Vandana Shiva keynote speech — Earth at Risk Conference 2014

[00:00:00] We are so lucky to have had the support of the Wallace Action Fund to be able to bring [00:00:25] such great speakers today, including our next speaker, who was flown here all the way [00:00:31] from India. [00:00:40] Our next speaker holds a Ph.D. in the study of physics and has been a central figure in [00:00:45] the environmental movement, the food justice movement, the anti-globalization movement, [00:00:51] and the field of ecofeminism. [00:00:54] She has written over 20 books on environmentalism, feminism, and social justice. [00:01:01] She has appeared in countless documentaries, including The Corporation and The World According [00:01:06] to Monsanto. [00:01:08] She founded an independent research institute in the 1980s, a national seed-saving movement [00:01:14] in India in the 1990s, an independent college for sustainable living in the early 2000s. [00:01:23] All of this only begins to touch on the great body of work that this person has achieved. [00:01:30] And it is with great pleasure and deep humility that I introduce Vandana Shiva. [00:01:40] Thank you. [00:01:52] Thank you very much. [00:01:53] We have gathered to discuss the earth at risk. [00:02:11] I believe the earth is too big, too grand, too self-organizing to be put at risk by one species. [00:02:23] What we can do is put other species at risk. [00:02:27] And that is the ecological catastrophe we are living through. [00:02:34] All past extinctions have been driven by catastrophes, usually linked to dramatic climate change. [00:02:46] But the species extinction of our times is being driven by business as usual. [00:02:55] The economy, organized as it is, has become the catastrophe. [00:03:06] On the long flight over from India, I was reading the sixth extinction. [00:03:12] But two, three hundred years ago, and that is how recent, you know, in the 1700s, this country [00:03:17] is so young. [00:03:19] But they found the remains of a mammoth. [00:03:23] And Thomas Jefferson was absolutely confident that the species had to exist, because this [00:03:30] is what he said. [00:03:32] Such is the economy of nature that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one [00:03:40] race of her animals to become extinct of having found, formed any link in her great work so [00:03:47] weak as to be broken. [00:03:49] Well, nature's links are resilient. [00:03:56] They're being broken by the most arrogant, blinded ignorance, parading as. [00:04:07] technological progress, parading as economic development. [00:04:14] There are just two indicators driving everything in our times. [00:04:23] One is a number called GDP. [00:04:27] And all it measures is what gets commodified. [00:04:32] It doesn't measure growth as growth. [00:04:34] Growth of life, growth of our children, growth of our forests, growth of our biodiversity, growth [00:04:40] of food and plants and communities and freedom. [00:04:45] It just measures one number of how to commodify nature and society. [00:04:52] There was a lot of discussion, as I was waiting backstage to come, about the commodification [00:05:00] of women. [00:05:02] You know, most countries aren't doing very well economically these days. [00:05:05] And England is doing particularly badly. [00:05:10] But they added 10 billion pounds to their growth last year. [00:05:17] Or maybe it was earlier this year. [00:05:20] Guess what they did? [00:05:21] They said, prostitution and drug trafficking are very big economic activities. [00:05:28] So let's just add them to trump up the GDP. [00:05:32] So the more you destroy society, the more you destroy the earth, the GDP grows. [00:05:43] The other indicator is measure of technological progress. [00:05:55] Technology is just a tool. [00:05:57] It's just a means. [00:05:59] All progress gets measured by higher values and higher ends. [00:06:05] Not by tools. [00:06:08] Particularly tools whose only capacity is to destroy. [00:06:12] And there are no tools causing more threats to the biodiversity of this planet [00:06:22] than tools of agriculture in industrial models. [00:06:27] Industrial farming is the single biggest destructive force on the planet today. [00:06:33] Both in terms of what's happening to the earth as well as in terms of what's happening to society. [00:06:41] Industrial agriculture begins with a very strange set of assumptions about what the earth is. [00:06:58] Most of biodiversity in industrial agriculture is just weeds to be exterminated. [00:07:06] Not food. [00:07:07] Not nourishment. [00:07:08] Not nourishment. [00:07:09] Most of insect life is pests. [00:07:14] Also to be exterminated. [00:07:16] Get out the spray gun. [00:07:18] Kill. [00:07:19] The soil in all definitions of industrial agriculture is just an empty container that holds