Other than being appreciative of the role they play in making my life more convenient and helping to heal me when I’m sick, I want little to do with science and its cohort, technology. Usually, both topics are above my head and far outside my interests, but lately, I get the feeling that I should be paying more attention to them and their juxtaposition with nature.
I recently had the distinct pleasure of attending a lecture by world-renowned environmentalist (physicist, activist, thinker, hero) Dr. Vandana Shiva. To say that it changed my life would be to admit that I’ve forgotten some of the planet’s most fundamental truths, so I’ll say that the lecture was life affirming.
Dr. Shiva’s research and travels have led her to conclude that we are suffering from “monoculture of the mind.” Our science and technology has led to the point where we have “an inability to appreciate diversity.” Monoculture is a disease for which Earth Democracy is the cure. Earth Democracy is Shiva’s ideology that biodiversity is essential to sustaining life.
Dr. Shiva arrived at her ideology after studying the Green Revolution in India. The initiatives of the Green Revolution were designed to increase industrialized agriculture by developing high-yielding crops, expanding irrigation and distributing pesticides and hybrid seeds. And while the initiatives did increase production (India became a major rice producer) they also introduced toxins into the environment, led to the privatization (ownership) of seeds, reduced biodiversity, and ultimately created a food crisis.
Pesticides, meant to discourage bugs and rodents and promote more prolific harvests, are nothing more than toxins. When a species of bug or rodent becomes resilient to a pesticide, another is modified and introduced to do the job. Research has shown that pesticides have side effects, like a pesky disease called cancer.
When genetically engineered seeds were introduced to India, diversity in crops was lost and scientist claimed ownership of seeds, which used to be free. To understand the absurdity of claiming ownership of something found in nature simply by altering its makeup, consider Dr. Shiva’s analogy: “suppose I brought the chair I’m sitting in from India, used it in your Academy (The Academy of Natural Science) during this lecture, and told you when I was through that your Academy had been enhanced by my chair so I now own the entire building.” Absolutely absurd except when you’re speaking of the Green Revolution.
Before the Green Revolution in India, seeds were free (native). After the Revolution, they cost 3,600 rupees per seed. Sixty percent of a farmer’s costs went to buying seeds which meant most farms would go under within a year or two. What’s next for the farmer? Nothing. According to Dr. Shiva, 200,000 farmers who lost their farms as a result of the Green Revolution committed suicide. (This cycle is precisely why developing nations do not need Green Revolutions, but community built agricultural systems that remain true the indigenous practices they’ve maintained for centuries.)
In India, as in all nations, the economy and the environment are inextricably linked. When land is bought up and biodiversity privatized for the sake of financial gain, a food crisis results. Direct betting on the food system created food shortages, malnourishment, and chronic illness (the same type of disastrous results we saw in the collapse of the US housing market).
What we produce now is not food, but commodities with artificial prices. Contrary to what we’ve been told, good food, which is to say healthy food, is not truly more expensive. Making healthy choices may cost more in the checkout line or market, but it will certainly curtail the expenses associated with chronic food-related illnesses like obesity and diabetes. When you factor in the long term health effects of eating bad food—especially when the segment of the population conditioned to eat bad food is also likely not to have health insurance—it is anything but cheap.
Instead of giving the worst food to the poor, Dr. Shiva advocates making healthy food options available. Why not give our poor the fruits of an organic farm cooperative that receives government funding rather than putting government funds into bad food and perpetuating injustice? It’s a common sense approach that Dr. Shiva says should be on every democratic agenda.
Speaking of agendas, Dr. Shiva is often asked about her views on capitalism. (Some might read her literature as anti-capitalist.) She explains her stance by saying that our current means of measuring success and growth is through financial gain: a misleading indicator of the health and success of an entire culture. For instance, four of the richest people in the world are Indian and yet one in four Indians are hungry. Rather than measuring success through profit and loss, Dr. Shiva encourages nations to measure growth by nature: how many trees were planted, how many streams were replenished, how many farms had successful harvests, etc. (Bhutan, she mentions anecdotally, measures growth in Gross National Happiness.)
On an individual level, Dr. Shiva explains that we must change the paradigm of who we are.” Currently, we are “shrinking citizenship,” by disenfranchising vast segments of the population and perpetuating injustice. We continue to destroy the climate by living and eating against nature. (Forty percent of pollution comes from industrialized agriculture). If we keep on our current path Dr. Shiva explains, we, like the dinosaurs skeletons she passed on her way to this lecture, will be extinct. But, by ascribing to Earth Democracy and reclaiming the fundamental freedoms of rivers, air, pastures and forests, we can solve nearly every problem on the planet, including our own extinction.
To apply Earth Democracy in our own lives, Dr. Shiva encourages us to think about our own particular places, our communities. She tells us to “make conscious choices, be aware, be thoughtful. Make the act of eating a conscious act of shaping agriculture.”
When asked what give her hope, Dr. Shiva replied, “every seed that grows, every person who says ‘I will be part of life.’”
It’s scientists like Dr. Shiva that should give us all hope and determination to be part of life.
While evaluating and re-creating a 1st grade social studies curriculum, and in reviewing my influence as a teacher of young children, I came across Dr. Shiva. My desire to include environmental awareness and social justice in our curriculum, we are planning to present past and present heroes who’s voices are making an impact in our world for the good. I am inspired by Dr. Shiva and her work. She will be one of the heroes we will present to our 1st graders and community.