Q&A: Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva is a physicist by training, but by practice she is an ecofeminist, prolific author (of books and over 300 scientific papers) and environmental activist. She lives in New Delhi, where she heads up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, an independent research institute that she founded in 1982. Included among her countless accolades and awards are the the Alternative Nobel Prize (AKA the Right Livelihood Award, 1993), Order of the Golden Ark, Global 500 Award of UN and Earth Day International Award.

Inkling was lucky enough to nab some time with Shiva this past Monday while she was in Vancouver, where she gave a talk on “Defending Food Freedom in a Period of Food Fascism” as a part of the University of British Columbia’s joint science-humanities awareness venture, Terry’s star-studded seminar series.  That afternoon, in geneticist Dave Ng’s delightfully eclectic office, Shiva sat regally in her earth-hued sari and let us pick her brain a smidge.

Q. What unique abilities do you believe women can lend science?

I think there are two definitely unique abilities that women bring to science. First, because they have not been groomed into a clubby behavior, they’re always outsiders no matter how good they are and this means they have not numbed their thinking.

Whenever there’s a clubbiness there are tacit norms, dos and don’ts, that get shaped. Women coming from a freer mind can ask basic questions. That’s why so much interesting stuff is coming out of women’s participation in science.

Second, epistemically we haven’t had centuries of training in reductionism. Even when we are trained in a particular discipline we bring other disciplines to bear. That multidimensionality also enriches science.

Q. You were first trained as a physicist and began your Ph.D. in quantum physics at the University of Western Ontario. Do you ever plan to return to physics?

I have to say I had the most exciting intellectual time in my days of physics. When you work on those very tough issues of quantum theory there’s a particular engagement of the mind that has its own level of satisfaction for those who really care about knowledge-seeking. In a way it’s like deep meditation. And when you bring all your energies to bear with concentration that’s what meditation is about. I have now given myself the age of 60 [as the age at which I’ll return to physics].

Now, let’s see how much my brain cells function at that time.

Q. How has that early scientific training informed the rest of your career?

I think partly because the very special nature of quantum physics is indeterminacy, uncertainty, the probabilistic nature of any prediction, and the multiplicity of options at any one point in time – that kind of training has definitely helped me a lot in dealing with the very false determinism of the current economic models.

Also, even though I work very theoretically, my physics training keeps me coming back to physical structures, processes and events. What happens to ecosystems? What happens to people? The wellbeing of communities?

Q. What is your most recent personal victory?

My latest victory has been defending the rights of farmers to their land. In the last year, partly because India is now being seen as the mecca for all of global investment, the farmers’ land is under huge assault.

A new law passed in February 2006 that enabled our government to appropriate the land of farmers and hand it over to corporations who would speculate further in the land or set it up for exports. One by one, communities would come to me and ask for help so I had to pull together a national study on this situation. As a result of our work the government stalled its practice of farmland appropriation this past January.

At the heart of this is the false assumption that small farms can’t be viable.

Q. And how is that assumption false?

We’re documenting the productivity of farms that have given up chemicals and dependence on GMOs [genetically modified organisms] and are finding that ecological farms can produce twice as much if they work with nature. We’re supplementing this with a new dimension of studies that are connecting it with climate change. When you do organic ecological agriculture you’re not just reducing emissions of CO2. You’re enhancing the CO2 absorption both in the soil as well as in the plant biomass.

We’re finding that by doing small-scale, biodiverse organic farming you’re solving three problems at once: You’re solving the problem of climate change; you’re solving the problem of rural poverty; and you’re solving the problem of hunger by producing more food.

Obviously our ancestors would have been super smart. Precisely the same species they picked as sacred, like the neem tree and sacred fig tree, are the best carbon fixers.

Vandana Shiva’s recent book titles include Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, The Violence of Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics and Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit.