'A brilliant book [that] shows a way out of the destructive trap of Anthropocentric arrogance.' Vandana Shiva, from the Foreword Biocivilisations is a fascinating, original and important exploration into how complex civilisations existed on Earth long before humans. What is life? This is arguably the most important question in all of science. Many scientists believe life can be reduced to ‘mechanistic’ factors, such as genes and information codes. Everything can be sequenced and explained. But in a world as rich and complex as this one, can such an assertion really be true? A growing army of scientists, philosophers and artists do not share this mechanistic vision for the science of life. The gene metaphor is not only too simplistic but also misleading. If there is a way to reduce life to a single principle, how does that principle acknowledge the creativity of life that turns both genetic and information determinism on their heads? Biocivilisations is a groundbreaking book exploring the mysteries of life and its deep uncertainty. Dr Predrag Slijep�ević turns anthropocentric scientific thinking on its head, showing how the humble bacteria created the equivalent of cities and connected them with information highways, bringing our planet to life three thousand million years ago. He explains how bacteria, amoebas, plants, insects, birds, whales, elephants and countless other species not only preceded human beings but also demonstrate elements of complex civilisation – communication, agriculture, science, art, medicine and more – that we associate with human achievement. More than 99.99 percent of life on Earth has existed without humanity, and life will continue without humans long into the future. Biocivilisations is an important rethinking of the current scientific paradigm. It challenges us to reconsider the limited scope and time-window of our current ‘scientific revolution’ and to fundamentally reimagine what we call ‘life on Earth’.

'One of the world's most prominent radical scientists.' The Guardian 'Vandana Shiva is an expert [on the dangers of gobalization] whose analysis has helped us understand this situation much more deeply.' Russell Brand A powerful new memoir published to coincide with Vandana Shiva's 70th birthday. Vandana Shiva has been described in many ways: the 'Gandhi of Grain,' 'a rock star' in the battle against GMOs, and 'the most powerful voice' for people of the developing world. For over four decades she has vociferously advocated for diversity, indigenous knowledge, localisation, and real democracy; she has been at the forefront of seed saving, food sovereignty, and connecting the dots between the destruction of nature, the polarization of societies, and indiscriminate corporate greed. In Terra Viva, Dr Shiva shares her most memorable campaigns, alongside some of the world's most celebrated activists and environmentalists, all working towards a livable planet and healthier democracies. For the very first time, she also recounts the stories of her childhood in post-partition India - the influence of the Himalayan forests she roamed; her parents, who saw no difference in the education of boys and girls at a time when this was not the norm; and the Chipko movement, whose women were 'the real custodians of biodiversity-related knowledge.' Throughout, Shiva's pursuit of a unique intellectual path marrying quantum physics with science, technology, and environmental policy will captivate the reader. Terra Viva is a celebration of a remarkable life and a clear-eyed assessment of the challenges we face moving forward - including those revealed by the Covid crisis, the privatisation of biotechnology, and the commodification of our biological and natural resources. 'All of us who care about the future of Planet Earth must be grateful to Vandana Shiva.' Jane Goodall, UN Messenger of Peace

The Green Revolution has been heralded as a political and technological achievement -- unprecedented in human history. Yet in the decades that have followed it, this supposedly nonviolent revolution has left lands ravaged by violence and ecological scarcity. A dedicated empiricist, Vandana Shiva takes a magnifying glass to the effects of the Green Revolution in India, examining the devastating effects of monoculture and commercial agriculture and revealing the nuanced relationship between ecological destruction and poverty. In this classic work, the influential activist and scholar also looks to the future as she examines new developments in gene technology.

Widespread poverty and malnutrition, an alarming refugee crisis, social unrest,economic polarisation have become our lived reality as the top 1% of the world's seven-billion-plus population pushes the planet-and all its people-to the social and ecological brink. In Oneness vs. the 1%, Vandana Shiva takes on the Billionaires Club of Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg and other modern Mughals, whose blindness to the rights of people, and to the destructive impact of their construct of linear progress, have wrought havoc across the world. Their single-minded pursuit of profit has undemocratically enforced uniformity and monoculture, division and separation, monopolies and external control-over finance, food, energy, information, healthcare, and even relationships. Basing her analysis on explosive little-known facts, Shiva exposes the 1%'s model of philanthrocapitalism, which is about deploying unaccountable money to bypass democratic structures, derail diversity, and impose totalitarianism, so that people can reclaim their right to live free; think free; breathe free; eat free.

