Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability & Peace

by Vandana Shiva (2005)

South End Press

April 9, 2010

Jane Lehr

jlehr@calpoly.edu

Principles of Earth Democracy

1. All species, peoples, and cultures have intrinsic worth.

2. The earth community is a democracy of all life.

3. Diversity in nature and culture must be defended.

4. All beings have a natural right to sustenance.

5. Earth Democracy is based on living economies and economic democracy.

6. Living economies are built on local economies.

7. Earth Democracy is a living democracy.

8. Earth Democracy is based on living cultures.

9. Living cultures are life nourishing.

10. Earth Democracy globalizes peace, care, and compassion.

Vandana Shiva & me …

Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (1999) “Genetically Modified Crops, World Trade & Security” (1999)

Oxfam: "Donor governments and agencies should commit resources for investment in research into the potential opportunities of GM technology to deliver economic, environmental and health benefits to poor farmers in adverse agro-ecological zones.”

Shiva: “We feel that Oxfam risks betraying the South, the poor and food security objectives by calling for support for promotion of G.M. crops in the South instead of calling for support for ecological and sustainable agriculture which is much better suited to the small farmers in adverse agroecological zones. … The focus on promotion of G.M. crops in the Third World, and the total absence of recommendations relating to the promotion of sustainable, ecological agriculture will on the one hand deprive the poor of ecological, decentralised production systems. On the other hand it carries a major risk of creating a nutritional apartheid - with northern consumers having G.E. free foods and the poor in the South being condemned to a future based on G.E. crops and foods.” http://www.gene.ch/gentech/1999/Nov/msg00040.html

Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (1999) Oxfam responds to Shiva

We think that there is only a minor difference of opinion between yourself and Oxfam GB. In our paper we call for a moratorium on the commercial release of GM crops because of the enormous health, environmental and socio-economic risks to poor farmers, consumers and developing countries. However, before completely shutting the door we believe further research is needed to establish the full risks and potential of genetic modification of crops for poor farmers and for consumers. We really don't feel that it is fair to suggest that our position amounts to risking "betraying the South, the poor and food security objectives". …

We are at risk of entering in a debate where one is either in favour or against biotechnology. We are of the opinion that there are serious dangers implied by the rapid development of genetically modified crops in the hands of large private industries, dangers to public health, the environment and socio-economic relations. That is however not the same as rejecting the potential of all biotechnologies as such (there are many technologies that fall under that term), in particular not the applications that could support small holder farmers, consumers, and that could help local and global food security. http://www.sirc.org/news/oxfam_open_letter.html

Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (1999) Oxfam responds to Shiva

We have mentioned nitrogen-fixing, salt resistant crops and enhanced vitamin and mineral levels of foods. We could also have mentioned improved or hybrid high yielding varieties that can be replanted (i.e. that are genetically identical to the mother plant and are reproduced 'by apomixes', without sexual fertilisation). All of those are in our view potentially supportive of sustainable agriculture, even though some may reject those as not entirely natural or 'organic'. We are aware that these potentially positive applications are in their infancy only and can imply similar environmental and health risks as some of the applications favoured by private companies, and therefore we believe that public funding and extreme caution should dominate such research and development. We do not suggest that public money should be diverted away from research and development of sustainable farming technology, on the contrary, we want more publicly funded research to support that, including biotechnological research. …

We hope that this reply reassures you that Oxfam GB is not 'off course' and that we will continue to support the development and use of technologies that are in the interest of poor farmers and their environments, consumers and developing economies. http://www.sirc.org/news/oxfam_open_letter.html

Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (2002) Rigged Rules and Double Standards (2002)

http://www.maketradefair.com/en/index.php?file=03042002121618.htm Shiva: In response to this report, Vandana Shiva argued that Oxfam

views market access as a “magic potion for pulling the poorest out of poverty.” In her letter, she instead suggests that “market access is just another word for export orientation and export domination.”

Oxfam Responds to Shiva Vandana Shiva directs her argument against Chapter 4 of Rigged Rules

and Double Standards. In this chapter, Oxfam sets out a case for improving market access for poor countries, and for ending the subsidised overproduction and dumping of agricultural surpluses by the European Union and the United States. The chapter suggests that, under appropriate conditions, access to Northern markets can contribute to poverty-reduction efforts. Those conditions are set out in the report. They include redistributive programmes to overcome inequalities based on gender, access to productive assets, and education. Ecologically sustainable resource management is another critical requirement. http://www.maketradefair.com/en/index.php?file=27062002154832.htm

Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (2002) Oxfam Responds to Shiva

There are three problems with Vandana Shiva's comments. First, she not only distorts Oxfam's argument, but applies a reductionist logic that casts all export activity as bad for poor people - and all advocacy in favour of improved market access as part of a neo-liberal conspiracy.