the plant. [00:07:28] That's SONI work. [00:07:29] In industrial farming there is no knowledge of the bounty of biodiversity in the soil. [00:07:38] Next year is the year of soil. [00:07:42] There will be a lot of knowledge coming out of how the soil food web is what really feeds us. [00:07:49] And water of course is considered absolutely inexhaustible. [00:07:55] So we've evolved a system of farming which uses ten times more water to produce the same amount [00:08:02] of food. [00:08:04] Destroying aquifers, damming rivers, and leaving large areas desertified. [00:08:14] Overall, 75% of the planetary destruction measured in biodiversity extinction, soil degradation, [00:08:25] water depletion, and pollution comes from industrial farming. [00:08:31] Industrial farming which only measures how much commodity is being produced and traded. [00:08:39] That is why we have shrunk our food base from 8,500 species of plants that used to be eaten [00:08:48] to 8 globally traded commodities. [00:08:52] And even that 8 is shrinking because in recent years, about 20 years ago, the industry that [00:09:00] had brought us the chemicals for farming, which is an industry that had its roots in war, [00:09:05] they first made the chemicals for war, then they retooled them for agri-chemicals. [00:09:10] Now they decided they should own the seed and collect rents from the very reproduction of life [00:09:16] on earth. [00:09:18] So they invented the idea of patenting seed. [00:09:22] Monsanto is on record saying we were the patient, diagnostician, physician, all in one. [00:09:30] We defined a problem and offered a solution. [00:09:35] We wrote a treaty, took it to our government, and had it imposed on the world. [00:09:40] This treaty is called the Intellectual Property Treaty of WTO. [00:09:44] It's got a long name, Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement. [00:09:49] The reason it's called trade-related is because India, my country, said, [00:09:53] but there's nothing trade-related about what can be patented and what can't be patented. [00:09:59] What should be the length of copyright? [00:10:02] What should be the limits of design, exclusive rights on design? [00:10:09] So they just put TR before IP and said, "Now, lump it." [00:10:15] It was so wrong that built into those clauses was a review in 1999. [00:10:23] I have worked with many governments around the world on this review. [00:10:27] The mountain of paper is that high. [00:10:30] That review has not allowed to be done because the review is saying patenting life is wrong. [00:10:36] There should be no patents on life. [00:10:39] And patents on life very naturally are associated with another aspect. [00:10:45] Because if you can patent anything, then you find Indian women use neem to control pests. [00:10:55] You run back here, apply a patent in the US Patent Office, get a patent, sell it to a big company, WR Grace, [00:11:04] which takes a joint patent with the US Department of Agriculture. [00:11:10] We are in the 30th anniversary of the great tragedy of Bhopal. [00:11:16] In a few days, on 2nd of December, we'll be marking the 30th anniversary. [00:11:23] 2,000 people were killed that night of 2nd December, 1984. [00:11:28] 8,000 killed in the days following, about 30,000 since then. [00:11:33] And hundreds of thousands are still maimed and crippled, including unborn children, children being born today. [00:11:42] So when the Bhopal disaster happened, I thought in my mind, I said, [00:11:51] "Why do we have to have an agriculture that is like war, when we have beautiful trees like the neem?" [00:11:57] So I carried bucketfuls of neem saplings to Bhopal and started a campaign, [00:12:03] "No more Bhopal's plant a neem." [00:12:06] Ten years later, I find neem has been patented. [00:12:10] Eleven years, we fought the case, and we defeated the US government and WR Grace. [00:12:17] Just as we have neem, we have other plants, and most insects actually do work in a friendly way for us. [00:12:23] When we do ecological farming, it's insects that are controlling other insects, so we don't have pests. [00:12:39] Our farm in Dehradun, and I hope some of you will at some point visit, we have no pests. [00:12:51] The ladybirds are thriving. [00:12:53] Every plant has spider webs. [00:12:55] The ladybirds and the spiders are far more efficient pest control agents. [00:13:02] Poisons have never been effective, because they don't manage to kill the pest. [00:13:08] The pest becomes resistant. [00:13:09] They kill the friendly insects, and now you've got no pest control system. [00:13:14] And the same thing is being repeated with the genetically engineered pest control through the BT cotton. [00:13:21] There are only two applications of genetic engineering in all of these years. [00:13:27] When they started to talk about