Vandana Shiva was born on November 5, 1952. She is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, advocate for food sovereignty, eco-feminist, and author who writes about opposing global economic systems. She lives in Delhi and has written more than 20 books. She is often called "Gandhi of grain" because of her work in the movement against genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Shiva is a leader and board member of the International Forum on Globalization, which includes other leaders like Jerry Mander, Ralph Nader, and Helena Norberg-Hodge. She supports traditional practices, as shown in her interview in the book Vedic Ecology by Ranchor Prime. She serves on the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, which is part of Spain's Socialist Party. She is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society.

Early life and education

Vandana Shiva was born in Dehradun. Her father worked as a forest official, and her mother was a farmer who loved nature. She attended St. Mary's Convent High School in Nainital and the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Dehradun.

Shiva studied physics at Panjab University in Chandigarh and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1972. After a short job at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, she moved to Canada to study the philosophy of science at the University of Guelph in 1977. Her master's thesis was titled "Changes in the Concept of Periodicity of Light." In 1978, she completed a PhD in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, focusing on the philosophy of physics. Her dissertation, titled "Hidden Variables and Locality in Quantum Theory," explored the mathematical and philosophical ideas behind hidden variable theories that are not covered by Bell's theorem. Later, she conducted research on science, technology, and environmental policy at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.

Career

Vandana Shiva has written and spoken about important topics in agriculture and food. She has worked in areas such as intellectual property rights, biodiversity, biotechnology, bioethics, and genetic engineering. She has supported groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria that oppose the use of genetic engineering in farming.

In 1982, she started the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. This led to the creation of Navdanya in 1991, a movement to protect the variety and quality of living resources, especially native seeds, and to promote organic farming and fair trade. Navdanya, which means "Nine Seeds" or "New Gift," helps farmers learn the benefits of growing many types of crops instead of relying on single-crop farming. The group set up over 40 seed banks in India to support diverse farming practices. In 2004, Shiva started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international school for sustainable living in India, in partnership with Schumacher College in the United Kingdom.

Shiva and her team have challenged the unfair use of natural resources, such as neem, basmati, and wheat, in the areas of intellectual property rights and biodiversity.

In 1990, she wrote a report for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) titled "Most Farmers in India are Women." She helped create the gender unit at the International Centre for Mountain Development in Nepal and was a founding member of the Women's Environment & Development Organisation (WEDO). She received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993, which was created by a Swedish-German philanthropist named Jakob von Uexkull.

Shiva’s book Making Peace With the Earth discusses biodiversity and how communities and nature are connected. She believes that harming natural biodiversity is linked to the loss of traditional communities that understand the natural world. A reviewer named David Wright noted that Shiva sees villages as symbols of local communities in every country.

Shiva has advised governments in India and other countries, as well as organizations such as the International Forum on Globalization, WEDO, and the Third World Network. She leads the Commission on the Future of Food in Tuscany, Italy, and is part of a scientific group that advised Spain’s former prime minister, Zapatero. She is also part of the Steering Committee of the Indian People’s Campaign Against the World Trade Organization and a member of the World Future Council. She works on government committees in India about organic farming and took part in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.

In 2021, she advised Sri Lanka’s government to ban inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. She said this would help farmers grow more nutritious crops and keep the soil healthy. The policy was applied quickly, mainly to save money on imported fertilizers, but it caused problems, including lower farming production and a drop in tea and rice yields. The ban was canceled seven months later.

Activism

Vandana Shiva's work in agriculture began in 1984, following events such as the violence in Punjab and the Bhopal disaster, which occurred when a gas leak from a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide caused harm. Her research for the United Nations University led to the publication of her book, The Violence of the Green Revolution.

In an interview with David Barsamian, Shiva explains that the green revolution promoted a system that combines seeds with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. She claims this system has damaged soil and harmed ecosystems. She also states that over 1,400 pesticides may enter the global food system today.

Shiva is a founding member of the World Future Council (WFC), an organization created in 2007 to advocate for policies that protect the interests of future generations. The WFC focuses on addressing climate change and ensuring long-term environmental safety.

Shiva supports making ecocide a crime that can be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. She argues that the idea of endless economic growth is harming the Earth and nature.

Shiva promotes "seed freedom," which means opposing patents on new plant varieties. She has criticized the 1994 WTO agreement called TRIPS, which allows patents on living things. She calls this process "biopiracy" and has opposed patents on plants like basmati rice. In 2005, her organization helped stop a patent on the Neem tree in Europe. In 1998, her group Navdanya fought against a patent on basmati rice by a U.S. company, and in 2001, the company lost most of its claims.

Shiva strongly opposes "Golden Rice," a type of genetically modified rice designed to produce vitamin A. She argues that Golden Rice is not helpful and may worsen hunger and malnutrition. She claims that Indian farmers grow and eat many plants that provide the same nutrients. However, others, such as Adrian Dubock, say Golden Rice is affordable and could help reduce vitamin A deficiency, which causes blindness and child deaths. In 2013, two economists estimated that the lack of Golden Rice in India may have contributed to over 1.4 million deaths in the previous decade.