It is 20 years since environmental issues were first put on the international agenda at the Stockholm Conference, and concern for planetary survival has shifted from desertification to acid rain to ozone depletion to biodiversity. The official responses to all the various crises, however, has largely been one of offering technological and managerial 'fixes,' which often fail to address or solve the basic ecological issues. Genuine, viable improvements can only be implemented at ground level, by those most strongly affected by the problem. Because of their location 'on the fringes,' and their traditional role in providing sustenance, it is women who are often able to offer ecological insights that are deeper and richer than the technocratic recipes of international experts, or the responses of men in their own societies. Close to Home emphasises that the environment is not some distant concern, but one that affects the health and well-being of communities on a daily basis. For women, 'the environment' is the place in which we live. The contributions in this book, edited by Vandana Shiva, show how women worldwide are taking action at grass-roots level, battling toxic wastes, low-level radiation and biotechnology in the struggle for truly sustainable community development.

A David and Goliath battle for truth A specialist in GM foods and pesticides, the biologist Gilles-Eric Seralini has studied their toxicity and effects on people's health for many years. In September 2012, for the first time in a major scientific journal (Food and Chemical Toxicology), he published a study showing the effect on the liver and kidneys of two of Monsanto's flagship products: Roundup weedkiller and the GM foods created to absorb it. Images from the study of tumor-ridden rats fed with GM foods and Roundup went viral. The study was a PR disaster for Monsanto. The multinational soon bounced back and did everything in its power to cover up the study-leaning on the publishers to retract the findings. Monsanto began a series of smear campaigns to discredit Seralini and fellow researchers and intimidate their supporters, while pumping out their own collection of fake research findings and testimonies. These practices were met with huge suspicion, but there was no concrete evidence until, in 2017, Monsanto was ordered to publish tens of thousands of confidential documents in a class-action lawsuit presented by thousands of individuals afflicted with serious illnesses from their use of Roundup. The "Monsanto Papers" that were produced subsequently proved the company's cynical attempts at a cover-up as well as its fraudulent practices. Gilles-Eric Seralini and Jerome Douzelet delved into the documents and discovered how, in the pursuit of its own short term economic interests, Monsanto used sophisticated methods of deceit to bypass legislation devised to protect millions of people. Seralini and Douzelet discovered how Monsanto managed to provide phony assessments to conceal the poisons its products contain, thus deceiving the public authorities and the scientific and medical communities.

Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth lays out the scientific, legal, political, and cultural struggle to defend the sovereignty of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Corporate war on nature and people through patents and corporate Intellectual Property Rights has unleashed an epidemic of biopiracy resulting in important legal battles fighting efforts to patent the rights to many plants, including basmati, neem, and wheat. The author presents details of the specific attempts made by corporations to secure these patents and the legal actions taken to fight them. The book goes beyond the legal struggle to position the necessary solutions to corporate control including the exploring the Rights of Nature and proposing a framework for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. It is the first detailed legal history of the international and national laws related to biodiversity and Intellectual Property Rights.

It is 20 years since environmental issues were first put on the international agenda at the Stockholm Conference, and concern for planetary survival has shifted from desertification to acid rain to ozone depletion to biodiversity. The official responses to all the various crises, however, has largely been one of offering technological and managerial 'fixes, ' which often fail to address or solve the basic ecological issues. Genuine, viable improvements can only be implemented at ground level, by those most strongly affected by the problem. Because of their location 'on the fringes, ' and their traditional role in providing sustenance, it is women who are often able to offer ecological insights that are deeper and richer than the technocratic recipes of international experts, or the responses of men in their own societies. Close to Home emphasises that the environment is not some distant concern, but one that affects the health and well-being of communities on a daily basis. For women, 'the environment' is the place in which we live. The contributions in this book, edited by Vandana Shiva, show how women worldwide are taking action at grass-roots level, battling toxic wastes, low-level radiation and biotechnology in the struggle for truly sustainable community development.