genetic engineering about 30 years ago, [00:13:33] they talked about growing food on the moon on toxic dumps in the Sahara Desert. [00:13:39] All you have is BT toxin crops, herbicide tolerant crops. [00:13:45] Both are toxic genes. [00:13:47] They don't increase the yield of the crops. [00:13:50] They're not feeding the world. [00:13:52] They're starving the world. [00:13:54] Because they're transforming agricultural systems into toxic systems for production of commodities and profits alone. [00:14:06] 10% of the GMO corn and soya is all that goes into the food system. [00:14:12] And I would guess that even that 10% would disappear if you had labelling laws for GMOs. [00:14:20] Because most people wouldn't eat that 10%. [00:14:22] 90% goes for animal feed and biofuel. [00:14:26] It's not a food system. [00:14:28] I call it an anti-food system. [00:14:34] Because it is causing so much harm. [00:14:36] Just three days ago, a new research came out. [00:14:41] That Roundup, which is based on glyphosate, is killing the earthworms. [00:14:48] There are earlier studies that show that the BT corn kills the monarch butterfly. [00:14:56] The Roundup destroys the milkweed on which the monarch butterfly lays. [00:15:01] So on both sides, the two applications are killing the monarch butterfly, which is now down to about 25% of its population. [00:15:10] Just in a few years. [00:15:14] We've done studies on soil. [00:15:16] What's happening to the soil with these GMO crops? [00:15:20] 22% biodiversity gone in the first four years of planting a BT cotton, which is a GMO cotton. [00:15:28] But what happens to the earth is also happening to human beings. [00:15:36] So the only aim of deploying genetically engineered organisms, GMOs as they are called, is to own the seed and collect royalties. [00:15:46] That's all the objective is. [00:15:48] I was at a meeting in 1987 where the industry laid this out very clearly. [00:15:54] That's why I started Navdanya, the movement for seed saving. [00:15:59] Because for me it was unacceptable that five corporations turn around and say we have invented life on earth. [00:16:07] And sometimes when people get very confused about intellectual property and what is it and how does it work, [00:16:14] I say just remember GMO means God move over. [00:16:17] We are the creators. [00:16:19] We have created life. [00:16:21] And now onwards we should get the rents. [00:16:28] Since ownership of seed and collection of royalty is the only objective, [00:16:34] who does this royalty come from? [00:16:40] Not a competing firm because they are a cartel. [00:16:43] The five corporations are functioning like a cartel. [00:16:47] The beginning of these companies in Germany during the war years was IG Farben. [00:16:54] It was a cartel. [00:16:57] They are again a cartel and one could call them the cartel that has declared war against the planet and people. [00:17:03] And they are changing every structure in order to continue to sell their toxic commodities. [00:17:12] So in India in '98 Monsanto came in illegally. [00:17:18] I sued them. [00:17:20] They were stopped for four years. [00:17:22] Eventually, they have a very effective way of influencing the White House or the Indian Prime Minister's Office or the European Commission. [00:17:37] In Brussels, they have 80 lobbyists sitting every day to influence institutions. [00:17:43] And you can make out White House. [00:17:45] Nothing changed. [00:17:46] Where Monsanto was concerned, nothing changed between your last president and the current president. [00:17:52] The same officials continued. [00:17:55] And they were all officials with a revolving door to Monsanto. [00:18:04] So the control over seed, I have witnessed in a very short time what it can do. [00:18:10] Starting '95 when markets were opened, as they call it, I think markets got closed because local markets got closed. [00:18:19] Corporate markets on a global scale got opened. [00:18:23] Seed monopoly started to be established in cotton. [00:18:27] Today, Monsanto owns 95% of the cotton seed in India and collects royalties. [00:18:33] Do they do the work? [00:18:35] No, they don't do the work. [00:18:37] The farmers do the work. [00:18:39] Indian companies do the work. [00:18:40] They have locked every company into a licensing arrangement so no one can sell anything but a GMO cotton. [00:18:48] The price has jumped thousands of times. [00:18:54] Farmers have got into debt. [00:18:55] The technology doesn't work to control pests. [00:18:57] New pests have been created. [00:18:59] Aphids, jacids, even in this country, I just read the other day, army bug has taken over. [00:19:06] In India, army bug has taken over. [00:19:08] Mealy bug, the whole plant becomes white. [00:19:11] And the bollworm which was to be controlled has become resistant. [00:19:15] Because