In a 2013 article, Shiva wrote that rising seed costs in India have led to farmer debt and suicides. She claims that seed monopolies, the loss of farming alternatives, and profits from patented seeds have worsened poverty and hunger. She states that 75% of rural debt in India comes from buying farming supplies, and that as companies like Monsanto profit, farmers face greater hardship.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) studied data and found no evidence to support claims that farmer suicides have increased due to these issues.

Ecofeminism

Shiva plays an important role in the global ecofeminist movement. In her 2004 article Empowering Women, she suggests that a more sustainable and productive way to farm in India can be achieved by restarting a farming system that involves more women. She opposes the common "patriarchal logic of exclusion," arguing that focusing on women's roles in farming would improve outcomes. She believes that environmental harm and industrial disasters affect daily life, and women are often the ones who manage these challenges.

Cecile Jackson has criticized some of Shiva's ideas as essentialist.

Shiva co-wrote the book Ecofeminism in 1993 with Maria Mies, a German anarchist and radical feminist sociologist. The book combined ideas from Western and Southern feminism with environmental, technological, and feminist issues, all grouped under the term "ecofeminism." These theories are discussed in essays written by Shiva and Mies throughout the book.

Stefanie Lay described the book as a collection of thought-provoking essays but noted that it lacked new ecofeminist ideas and modern analysis. She also pointed out that the book did not properly credit the work of other people.

Indian Intelligence Bureau investigation

In June 2014, Indian and international news sources reported that Navdanya and Vandana Shiva were mentioned in a secret report from India's Intelligence Bureau (IB). This report was prepared for the Indian Prime Minister's Office.

The leaked report claims that activities by Indian nonprofit organizations, such as Navdanya, are slowing India's progress. The IB stated that these groups receive money from foreign donors under the pretense of supporting causes like human rights or women's equality. However, the report alleges that the funds are instead used for bad or harmful activities. It also says that foreign donors encourage local NGOs to provide reports that are used to create records against India. These reports are said to help Western governments achieve their foreign policy goals.

Criticism

Investigative journalist Michael Specter, in an article published in The New Yorker on August 25, 2014, titled "Seeds of Doubt," questioned some of Shiva's statements about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and her methods of activism. Specter wrote that Shiva's strong beliefs about GMOs sometimes lead her to make claims that are not fully supported by facts. In 1999, after a cyclone in India's Orissa state killed 10,000 people and left millions homeless, the U.S. government sent grain and soy to help the affected people. Shiva held a news conference in New Delhi and claimed the donation was proof that the United States was testing genetically engineered products on the victims, even though those same products are approved and used in the United States. She also wrote to the international relief agency Oxfam, asking it not to send genetically modified foods to help the survivors.

Shiva responded by saying Specter was "ill informed" and noted that she had faced death threats since 1999 after suing Monsanto for illegal Bt cotton trials in India. She claimed that the criticism she has faced from people like Specter and others is a sign that the biotech industry is worried about the global opposition to GMOs. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, supported Specter's article by publishing a letter in favor of it.

Some cases of plagiarism have been reported against Shiva. Birendra Nayak pointed out that she copied text word for word from a 1996 article in Voice Gopalpur for her 1998 book Stronger than Steel. In 2016, she also copied several paragraphs from an article by S. Faizi about the Plachimada/Coca-Cola issue published in The Statesman.

In an article published in Discover on October 23, 2014, titled "The Rich Allure of a Peasant Champion," journalist Keith Kloor noted that Shiva charges $40,000 per lecture, plus a business-class air ticket from New Delhi. Kloor wrote that although Shiva is often praised as a strong advocate for poor farmers, she does not live a simple life like the farmers she claims to support.

Stewart Brand, in Whole Earth Discipline, described some of Shiva's statements as not based on real science. He called her claims about "heritable sterility" from her book Stolen Harvest (2000) a "biological impossibility" and noted that she copied the idea from Geri Guidetti, owner of the seed company Ark Institute. Brand also criticized anti-GMO activists, including Shiva, for pressuring Zambia's government to reject donated corn in 2001–2002, claiming it was "poisoned." He also criticized Shiva for her role in preventing aid from reaching starving people in India after the 1999 cyclone. Shiva argued that emergencies should not be used as opportunities for profit, to which Brand responded that people who encourage others to starve should "do some of the starving themselves."

In 1998, Shiva protested the Bt cotton program in India, calling it "seeds of suicide, seeds of slavery, seeds of despair" and claiming she was protecting farmers. However, restrictive laws in India, influenced by anti-GMO activism, led to illegal planting of Bt cotton and Bt brinjal seeds by farmers. These seeds were obtained from experimental farms or from Bangladesh, where they are legally grown, due to higher crop yields and less pesticide use. By 2005, over 2.5 million hectares of land in India were planted with "unofficial" Bt cotton.

Noel Kingsbury, in Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding (2009), wrote:

— Noel Kingsbury, Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding (2009)

In India, farmers who illegally planted GM crops formed the Shetkari Sanghatana movement, which pushed for changes to the restrictive laws created by anti-GMO lobbying. By 2020, an estimated 25% of cotton grown in India was genetically modified.