The book is an interdisciplinary synthesis of research and practice carried out over decades by leaders of the agroecology and regenerative organic agriculture movement. It provides detailed analysis of the multiple crises we face due to chemical and industrial agriculture, including land degradation, water depletion, biodiversity erosion, climate change, agrarian crises, and health crises. The book lays out biodiversity based organic farming and agroecology as the road map for the future of agriculture and sustainable food systems, both locally and globally. With detailed scientific evidence, Agroecology & Regenerative Agriculture shows how ecological agriculture based on working with nature rather than abasing ecological laws can regenerate the planet, the rural economy, and our health.

For the farmer, the seed is not merely the source of future plants and food; it is a vehicle through which culture and history can be preserved and spread to future generations. For centuries, farmers have evolved crops and produced an incredible diversity of plants that provide life-sustaining nutrition. In India alone, the ingenuity of farmers has produced over 200,000 varieties of rice, many of which now line store shelves around the world. This productive tradition, however, is under attack as globalized, corporate regimes increasingly exploit intellectual property laws to annex these sustaining seeds and remove them from the public sphere. In Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, Shiva explores the devastating effects of commercial agriculture and genetic engineering on the food we eat, the farmers who grow it, and the soil that sustains it. This prescient critique and call to action covers some of the most pressing topics of this ongoing dialogue, from the destruction of local food cultures and the privatization of plant life, to unsustainable industrial fish farming and safety concerns about corporately engineered foods. The preeminent agricultural activist and scientist of a generation, Shiva implores the farmers and consumers of the world to make a united stand against the genetically modified crops and untenable farming practices that endanger the seeds and plants that give us life.

As the world's billionaire class reaps record profits and global inequalities further divide nations and communities, this anthology compiled by renown activist Dr. Vandana Shiva pulls back the curtain on how ruthless capitalistic exploitation branded as philanthropic altruism forges a direct path to global destruction. Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Demo cracy: A Global Citizens' Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture details how global philanthrocapitalist organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and affiliated entities effectively monopolize and privatize common land for food production in a manner that jeopardizes public health around the globe. Through various initiatives, sub-organizations, development schemes, and funding mechanisms, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's empire in particular weaves an intricate network of power and influence designed to ensnare local communities and traditions in an unwavering pursuit of profit and market expansion. Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy calls to account problematic initiatives that serve to corrode the integrity of democratic institutions, often under a banner of future-oriented innovation. This book lays bare the destructive power of overly capitalistic systems that enable mass human suffering and environmental catastrophe via the entanglement of private investment and public policy. This democratic emergency is analyzed in detail by leading experts and civil society movements' leaders, such as: Dr. Vandana Shiva, Farida Akhter, Jose Esquinas Alcazar, Nicoletta Dentico, Fernando Cabaleiro, Seth Itzkan, Dru Jay, Satish Kumar, Jonathan Latham, Aide Jimenez-Martinez, Chito Medina, Zahra Moloo, Silvia Ribeiro, Adelita San Vicente, Ali Tapsoba, Jim Thomas, Timothy A. Wise. International organizations and national movements who also participated include ETC Group, Community Alliance for Global Justice/AGRA Watch, Soil4Climate, Bioscience Resource, GM Watch, Naturaleza de Derechos - Argentina, Masipag - Philippines, Terre a Vie - Burkina Faso, UBINIG - Bangladesh.

In this compelling and rigorously documented exposition, Vandana Shiva demolishes the myths propagated by corporate globalization in its pursuit of profit and power, and reveals its devastating environmental impact.Shiva argues that consumerism lubricates the war against the earth and that corporate control violates all ethical and ecological limits. She takes the reader on a journey through the world's devastated eco-landscape, one of genetic engineering, industrial development, agribusiness and land-grabs in Africa, Asia and South America. She concludes that exploitation of this order is incurring an ecological and economic debt that is utterly unsustainable.Making Peace with the Earth boldly makes the claim that a paradigm shift to earth-centered politics and economics is our only chance of survival, envisioning how collective resistance to corporate exploitation can open the way to a new environmentalism.

"Her great virtue as an advocate is that she is not a reductionist. Her awareness of the complex connections among economy and nature and culture preserves her from oversimplification. So does her understanding of the importance of diversity." -- Wendell Berry, from the foreword

Motivated by agricultural devastation in her home country of India, Vandana Shiva became one of the world's most influential and highly acclaimed environmental and antiglobalization activists. Her groundbreaking research has exposed the destructive effects of monocultures and commercial agriculture and revealed the links between ecology, gender, and poverty.