this denial, the dominant world view based on mechanistic science is in deep denial of evolution. [00:19:26] That species have intelligence and they evolve. [00:19:30] Pests will evolve and become resistant. [00:19:33] Weeds will evolve. [00:19:35] Half the acreage of this country is overtaken by superweeds that are resistant to Roundup. [00:19:42] And now Dow has brought and been granted permission to sell genetically engineered crops that are resistant to 2,4-D, which was an ingredient of Agent Orange, which was sprayed on Vietnam. [00:19:59] We know the harm that was done in Vietnam. [00:20:02] That's going to be the daily harm. [00:20:05] The assumption is none of this accumulates in the food. [00:20:10] It does. [00:20:11] Glyphosate residues have been found in the corn. [00:20:15] Glyphosate is killing the beneficial soil organisms. [00:20:20] Glyphosate is killing the beneficial bacteria in our gut. [00:20:24] Glyphosate is binding minerals, preventing them from performing the functions they perform, particularly for brain processes. [00:20:39] The result is an explosion in diseases, intestinal diseases. [00:20:46] Autism in this country has exploded so fast that according to the Center for Disease Control, half the children of America will be autistic by 2050. [00:20:55] Half. [00:20:57] The graph goes like this. [00:20:58] Now the least a society does when graphs start to climb like that is to say, "We must investigate. [00:21:07] We must do more research." [00:21:12] But these corporations that have got so used to profits at any cost, not only are they destroying the biodiversity of the planet, [00:21:24] they are trying to silence knowledge and science. [00:21:29] The attack on science has never been so intense. [00:21:34] I can't give you the long details of the individual scientists. [00:21:38] But if we don't have knowledge of what's happening to the earth and what's happening to our bodies, [00:21:44] how on earth will we shape societies that protect the earth and protect the human beings? [00:21:53] And while all of this very high cost is being justified in the name of feeding the world, [00:22:00] the reality is that only 30% of all the food eaten by people comes from industrial farms. [00:22:11] 75% comes from small farms, from family farms. [00:22:16] 70%. [00:22:17] And that's after a century of destruction of the small farm. [00:22:22] Even today, small farms feed the world. [00:22:26] If you do a calculation, if 30% is causing 75% of the planetary destruction, [00:22:32] it just has to go to 40% by destroying all small farms, but it will also destroy the planet. [00:22:39] And you can't grow food on a dead planet. [00:22:46] You can't do business on a dead planet. [00:22:48] And that's something they just don't get. [00:22:50] Such an obvious fact. [00:22:52] And they don't get it for two reasons. [00:22:55] First, they're blind to biodiversity. [00:22:58] And second, they're blinded by power. [00:23:01] So blinded by power that every time the disruption of ecosystems, [00:23:09] the disruption of agriculture systems causes social unrest, [00:23:16] they address the social unrest in terms of a military response. [00:23:20] I know this in the case of India in 1984. [00:23:23] The year of Bhopal was also the year of violence in Punjab. [00:23:27] And I did a study for the United Nations University and wrote a book called [00:23:31] The Violence of the Green Revolution. [00:23:34] The problems in Punjab were related to the farmers' discontent [00:23:39] because they were getting into debt. [00:23:41] The solution was sending the army. [00:23:45] 2009, Syria, which was totally at peace. [00:23:49] It wasn't part of the turmoil of the Middle East. [00:23:53] Syria had a severe drought. [00:23:55] 800,000 people were uprooted in one season. [00:23:59] 75% of the crop gone. [00:24:01] 85% of the livestock. [00:24:03] What was the response? [00:24:05] The military. [00:24:06] What was the global response? [00:24:08] Instead of saying, let's make sure farmers can deal with climate change and drought. [00:24:12] Farmers have the seeds that are adapted to drought. [00:24:15] Instead of changing the narrative, the whole global alliance started to aid the rebels initially, [00:24:23] and then the rebels became the ISIS, and now it's nobody. [00:24:27] If someone had to write a reasonable account of what's happening in Syria, [00:24:31] nobody really knows except there's a solution even when you don't know, bomb them. [00:24:36] It's exactly like in the issue of pests. [00:24:42] Insects are not pests. [00:24:45] But if you define every insect as a pest, and your only attitude is exterminate, [00:24:51] you will exterminate. [00:24:53] And then there'll be a bouncing back of those who are trying to exterminate, [00:24:57] because they're intelligent, they