Second, the anti-international trade perspective she advocates would, in our view, deny poor countries and poor people important opportunities for poverty reduction.

Third, while her comments raise important concerns about the relationship between trade and ecological sustainability, the assumption that trade is inherently bad for sustainability is unjustified. This is a subject that merits more serious consideration. Oxfam is working closely with a range of environmental and development movements to campaign on these issues in the lead up to the forthcoming World Food Summit and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. http://www.maketradefair.com/en/index.php?file=27062002154832.htm

Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (2002) Oxfam Responds to Shiva

Having called for a "contextualised analysis", Vandana Shiva decontextualises trade. …

It is asserted that all export activity undermines local and national economic activity, and that agricultural exports inevitably exacerbate hunger by displacing food production. While some export activity certainly produces such effects, such outcomes are not inevitable. They are typically the result of specific policies that skew the benefits of export in activity towards vested interests and powerful social groups, while failing to address the concerns of poor people.

Much of the evidence cited by Vandana Shiva is difficult to context since it is pitched at a very high level of generality. … Her own figures are inconsistent with FAO data. … the relationship between national food security and export activity cannot be reduced to generalisations of the type offered by Vandana Shiva.

Such generalisation divert attention from the crucial question of unequal power relations in local, national and global markets -and from the types of state action that can make trade work for or against the poor.

Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (2002) Oxfam Responds to Shiva

The black and white model of market access = export domination and neo-liberalism is not constructive. The Brazilian Worker's Party, the UN Secretary General, Nelson Mandela, virtually every Southern government, and many NGOs have called for improved market access. Lumping them with the World Bank/WTO/IMF is as helpful as implying that Vandana Shiva occupies the same protectionist ground as the Bush Administration and European big farm interests. Clearly, she does not occupy that ground. But her comments divert attention from the core challenge of changing production systems to ensure that trade reform is integrated into poverty-reduction strategies.

Vandana Shiva ignores the potential benefits that poor women and men might derive from production for export markets - and their real struggles to improve their living conditions. In Bangladesh, Oxfam is working with women's organisations that are attempting to improve wages, working conditions, and female employment rights - and these organisations are arguing for improved market access. …

Whether or not improved market access delivers benefits for poor people will be a function of political decisions, the role of government, and power relations in the market place. Of course, there are many cases in which export growth is marginalizing poor people. By the same token, import protection and state support on domestic markets is often equally anti-poor (a point that Vandana Shiva ignores). That is why simple dichotomies between export production and production for domestic markets are not helpful.

Discussion Plan/Topics

Gender, Women, Patriarchy (Biological & Cultural) Diversity Localization Ways We Might Go Forward

1993: Right Livelihood Award

”...for placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse.” http://www.rightlivelihood.org/v-shiva.html

From Acceptance speech: I am increasingly sensing that the primary threat to nature and people today

comes from centralising and monopolising power and control which inevitably generates one-dimensional structures and what I have called "Monoculture of the Mind". The monoculture of the mind treats all diversity as disease, and creates coercive structures to model this biologically and culturally diverse world of ours on the privileged categories and concepts of one class, one race and one gender of a single species.

These simultaneous colonisations are the inevitable result - the colonisations of nature's diverse species, of women and of the Third World. The politics of diversity is for me the ground for resisting all three colonisations. …

Conservation of diversity is, above all, the commitment to let alternatives flourish in society and nature, in economic systems and in knowledge systems. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times. It is a survival imperative, and the precondition for the freedom of all, the big and the small.

“placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse”

In Earth Democracy, what does Shiva add? In particular, how does her attention to women, gender, and/or

patriarchy extend or complicate our previous discussions? What is her argument about women, gender, patriarchy? Is this a major or minor part of the book for you? Is this a strength and/or weakness of the book for you?

The emergence of the women, gender, patriarchy argument Staying Alive: Development, Ecology, and Women (1989) With Maria Mies, Ecofeminism (1993) With Ingunn Mosser (1995) (eds.), Biopolitics: A Feminist and

Ecological Reader on Biotechnology Etc.

