Vandana Shiva is an Indian feminist, physicist, author, environmental activist, and policy advocate. She founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology and Navdanya to protect biodiversity and indigenous seeds. She is against genetic engineering and promotes traditional Indian knowledge. Shiva is also linked to the ecofeminist movement and has written 13 books and over 300 articles. She has won numerous awards for her work in feminism and ecology.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a feminist, physicist, author, environmental activist and policy advocate. Born in Dehradun, India on November 5, 1952, Shiva currently continues her work from her home in Delhi.
Raised by an environmentalist father and a farmer mother, Shiva started her work in science at St. Mary’s School in Nainital and Jesus & Mary Convent in Dehradun. Shiva received her bachelor’s degree in physics and then her master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. In 1979, the University of Western Ontario awarded Vandana Shiva a PhD in quantum theory physics, after which Shiva returned to India to conduct interdisciplinary research on environmental policy and the ecological impacts of technology at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.
In 1982, Vandana Shiva founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), which aimed to conserve biodiversity. Later, in 1991, Vandana Shiva founded Navdanya, translated “nine seeds”, an institution that protects the diversity of indigenous seeds. Both foundations offer encouragement and support to farmers seeking to evade political and economic pressure to adopt agricultural practices that could undermine biodiversity, especially genetic engineering. Vandana Shiva and his organizations also promote the accepted use of traditional Indian knowledge.
In these two organizations, through her writings, and in other grassroots organizations and movements with which she has allied herself, Vandana Shiva has focused her arguments primarily on agriculture, food, biodiversity, and water rights. In the 1970s, Shiva took part in the Chipko nonviolent movement in which participants, mainly women, hugged trees to prevent them from being cut down.
Shiva has also lent his intellectual clout to the Green movement, which works globally against genetic engineering in the belief that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) create hybrid super-parasites and super-weeds, degrade the gene pool and promote dependence of farmers on seed companies. This belief also prompted her to speak out against the Green Revolution of the 1970s, which espoused the introduction of Western agricultural technology to alleviate hunger in India.
Vandana Shiva is also strongly linked to the ecofeminist movement, which argues that empowering women through traditional women-centered agricultural practices will benefit agricultural sustainability and food security. Her prolific and well-read writings, especially her book Staying Alive, have helped to raise awareness of the plight of Third World women.
Shiva is currently a consultant to the Government of India, as well as other governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Women’s Environment and Development Organization. At the International Forum on Globalization, she takes a leading role alongside other environmental figures, including Ralph Nader and Jerry Mander. Vandana Shiva has written thirteen books and over 300 published articles, has appeared in several documentaries, including Flow: For Love of Water and The Corporation, and has won numerous awards, including the Right Livelihood Award and the Global 500 Award for her I work in the fields of feminism and ecology.
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