love their life, they don't want to be exterminated, [00:25:01] whether it's an insect, a plant, or a human being. [00:25:06] And that is why Samuel Huntington got it so wrong when in his clash of civilizations, [00:25:14] he said, "You can only know who you are if you know who you hate." [00:25:21] Well, I know who I am because I love the place where I was born, Dehradun, [00:25:26] which is where I returned. [00:25:28] I love my son. [00:25:29] I love my family. [00:25:30] I love my community. [00:25:31] I love you all. [00:25:33] It's my love that tells me who I am. [00:25:44] And just as non-sustainability arises from the war against diversity, [00:25:51] all the wars in our time arise from intolerance of diversity, [00:25:55] the inability to live with diversity, the inability to celebrate our diversity. [00:26:00] And our work is to celebrate diversity across race, across gender, across class, across religion. [00:26:08] We are not each other's enemies. [00:26:10] We are one human family. [00:26:13] But we are more than that. [00:26:15] We are one Earth community. [00:26:17] The risks we face can only be addressed [00:26:23] by experiencing ourselves as part of the web of life, [00:26:29] knowing that we are not separate from nature and other species, [00:26:34] but we are one among them. [00:26:37] And just at the time when the renewal of indigenous wisdom [00:26:43] and timeless cultures, as the indigenous communities were talking, [00:26:51] just at that time when we are learning to go beyond anthropocentrism, [00:27:01] realizing that we are all children of Mother Earth and she has rights, [00:27:06] and our duty is to protect those rights, [00:27:08] just at that time that blindness and arrogance that has brought us to the brink [00:27:15] is intensifying its power. [00:27:18] So it is one thing to know that the dominant systems of production and consumption, [00:27:24] particularly food, are destroying the planet. [00:27:29] It is another thing to say we are now in the Anthropocene age, [00:27:33] so let's destroy it faster and further. [00:27:36] Every solution that is coming from the arrogant mindset is, [00:27:41] we have got climate change, let's create artificial volcanoes, [00:27:45] let's put reflectors in the sky to send back the sunlight. [00:27:49] Where was the sun there ever the problem? [00:27:52] The sun blesses us. [00:27:54] We would not have life on this planet without the sun. [00:27:57] Not human life, not plant life, without photosynthesis for which the sun is vital, [00:28:03] there would be no life on Earth. [00:28:05] And not just the Anthropocene description, [00:28:12] but a new mutation, which is a mutation of personhood. [00:28:23] For us, all beings are equal. [00:28:28] From the microbes in the soil, to the pollinators, [00:28:32] to the birds and the bees, the butterflies, [00:28:36] who contribute one third of the food that we eat, [00:28:39] and we are exterminating them. [00:28:43] That Earth community is the real beings. [00:28:50] The insanity of our times is corporations which are legal entities, [00:28:58] which should exist without permission, [00:29:01] within bounds of responsibility, [00:29:04] within the limits of ecological sustainability, [00:29:08] have suddenly in this country defined themselves as persons. [00:29:13] And sitting far away in India, you know, does look totally crazy. [00:29:21] Now, you know about Citizen United and what it's done to your elections. [00:29:25] But there are two other aspects where this issue of corporate first personhood [00:29:31] and the ability to spend money to influence decisions as free speech, [00:29:36] it's being applied right now. [00:29:42] So California was the first to try and get GMO labeling laws in place, [00:29:46] and you know how money undermined it, $40 million. [00:29:50] Monsanto then spent $40 million in Washington, [00:29:54] another $26 million in Oregon, Colorado. [00:29:58] In Vermont, which is a small, poor state, [00:30:01] and sometimes poverty is an advantage, [00:30:04] they got the labeling law through, through legislative process. [00:30:09] And now Monsanto is suing Vermont [00:30:14] on grounds that corporations are persons. [00:30:18] And, of course, you know, basically the fight is, [00:30:22] the front is something called Grocery Manufacturer Association. [00:30:26] When I think of my grocer, I think of the shop next door. [00:30:30] But Grocery Association is now the non-grocers, [00:30:34] the junk food producers, the Pepsis and the Cokes, [00:30:37] who need GMOs for their high fructose corn syrup. [00:30:40] They are suing Vermont and the argument is, [00:30:45] if people have a right to know what they are eating, [00:30:48] then our free speech is being taken away. [00:30:51] And this is an ultimate clash of who is a being, [00:30:57] who