In The Vandana Shiva Reader, Shiva assembles her most influential writings, combining trenchant critiques of the corporate monopolization of agriculture with a powerful defense of biodiversity and food democracy. Containing up-to-date data and a foreword by Wendell Berry, this essential collection demonstrates the full range of Shiva's research and activism, from her condemnation of commercial seed technology, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and the international agriculture industry's dependence on fossil fuels, to her tireless documentation of the extensive human costs of ecological deterioration.

This important volume illuminates Shiva's profound understanding of both the perils and potential of our interconnected world and calls on citizens of all nations to renew their commitment to love and care for soil, seeds, and people.

'One of the world's most prominent radical scientists.' The Guardian 'A star among environmental, activist, and anti-corporate circles.' Vice The world's food supply is in the grip of a profound crisis. Humanity's ability to feed itself is threatened by a wasteful, globalized agricultural industry, whose relentless pursuit of profit is stretching our planet's ecosystems to breaking point. Rising food prices have fuelled instability across the world, while industrialized agriculture has contributed to a health crisis of massive proportions, with effects ranging from obesity and diabetes to cancers caused by pesticides. In Who Really Feeds the World?, leading environmentalist Vandana Shiva rejects the dominant, greed-driven paradigm of industrial agriculture, arguing instead for a radical rethink of our relationship with food and with the environment. Industrial agriculture can never be truly sustainable, but it is within our power to create a food system that works for the health and well-being of the planet and all humanity, by developing ecologically friendly farming practices, nurturing biodiversity, and recognizing the invaluable role that small farmers can play in feeding a hungry world.

Distinct practices of eating are at the heart of many of the world's faith traditions -- from the Christian Eucharist to Muslim customs of fasting during Ramadan to the vegetarianism and asceticism practiced by some followers of Hinduism and Buddhism. What we eat, how we eat, and whom we eat with can express our core values and religious devotion more clearly than verbal piety. In this wide-ranging collection, eminent scholars, theologians, activists, and lay farmers illuminate how religious beliefs influence and are influenced by the values and practices of sustainable agriculture. Together, they analyze a multitude of agricultural practices for their contributions to healthy, ethical living and environmental justice. Throughout, the contributors address current critical issues, including global trade agreements, indigenous rights to land and seed, and the effects of postcolonialism on farming and industry. Covering indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives, this groundbreaking volume makes a significant contribution to the study of ethics and agriculture.

With the publication of this remarkable book in 1998, Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash instigated a complete, epistemological rupture. Grassroots Post-modernism resolutely attacks the three sacred cows of modernity - the idea, entrenched in globalisation, that there is only one, universally valid way of understanding social reality; the exclusive and general validity of Western-defined notions of 'human'; and the notion of the self-sufficient individual, as opposed to people-in-community - that have so grotesquely warped hour view of the human condition. Rejecting the terminology and constructs of development in all its forms, Esteva and Prakash argue that even alternative development prescriptions deprive the people of control over their own lives, shifting this control to bureaucrats, technocrats, and educators. Rather than presuming that human progress fits some predetermined mold, leading toward an increasing homogenization of cultures and life styles, the authors argue for a 'radical pluralism' that honours and nurtures distinctive cultural variety and enables many paths to the realization of self-defined aspirations.This classic text is essential reading for those looking beyond Neoliberalism, the gobal project and the individual self.

"The world's most prominent radical scientist." The Guardian Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmentalist and campaigner, examines the 'water wars' of the twenty-first century: the aggressive privatization by the multinationals of communal water rights. While drought and desertification are intensifying around the world, corporations are aggressively converting free-flowing water into bottled profits. The water wars of the twenty-first century may match -- or even surpass -- the oil wars of the twentieth. In Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit, acclaimed author Vandana Shiva sheds light on the activists who are fighting corporate manoeuvres to convert this life-sustaining resource into more gold for the elites. In Water Wars, Shiva uses her remarkable knowledge of science and society to outline the emergence of corporate culture and the historical erosion of communal water rights. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, Shiva exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good. Shiva calls for a movement to preserve water access for all, and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns.