Shiva’s Gender Analysis Call to Action (1 of 3)

Within this period of globalization, gender analysis needs to make two major shifts. First, since globalization manifests itself primarily

as a removal of national barriers to trade and investment, gender analysis needs to move beyond an exclusively domestic model of analysis (limited to either the household or the country) and toward an understanding of gender relations between actors as the global level. (p. 131)

Shiva’s Gender Analysis Call to Action (2 of 3) Within this period of globalization, gender analysis needs to

make two major shifts. … Second, gender analysis needs to move from a focus on the end

result, which victimizes women by only concerning itself with the impact on women. In order to effect change we need to adopt a structural and transformative analysis that addressed the underlying forces that form society. Global financial trade and corporate institutions are “gendered” institutions; they impact on men and women, the rich and poor, and different people in different ways.

These institutions and structures are created, dominated, and controlled by men. Because they are shaped by a particular gender, class, and race of humans, predominantly men from the rich G7 countries, these institutions are expressions and vehicles of the visions, aspirations, and assumptions of that particular group. (pp. 131-132)

Shiva’s Gender Analysis Call to Action (3 of 3)

Gender analysis of globalization, therefore, cannot limit itself to the impact on women. It needs to take into account the patriarchal basis of the paradigms, models, processes, policies, and projects advanced by these global institutions. It needs to take into account how women’s concerns, priorities, and perceptions are excluded in defining the economy, and excluded from the process of defining economic problems and proposing and implementing solutions. (p. 132)

Impacts on Women Globalization as a project of capitalist patriarchy (p. 130)

Robs women of their productivity and creativity by destroying nature/sustenance economy

Devaluing women’s knowledge Sex Trafficking (p. 130) Cuts in social support programs (to address debt or as an IMF/WB

requirement) (p. 130) Religious patriarchy and capitalist patriarchy make women disappear (p.

132) Contest between “women-centered worldviews, knowledge systems, and

productive systems that ensure sustenance and sharing and patriarchal systems of knowledge and the economy based on war and violence” (p. 133)

“Dowry deaths” menace Feticide through amniocentesis & selective abortion Argument that (mal)development leads to overpopulation (p. 58)

Other Types of Discussion “Women as Guardians and Promoters of Life-Centered

Cultures” Seeds Example Leaders of Resistance Movements & Alternative

farming/market/etc models “Women’s full humanity becomes the healing force that can

break the vicious cycles of violence based on treating the inhumanity of man as the measure of being human, of greed as the organizing principle of the economy, of genocide and suicide as expressions of religious fervor” (p. 140)

Women are refusing to be part of the culture of hate and violence. Women, in and through their lives, are showing that love and compassion, sharing and giving are not just possible human qualities they are necessary qualities for us to be human.” (p. 140)

A Very Golden History

Shiva on Diversity

“Living cultures are cultures of life, based on reverence for all life women and men, rich and poor, white and black, Christian and Muslim, human and nonhuman.” (p. 142)

Questions Is merely celebrating and embracing diversity the

solution? (judgmental relativism) How does this mesh with her other arguments?

Shiva on Localization

Centralization and regulation vs Localization

“The real issues of our times is how to reinvent the state in a way that is not centralized, bureaucratic, and controlling, in a way grounded in the community and responsible to community. Leaving decisions on the distribution of goods and services and on environmental impact to unregulated and nonaccountable market forces would also be an error.” (p. 89)

Broad Types of Ecofeminism From Sturgeon (1997), “Ecofeminist Movements”

1. Patriarchy equates women and nature, so feminist analysis is required to fully understand environmental problems

2. Patriarchy equates women and nature, so feminist analysis of women’s subordination must include environmental analysis

3. There is a special relationship between women and nature based on the social construction of gender and the history and contemporary practice of social institutions therefore environmental problems are more quickly resolved by women and taking women’s work more seriously

4. Women are biologically closer to nature therefore women have greater access to a sympathy with nature and will benefit themselves and the environment by identifying with nature

5. Feminists interested in constructing resources for a feminist spirituality should draw upon nature-based religions such as paganism, witchcraft, goddess worship, and Native American spiritual traditions

Ynestra King (1989), “The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology” in Healing the Wounds (p. 23)

Ways forward for feminists we can: Reject women-nature connection Reiforce the women-nature connection “Ecofeminism suggests a third direction: a recognition that

although the nature-culture dualism is a product of culture, we can nonetheless consciously choose not to sever the woman-nature connection by joining male culture. Rather, we can use it as a vantage point for creating a different kind of culture and politics that would integrate intuitive, spiritual, and rational forms of knowledge, embracing both science and magic insofar as they enable us to transform the nature-culture distinction and to envision and create a free, ecological society.”

