Tuesday, April 29, 2008

*Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace*

Posted by Media Release

Photo courtesy of here.

Worldfest proudly presents the 2008 keynote: Dr. Vandana Shiva (May 2, 4pm, TUC Great Hall, free and open to the public)

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, editor, prolific author and one of the most important activists of our time.  She is founder of *Navdanya*, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers’ rights and is the Founding Director of Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, a network of researchers specializing in ecology, health and sustainability.  She has also established a school for sustainability Bija Vidyapeeth on the Navdanya Biodiversity Farm in Doon Valley.

Dr. Shiva has also been called upon by several national governments for her expertise, as well as served as advisor to nongovernmental institutions, including the Women’s Environment & Development Network, and the Third World Network.  She sits on the Board of the International Forum on Globalisation and World Future Council and she is the Vice President of the global movement, Slow Food International.  Her work has garnered numerous awards, among them, the Right to Livelihood Award, known as the alternative Nobel Prize “ . . . For placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse.” She is also the recipient of the Global 500 Award of the United Nations Environment Programme and the UN Earth Day International Award for her commitment to environmental sustainability.

Earth Democracy is the subject of her keynote, in which she identifies the threat that monocultures, industrial food technologies, such as genetic engineering, and our unhealthy dependence on oil and petrochemicals pose to life and livelihood around the world.  According to Shiva: “The web of life is a food web. Today, this web is severely threatened by new technology to manipulate seed and terminate its fertility, by the obsession with monocultures, by the excessive use of oil and petrochemical based inputs, by the diversion of food to make biofuel to run automobiles. In effect we are eating oil and our food is being transformed into oil.

Across the world, food riots are taking place. In Mexico there have been tortilla riots. In Italy, pasta protests. In India, people have attacked ration shops in West Bengal. In Mauritiana and Mazambique, in Burkina Fas and Senegal, people have descended on streets to fight for food. 33 countries face social unrest due to rising food prices.

Food democracy has become vital to defend people’s food rights.  And food democracy is a vital pillar of Earth Democracy.

Either we will produce good food for all, working with gaia and her laws, or we will have no food at all. Good food for all is not just possible, it has become a necessity.”

Dr. Shiva has been featured in several documentaries, including *The Corporation, Fed up! Genetic Engineering, Industrial Agriculture and Sustainable Alternatives,* and most recently in *Flow:_For_Love_of_Water*, a competitor in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.  Her most recent books are *Water Wars* and *Earth Democracy*.

This event is sponsored by the Leadership Lecture Series, Student Activities & Leadership Development, The Women’s Studies Department & The UC Women’s Center and MainStreet.

For more info go to http://www.uc.edu/sald or call 556.6115.

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