is a person, and whose speech will count. [00:31:02] And what is speech? [00:31:03] These are fundamental existential issues [00:31:06] about our very existence on this planet [00:31:09] being called into question by this mutation [00:31:14] of legal constructions being given personhood. [00:31:19] And when these abstract constructions become persons and beings, [00:31:23] they will take away the rights and personhood of real people. [00:31:27] That is what we are facing. [00:31:30] So the inevitable next step, besides suing, [00:31:34] Maui, you know, little county in Hawaii, [00:31:37] decided they'd go beyond labeling and say, [00:31:39] we don't want GMOs. [00:31:40] Now in any democracy, [00:31:46] the will of the people is what counts. [00:31:49] It's of the people, by the people, for the people. [00:31:51] But when corporations have decided that they are the rulers, [00:31:56] then they must destroy democracy and redefine it as of the corporations, [00:32:04] by the corporations, for the corporations. [00:32:06] That's what's happening with these cases in Vermont and Maui. [00:32:11] A democratic process says we don't want GMOs. [00:32:15] And they say, we're going to force it on you. [00:32:17] They have an ad that was sent to me. [00:32:20] Everyone's sort of talking about dinner. [00:32:24] Earlier they should be talking about GMOs and miracle BT and HD. [00:32:27] Now they don't. [00:32:28] Let's have a conversation over dinner. [00:32:30] Well, suing governments that protect their people is not a conversation over dinner. [00:32:36] It's an assault on democracy. [00:32:38] And it should be absolutely unaccepted. [00:32:40] How do we deal? [00:32:42] How do we deal with these assaults? [00:32:44] This is the work I've been doing. [00:32:46] Starting '87 when I first heard of patenting of life and GMOs being used as the avenue, [00:32:53] I decided to save seeds and started the movement Navdanya, [00:32:57] which means nine seeds as well as the new gift. [00:33:01] The nine seeds stand for diversity. [00:33:04] The new gift stands for the commons. [00:33:07] Because everything is being privatised. [00:33:10] All the common basis of life is being privatised, [00:33:13] whether they be the biodiversity and the knowledge, [00:33:16] or it be the air through which we breathe. [00:33:19] All pollution of the atmosphere is an enclosure of our commons. [00:33:26] All emission trading schemes, as an answer to climate change, [00:33:32] is a further pollution and a further privatisation. [00:33:41] This issue of unjust laws being imposed on us, [00:33:47] we've experienced it in India. [00:33:50] This year you are experiencing something new. [00:33:54] One of the initiatives across the world is to save seeds. [00:34:01] Navdanya has created 120 community seed banks. [00:34:05] In this country they are called seed libraries. [00:34:08] In Maryland and Pennsylvania, the seed libraries have been ordered to be closed by the government. [00:34:18] On ground that saving heritage seed and heirloom seed is agri-terrorism. [00:34:25] And having untested GMOs sold is safe. [00:34:32] Now, there was an attempt to bring similar laws in India in 2004. [00:34:38] And I travelled the length and the breadth of the country and sat and had meetings with farmers and mobilised communities. [00:34:44] And took 100,000 signatures to our prime minister saying that the British too had tried to create monopolies. [00:34:53] At that time it was salt. [00:34:55] And Gandhi had walked to the beach, picked up the salt from the sea and said, [00:35:02] "Nature gives it for free. [00:35:04] We need it for our survival. [00:35:06] We will continue to make salt. [00:35:09] We do not obey your laws." [00:35:11] And he had added, [00:35:13] The word he used during the salt satya-gray 1930 was satya-gray. [00:35:23] Satya is truth. [00:35:25] Agri is the fight for truth. [00:35:28] The force of truth. [00:35:30] He first put it to practice in 1906 on another 9/11, exactly 9/11. [00:35:38] And he refused to obey the apartheid regime's racial discrimination. [00:35:44] He said, "We are one citizenry. [00:35:46] We will not be registered by race." [00:35:51] So we follow Gandhi's satya-gray, the fight for truth. [00:35:55] The civil rights movement of this country was based on that. [00:36:00] Rosa Park, if she had not sat on that seat and said, [00:36:05] "Unjust laws should not be obeyed," [00:36:08] you wouldn't have had an end to the legal protection of racism. [00:36:12] So we announced to our Prime Minister, [00:36:16] "We are very sorry. [00:36:17] We have received these seats from our ancestors and nature. [00:36:21] We owe it to future generations to protect them in their beauty, [00:36:25] their diversity, their fertility, their integrity. [00:36:28] We will not obey any law or adopt