Slides that may or may not be useful …

Emergence of Ecofeminism Françoise d’Eaubonne (1974), “The Time for Ecofeminism” Léonie Caldecott & Stephanie Leland (1983) (eds.), Reclaim the

Earth Judith Plant (1989) (ed.), Healing the Wounds Irene Diamond & Gloria Feman Orenstein (1990) (eds.) Reweaving

the World Karen Warren (1991) (ed.), Hypatia Special Issue on Ecological

Feminism Greta Gaard (1993) (ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature

Essentialism within Feminism Within feminism, essentialism refers to “the attribution of a fixed

essence to women” and “entails the belief that those characteristics defined as women’s essence are shared in common by all women at all times. … Essentialism thus refers to the existence of fixed characteristics, given attributes, and ahistorical functions”

Elizabeth Grosz, 1989, p. 153

11 Types of EnvironmentalismRobert Brulle (2008), “The U.S. Environmental Movement” in 20 Lessons in Environmental Sociology

Different Types Wildlife Management Conservation Preservation Reform Environmentalism Deep Ecology Environmental Justice Environmental Health Ecofeminism Ecospiritualism Animal Rights Anti-Globalization/Greens

Differences What is the goal or motivation of the

discursive frame or type of environmentalism?

What is the definition of the environmental problem(s)? What is the root cause?

Why or how does nature have value? What is the value?

What is the model of nature employed? (e.g. machine, organism, etc.)

What should the relationship between humans and nature be? Are humans part of nature? Are humans privileged over nature?

What role do human needs play in conceptions of an ideal world or ideal outcome of activism?

Second Wave Feminism A Bit More Complicated Story Liberal Feminism Radical Feminism root of oppression is patriarchy; focus on structures Cultural or Difference Feminism (called Radical Feminism by some) root of

oppression is patriarchy; solution is innate women’s values, women as the solution (essentialist); strong focus on change at the level of the individual as well as structures

Marxist Feminism root of oppression is capitalism; solve class oppression first

Socialist Feminism (called Radical Feminism by a few) root of oppression is capitalism and intersections with patriarchy; must try to solve class & gender oppression at the same time; eventually expands to include attention to intersections of class, gender, race, and sexuality

Women of Color | Womanist Feminism Multicultural Feminism Global Feminism Poststructuralist Feminism

King, “Why Women?” in “The Eco-Feminist Imperative” (1981) (p. 11)

“Because our present patriarchy enshrines together the hatred of women and the hatred of nature. In defying this patriarchy we are loyal to future generations and to live and this planet itself. We have a deep and particular understanding of this both through our natures and through our life experience as women.

We have the wisdom to oppose experiments which could permanently alter the genetic materials of future generations. As feminists we believe that human reproduction should be controlled by women not by a male-dominated medical establishment. We insist on the absolute right of a woman to an abortion. We support the life-affirming right of women to choose when and if to bear children.”

King, “Why Women?” in “The Eco-Feminist Imperative” (1981) (p. 11)

“We oppose war and we recognize its terrible force when we see it, undeclared but all around us. For to us war is the violence against women in all forms rape, battery, economic exploitation and intimidation and it is the racist violence against indigenous peoples here in the US and around the world, and it is the violence against the earth.

We recognize and respect the beauty of cultural diversity as we abhor racism. Racism divides us from our sisters, it lines the pockets of the exploiters and underlies the decimation of whole peoples and their homelands. The imperialism of white, male, western culture has been more destructive to other peoples and cultures than any imperialist power in the history of the world, just as it has brought us to the bring of ecological catastrophe.”

King, “Why Women?” in “The Eco-Feminist Imperative” (1981) (pp. 11-12)

“We believe that a culture against nature is a culture against women. We know we must get out from under the feet of men as they go about their projects of violence. In pursuing these projects men deny and dominate women and nature. It is time to reconstitute our culture in the name of that nature, and of peace and freedom, and it is women who can show the way. We have to be the voice of the invisible, of nature who cannot speak for herself in the political arenas of our society, of the children yet to be born and of the women who are forcibly silenced in our mental institutions and our prisons. We have been the keepers of the home, the children and the community. We learn early to be observe, attend, and nurture. And whether or not we become biological mothers, we use these nurturant powers daily as we go about our ordinary work. … The political and the personal are joined: the activities of women as feminists and anti-militarists, and the activities of women struggling in our neighborhoods and communities for survival and dignity are the same struggle.”