrics of gross national happiness. We must start turning into women, indigenous people, and young people. We are not power in destructive form, we are power in creative form. Consumerism is the wrong identity of who we are, we are creators. We will cooperate with our fellow beings to create neutrality, synergy, and peace.

I hope this Mother Earth Day across the world, people will rise for the promotion of peace, sustainability and justice.