Science as legacy of exploitation

Shiva has stated multiple times that science is a "narrow, male-dominated project" that has existed for only a short time in history. She says that science is often described as "mechanistic and reductionist," meaning it focuses on breaking things down into parts rather than looking at how they connect. She criticizes the scientific methods developed by figures like Bacon, Descartes, and others, whom she calls "fathers of modern science." She argues that these scientists view nature as lifeless and analyze it using a "mechanistic mode," which she believes ignores other ways of understanding the world. Shiva connects the development of modern science to the rise of capitalism, a time when new forms of exploitation required knowledge to support them. In a speech on March 8, 2017, to the European Parliament, she said that the rise of "masculinist science" led to the dominance of reductionist, mechanistic science. This, she claimed, overshadowed knowledge systems that focus on connections and relationships, including indigenous knowledge and the knowledge of women.

Film

Vandana Shiva has appeared in many documentary films, including Freedom Ahead, Roshni; Deconstructing Supper: Is Your Food Safe?; The Corporation; Thrive; Dirt! The Movie; Normal is Over; and This is What Democracy Looks Like (a film about the 1999 Seattle WTO protests). She also appeared in documentaries by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs, including Planet of the Humans.

Her work on water issues has led her to appear in several films about this topic. These films include "Ganga From the Ground Up," a documentary on water problems in the Ganges River; Blue Gold: World Water Wars by Sam Bozzo; Irena Salina’s documentary Flow: For Love of Water (which was shown at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival); and the PBS NOW documentary On Thin Ice.

On the topic of genetically modified crops, she appeared in the 2002 film Fed Up!, which discusses genetic engineering, industrial farming, and sustainable alternatives. She also appeared in The World According to Monsanto, a film made by French journalist Marie-Monique Robin.

Shiva appeared in a documentary about the Dalai Lama titled Dalai Lama Renaissance. In 2010, she was interviewed in a film about honeybees and colony collapse disorder called Queen of the Sun. She also appears in the French films Demain and Solutions locales pour un désordre global.

In 2016, she appeared in the vegan documentary H.O.P.E.: What You Eat Matters, where she criticized the animal agriculture industry and meat-heavy diets.

Other films she has appeared in include:
• Seeds of Death: Unveiling the Lies of GMOs (2012)
• Another Story of Progress (2012)
• The Farmer and His Prince (2013)
• Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth (2013)
• Poverty Inc. (2014)
• The True Cost (2015), a film about fast fashion and the garment industry
• Planet of the Humans (2018)

Publications

• 1981, Social, Economic, and Environmental Effects of Social Forestry in Kolar, Vandana Shiva, H.C. Sharatchandra, J. Banyopadhyay, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
• 1986, Chipko: India's Cultural Response to the Forest Crisis, J. Bandopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. Published by INTACH
• 1987, The Chipko Movement Against Limestone Quarrying in Doon Valley, J. Bandopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, Lokayan Bulletin, Volume 5, Issue 3, 1987, pages 19–25. Online version archived on April 18, 2016, by the Wayback Machine
• 1988, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Survival in India, Zed Press, New Delhi, ISBN 0-86232-823-3
• 1989, The Violence of the Green Revolution: Ecological Degradation and Political Conflict in Punjab, Natraj Publishers, New Delhi, ISBN 0-86232-964-7 hb, ISBN 0-86232-965-5 pb
• 1991, Ecology and the Politics of Survival: Conflicts Over Natural Resources in India, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, California, ISBN 0-8039-9672-1
• 1992, Biodiversity: Social and Ecological Perspectives (editor), Zed Press, United Kingdom
• 1993, Women, Ecology, and Health: Rebuilding Connections (editor), Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and Kali for Women, New Delhi
• 1993, Monocultures of the Mind: Biodiversity, Biotechnology, and Agriculture, Zed Press, New Delhi
• 1993, Ecofeminism, Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Fernwood Publications, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ISBN 1-895686-28-8
• 1994, Close to Home: Women Reconnect Ecology, Health, and Development Worldwide, Earthscan, London, ISBN 0-86571-264-6
• 1995, Biopolitics (with Ingunn Moser), Zed Books, United Kingdom
• 1997, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, South End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, ISBN 1-896357-11-3
• 2000, Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, South End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, ISBN 0-89608-608-9
• 2000, Tomorrow's Biodiversity, Thames and Hudson, London, ISBN 0-500-28239-0
• 2001, Patents, Myths and Reality, Penguin India
• 2002, Water Wars; Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, South End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• 2005, India Divided, Seven Stories Press
• 2005, Globalization's New Wars: Seed, Water and Life Forms, Women Unlimited, New Delhi, ISBN 81-88965-17-0
• 2005, Earth Democracy; Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, South End Press, ISBN 0-89608-745-X
• 2007, Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed (editor), South End Press, ISBN 978-0-89608-777-4
• 2007, Democratizing Biology: Reinventing Biology from a Feminist, Ecological and Third World Perspective, author, Paradigm Publishers, ISBN 978-1-59451-204-9
• 2007, Cargill