Citizens of an Earth Democracy: Vandana Shiva Offers a Vision for our Times

Washington, DC, March 2, 2009. Vandana Shiva speaks at Capitol Climate Action. Photo: © 2009 Pete Muller/Greenpeace

If you haven't heard the well-known Indian nuclear-physicist-turned activist Vandana Shiva speak recently, then please read this book. If you have heard her, then read it anyway, for in more detail than a single speech can ever give, you'll find a presentation of facts, experience, and connections addressing the triple crises of climate, energy, and food. This book is a resource to help readers understand and, in turn, educate.

"Our ideas of a good life are based on production and consumption patterns that the use of fossil fuel gave rise to. We cling to these patterns without reflecting on the fact that they have become a human addiction only over the past 50 years and that maintaining this short-term, non-sustainable pattern of living for another 50 years comes at the risk of wiping out millions of species and destroying the very conditions for human survival on the planet."

Yes, it is that serious. In this concise work Dr. Shiva weaves together information from international academic studies, field research, and experience from two decades of her Navdanya ("Nine Seeds") program ("for promoting ecological agriculture based on biodiversity, for economic and food security").

Her conclusion, presented on page one of Soil Not Oil: "Peak oil and the end of cheap oil make it imperative that we change the way we live. We need to move beyond oil. We need to reinvent society, technology, and economy. We need to do it fast and we need to do it creatively. We can."

A New Version of Development

Examples of problems and ways out are found in four chapters. The first addresses the politics of climate change, or "climate chaos," which we are already witnessing: "Extreme droughts, extreme floods, and extreme cyclones are part of the destabilization of the climate due to greenhouse gases." Examples of families, communities and entire regions in India that have been adversely affected bring the statistics' meanings home.

"The approaching climate crisis is a consequence of nearly two centuries of dependence by industrialized countries of fossil fuels. Industrialization is equated with a transition to a fossil fuel economy. Unfortunately, development too has been defined as industrialization."

But this kind of 'development' is unsustainable and deeply unjust. "In a period of peak oil and climate change," writes Shiva, "we need to de-link it (development) from oil. We need to relink it to the maintenance of living systems on the basis of living energies. We need to relink it to soil. We need to do this not just to mitigate climate change. We need to do it so we can adapt. And we need to do it to establish social and ecological justice."

Current 'conventional wisdom' and programs to counter climate change cannot succeed. The author examines one policy in some detail: carbon trading, or "privatizing the atmospheric commons," and "creating a supermarket of pollution." Carbon and emissions trading programs were recommended by both the Kyoto Protocol and the influential 2006 Stern report on the devastating economic costs of climate change. Under the Protocol, industrial countries are awarded "property rights" to the atmosphere -- and with them the right to pollute and to trade these rights. By 'investing' in a project in a developing country that reduces carbon emissions, the 'investor' in an industrialized country gets Certified Emission Reduction Units which can be used to meet its obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By developing green abroad, corporations get credits that allow them to pollute at home." Under the Kyoto Protocol this is called a Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM. The result of this policy is to "create a market in pollution," says Dr. Shiva, that is "ethically perverse," because basically the polluter gets paid, as slightly cleaner companies profit by selling their pollution rights to dirtier ones. The really 'clean' producers, such as small farmers and traditional farming communities, do not even feature in the scheme.

The False Promise of Biofuels

"Industrial biofuels are not the fuels of the poor; they are the foods of the poor transformed into heat, electricity, and fuel for the rich."

Another area of great challenge is the development of industrial "biofuels" for which basic foodstuffs like corn or palm oil are refined, using great amounts of water and electricity, into substitutes for petroleum for wealthy markets. "The entire structure built on fossil fuels is seeking to be maintained and expanded on the basis of oil from plants," writes Shiva. This heavily subsidized program in the north has contributed to hunger and rapidly rising food prices for the poor of the Global South, and to the destruction of ecologically critical rainforest for development of biofuel crops.

Related to the ripoff of natural resources from the south to fuel cars in the north is increased governmental commitment, as in India, to the automobile as the key form of transport to the detriment of more ecological and economical forms of public and self-powered transportation, from trains to bicycle rickshaws.

A Biodiversity Economy

The author makes the case for greater reliance on domesticated animals for work and transport, as well as bicycles, bicycle rickshaws -- and walking!

The closing chapter offers a well-argued call for the de-industrialization of agriculture and "powering down" of fossil fuel use, with a parallel "powering up" of quality of life. The "re-localization of our food systems has become an ecological and social imperative," she writes. We must rely less on the expensive transport of produce over long distances. Industrial processing in a fossil fuel economy supported by the "ultimate subsidy" (of) militarized support for the extraction of fossil fuels" -- must be scaled back. If it is tapped, says Vandana Shiva, the largest energy source we have "is the internal energy of human beings in all its dimensions -- spiritual, cultural, emotional, intellectual, physical."

Soil Not Oil can perhaps be considered an ecological companion to Naomi Klein's important 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which draws parallels through recent history between the growth in neoliberal economics and the harsh military force used to support and defend it. On her side, Shiva tells the tales of ecological and personal disasters (including farmer suicides in India) stemming from industrialized, ëfree-market' globalization, corporate control over seeds and more.

She calls on us to see "the biodiversity economy" as "the sustainable alternative to the fossil fuel economy," one that will "make a transition to an age beyond oil." A "carbon democracy" values and shares the "useful carbon" related to the natural growth cycles of the earth, its plant and animal life. "A bottom-up search for sustainability creates an Earth Democracy based on living economies."

And now a critique, less of Dr. Shiva than of her fine publishers, the progressive South End Press, in Cambridge, MA. Something serious is missing from this valuable work, which makes it less useful than it could be: printed footnotes at the back of the book -- and an index. A small line on the last page directs readers to a PDF on-line document with 'notes and citations' (see below for link). This document does not even include the book's title and author. Although there are no long discourses in the notes, there could be, and unless you have a print-out in hand as you read you won't know. And you may miss the valuable resources cited and the wealth of research on which the book is based, a total of 225 footnotes over 144 pages. Without an index, the book is difficult to use for reference.

Finally, for more from the author and others on these issues, please consider ordering the 45-minute documentary film Women from Planet Diversity. The film was made during the Planet Diversity festival and conference in Bonn, Germany, in May 2008, and follows Vandana Shiva and many others as they explore crucial connections between biodiversity and cultural diversity, the future of food and agriculture, and life on earth. All are urging: soil, not oil.

For More Information

Women and Life On Earth, www.wloe.org

Navdanya (www.navdanya.org). "Navdanya" means nine crops that represent India's collective source of food security. The main aim of the Navdanya biodiversity conservation programme is to support local farmers, rescue and conserve crops and plants that are being pushed to extinction and make them available through direct marketing.

South End Press link to resources and endnotes from Soil Not Oil : http://www.southendpress.org/images/cms/SoilNotOil_Endnotes.pdf