any technology that comes in the way of this duty to the earth and the future." [00:36:43] We are right now at the earth university we started at the Navdanya farm, [00:36:48] organizing a course on Gandhi in times of globalization. [00:36:52] How do you resist with deep commitment to non-violence, [00:36:59] the structures of violence that are putting the earth and our lives at peril? [00:37:04] And we need satya-gray everywhere. [00:37:07] I hope next year some of you will come. [00:37:09] But I hope U.S. citizens will rise against corporate brutality to practice satya-gray, [00:37:16] the fight for truth, the force of truth. [00:37:24] But you can't practice satya-gray without building the alternatives. [00:37:29] And that is why building alternatives becomes such an imperative in our times. [00:37:34] Alternatives that make peace with the earth. [00:37:36] We are not in an Anthropocene age. [00:37:38] We are and have been always in an Ecosene age. [00:37:42] We just have to be humble enough to recognize the earth's processes and work with them. [00:37:49] The big challenge in our times is to work according to the real laws of the earth. [00:37:55] The laws of water renewal, the laws of fertility renewal, the laws of absorption of carbon. [00:38:01] And every problem that industrial agriculture has created, ecological agriculture can solve. [00:38:09] Forty percent of the greenhouse gases are coming from industrial globalized agriculture. [00:38:14] And I wrote a book on this called Soil Not Oil. [00:38:18] But every time we recycle carbon, every time we give back to the earth in gratitude through organic farming, [00:38:26] we are not just making the soil more fertile. [00:38:29] We are not just holding more water in the soil. [00:38:31] We are actually addressing the climate problem in today, in our daily actions. [00:38:37] Every time we save a seed, and everyone can save a seed in their balcony, in their community gardens, even in cities. [00:38:45] Every place should become a garden of hope, and a sanctuary for biodiversity. [00:38:55] And every time we do this, we actually grow food. [00:38:58] We actually address the problems of a captive food system forcing chemicals, poisons, and GMOs on us. [00:39:07] Every time we grow our own food, we've solved the problem of corporate totalitarianism. [00:39:13] We have sowed the seeds of freedom. [00:39:15] In Navdanya, we've done this work now for 30 years. [00:39:20] We've done a study where we measured nutrition per acre on the real farms of real farmers. [00:39:26] Not on propaganda and advertisements. [00:39:29] Real farms. [00:39:30] We can produce two times the food India needs. [00:39:33] We can produce two times the food the world needs if we go ecological. [00:39:38] And we should. [00:39:39] We should set that as an agenda by 2020. [00:39:42] Let every one of us, from our homes, from our communities, from our states, from the bottom [00:39:48] up, say goodbye to that destructive system. [00:39:51] And say, "We don't need you. [00:39:52] We will not give you support. [00:39:53] We will build our alternatives." [00:39:55] And for this, the very big shift we need is a shift away from the big illusion that capital creates. [00:40:12] Capital, like corporations, is a construction. [00:40:16] It is not a creative force on this planet. [00:40:19] It doesn't create. [00:40:21] It has managed very smartly to define the earth as land and people as labour as mere inert inputs [00:40:35] into a machine that generates profits. [00:40:38] We are not inputs. [00:40:40] We are sovereign beings. [00:40:42] We are creative beings. [00:40:45] Work is not an input into a machine controlled by capital. [00:40:50] Work must become our creative gift to the earth as we rejuvenate her and her resources, her biodiversity, her water, soil. [00:41:00] It is given to us to work with the earth in co-creation and co-production. [00:41:06] We must redefine those deadening categories and recognise creativity where it lies. [00:41:13] Creativity lies in the earth, first and foremost, in every one of her species, in every head and mind and every hand and every heart of every person in this hall and across the planet. [00:41:26] So it is really a contest of creativity. [00:41:29] Will we treat destruction as creation or will we realise that rejuvenation of the planet in all her abundance and diversity and beauty is the real work and earth care is the first work we must all do. [00:41:43] And we must do it in freedom and we must do it through our democracy as participation. [00:41:48] Every illusion that is enslaving us is an illusion we can become free of by switching that illusion off and embedding ourselves in a living earth in our living communities. [00:42:01] Thank you. [00:42:02] Thank you. [00:42:31] Thank you. [00:43:01] Thank you.