'One of the world's most prominent radical scientists.' The Guardian This book is classic of the environmental movement. In it, Vandana Shiva envisions a world beyond our current dependence on fossil fuels and globalization, and makes the compelling case that food crises, oil dependency and climate change are all inherently interlinked. Any attempt to solve one without addressing the others is therefore doomed to failure. Condemning industrial agriculture and biofuels as recipes for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva instead champions small independent farmers. What is needed most, in a time of hunger and changing climates, are sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are better able to resist disease, drought and flooding. Calling for a return to local economies and small-scale agriculture, Shiva argues that humanity’s choice is a stark one: we can either continue to pursue a market-centred approach, which will ultimately make our planet unliveable, or we can instead strive for a people-centred, oil-free future, one which offers a decent living for all. This edition features a new introduction by the author, in which she outlines recent developments in ecology and environmentalism, and offers new prescriptions for the environmental movement.

Vandana Shiva has established herself as a leading independent thinker and voice for the South in that critically important nexus where questions of development strategy, the environment and the posititon of women in society coincide. In this new volume, she brings together her thinking on the protection of biodiversity, the implications of biotechnology, and the consequences for agriculture of the global pre-eminence of Western-style scientific knowledge. In lucid and accessible fashion, she examines the current threats to the planet's biodiversity and the environmental and human consequences of its erosion and replacement by monocultural production. She shows how the new Biodiversity Convention has been gravely undermined by a mixture of diplomatic dilution during the process of negotiation and Northern hi-tech interests making money out of the new biotechnologies. She explains what these technologies involve and gives examples of their impact in practice. She questions their claims to improving natural species for the good of all and highlights the ethical and environmental problems posed. Underlying her arguments is the view that the North's particular approach to scientific understanding has led to a system of monoculture in agriculture - a model that is not being foisted on the South, displacing its societies' ecologically sounder, indigenous and age-old experiences of truly sustainable food cultivation, forest management and animal husbandry. This rapidly accelerating process of technology and system transfer is impoverishing huge numbers of people, disrupting the social systems that provide them with security and dignity, and will ultimately result in a sterile planet in both North and South, In a policy intervention of potentially great significance, she calls instead for a halt, at international as well as local level, to the aid and market incentives to both large-scale destruction of habitats where biodiversity thrives and the introduction of centralised, homogenous systems of cultivation.

Ecofeminism as Politics is now a classic, being the first work to offer a joined-up framework for green, socialist, feminist and postcolonial thinking, showing how these have been held back by conceptual confusions over gender. Originally published in 1997, it argues that ecofeminism reaches beyond contemporary social movement ideologies and practices, by prefiguring a political synthesis of four-revolutions-in-one: ecology is feminism is socialism is postcolonial struggle. Ariel Salleh addresses discourses on class, science, the body, culture and nature, and her innovative reading of Marx converges the philosophy of internal relations with the organic materiality of everyday life. This new edition features forewords by Indian ecofeminist Vandana Shiva and US philosopher John Clark, a new introduction, and a recent conversation between Salleh and younger scholar activists.

"Her great virtue as an advocate is that she is not a reductionist. Her awareness of the complex connections among economy and nature and culture preserves her from oversimplification. So does her understanding of the importance of diversity." -- Wendell Berry, from the foreword

Motivated by agricultural devastation in her home country of India, Vandana Shiva became one of the world's most influential and highly acclaimed environmental and antiglobalization activists. Her groundbreaking research has exposed the destructive effects of monocultures and commercial agriculture and revealed the links between ecology, gender, and poverty.

In The Vandana Shiva Reader, Shiva assembles her most influential writings, combining trenchant critiques of the corporate monopolization of agriculture with a powerful defense of biodiversity and food democracy. Containing up-to-date data and a foreword by Wendell Berry, this essential collection demonstrates the full range of Shiva's research and activism, from her condemnation of commercial seed technology, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and the international agriculture industry's dependence on fossil fuels, to her tireless documentation of the extensive human costs of ecological deterioration.

This important volume illuminates Shiva's profound understanding of both the perils and potential of our interconnected world and calls on citizens of all nations to renew their commitment to love and care for soil, seeds, and people.