Vandana Shiva (born 5 November 1952) is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and anti-globalization author.Who's Who of Women and the Environment – Vandana Shiva. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Last visited 2012. Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. She is often referred to as "Gandhi of grain" for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement.
Shiva is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization (with Jerry Mander, Ralph Nader, and Helena Norberg-Hodge), and a figure of the anti-globalisation movement. She has argued in favour of many traditional practices, as in her interview in the book Vedic Ecology (by Ranchor Prime). She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, Spain's Socialist Party's think tank. She is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society.International Organization for a Participatory Society – Interim Committee Retrieved 25 September 2012
Her book, along with Shreya Jani, called "Slow Living" was published in March 2026. It invites readers to ask themselves what they can do about climate change. It asks readers to be aware and to take small steps to restore the Earth.
Early life and education
Vandana Shiva was born in Dehradun. Her father was a conservator of forests, and her mother was a farmer with a love for nature. She was educated at St. Mary's Convent High School, Nainital, and at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Dehradun.Joy Palmer, David Cooper, Peter Blaze Corcoran: Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment. Routledge, 2002, , p. 313
Shiva studied physics at Panjab University in Chandigarh, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1972.Benjamin F. Shearer, Barbara S. Shearer: Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Press, 1997, p. 364 After a brief stint at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, she moved to Canada to pursue a master's degree in the philosophy of science at the University of Guelph in 1977 where she wrote a thesis entitled "Changes in the Concept of Periodicity of Light". In 1978, she completed and received her PhD in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, focusing on philosophy of physics; her dissertation was titled "Hidden Variables and Locality in Quantum Theory" in which she discussed the mathematical and philosophical implications of hidden variable theories that fall outside of the purview of Bell's theorem. She later went on to pursue interdisciplinary research in science, technology, and environmental policy at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.
Career Vandana Shiva has written and spoken extensively about advances in the fields of agriculture and food. Intellectual property rights, biodiversity, biotechnology, bioethics, and genetic engineering are among the fields where Shiva has fought through activist campaigns. She has assisted grassroots organisations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria with opposition to advances in agricultural development via genetic engineering.
In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. This led to the creation of Navdanya in 1991, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. Navdanya, which translates to "Nine Seeds" or "New Gift", is an initiative of the RFSTE to educate farmers of the benefits of maintaining diverse and individualised crops rather than accepting offers from monoculture food producers. The initiative established over 40 seed banks across India to provide regional opportunity for diverse agriculture. In 2004 Shiva started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley, Uttarakhand, in collaboration with Schumacher College, UK.
In the area of intellectual property rights and biodiversity, Shiva and her team at the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology challenged the biopiracy of neem, basmati and wheat.
In 1990, she wrote a report for the FAO on Women and Agriculture titled "Most Farmers in India are Women". She founded the gender unit at the International Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu and was a founding board member of the Women's Environment & Development Organisation (WEDO). She received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993, an award established by Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull.
Shiva's book Making Peace With the Earth discusses biodiversity and the relationship between communities and nature. "Accordingly, she aligns the destruction of natural biodiversity with the dismantling of traditional communities—those who 'understand the language of nature'". David Wright wrote in a review of the book that to Shiva, "the Village becomes a symbol, almost a metaphor for 'the local' in all nations".
Shiva has also served as an advisor to governments in India and abroad as well as non-governmental organisations, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women's Environment & Development Organisation and the Third World Network. She chairs the Commission on the Future of Food set up by the Region of Tuscany in Italy and is a member of the Scientific Committee that advised former prime minister Zapatero of Spain. Shiva is a member of the Steering Committee of the Indian People's Campaign Against WTO. She is a councilor of the World Future Council. Shiva serves on Government of India Committees on Organic Farming. She participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.
In 2021, she advised the government of Sri Lanka to ban inorganic fertilizers and pesticides stating "This decision will definitely help farmers become more prosperous. Use of organic fertilizer will help provide agri products rich with nutrients while retaining the fertility of the land." The policy applied overnight, with the main purpose to save State foreign exchange bills on imported fertilizers, caused a crisis with a significant reduction of farming output in several sectors, hitting the tea industry in particular and reducing rice yields were by one third. The ban was overturned seven months later.
Activism Her work on agriculture started in 1984 after the violence in Punjab and the Bhopal disaster caused by a gas leak from Union Carbide's pesticide manufacturing plant. Her studies for the UN University led to the publication of her book The Violence of the Green Revolution.Fight Droughts with Science: Better crops could ease India's monsoon worries, Henry I. Miller, Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Wall Street Journal, 12 August 2009.Father of the Green Revolution – He Helped Feed the World! ja "Determining the Number Norman Borlaug – The Green Revolution", ScienceHeroes.com Tohtori Amy R. Piercen mukaan useimmat lukuisista arvioista yli miljardista ihmishengestä perustuvat ennustettuihin nälänhätiin, jotka jäivät toteutumatta, ja ovat epävarmoja. Piercen mukaan silti vaikutus kuolleisuuteen oli todella näin suuri, koska ravitsemus vaikuttaa niin voimakkaasti lapsikuolleisuuteen ja elinikään.
In an interview with David Barsamian, Shiva argues that the seed-chemical package promoted by green revolution agriculture has depleted fertile soil and destroyed living ecosystems. In her work Shiva cites data allegedly demonstrating that today there are over 1400 pesticides that may enter the food system across the world.
Shiva is a founding councillor of the World Future Council (WFC). The WFC was formed in 2007 "to speak on behalf of policy solutions that serve the interests of future generations." Their primary focus has been on climate security.
She supports the crime of ecocide being introduced to the International Criminal Court stating "The ideal of limitless growth is leading to limitless violations of the rights of the Earth and of the rights of nature. This is ecocide".
Seed freedom Vandana supports the idea of seed freedom, or the rejection of patents on new plant lines or cultivars. She has campaigned against the implementation of the WTO 1994 Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, which broadens the scope of patents to include life forms. Shiva has criticised the agreement as having close ties with the corporate sector and opening the door to further patents on life. Shiva calls the patenting of life 'biopiracy', and has fought against attempted patents of several indigenous plants, such as basmati. In 2005, Shiva's was one of the three organisations that won a 10-year battle in the European Patent Office against the biopiracy of Neem by the US Department of Agriculture and the corporation WR Grace. In 1998, Shiva's organisation Navdanya began a campaign against the biopiracy of basmati rice by US corporation RiceTec Inc. In 2001, following intensive campaigning, RiceTec lost most of its claims to the patent.
Golden rice Shiva strongly opposes golden rice, a breed of rice that has been genetically engineered to biosynthesise beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. Shiva contends that Golden Rice is more harmful than beneficial in her explanation of what she calls the "Golden Rice hoax": "Unfortunately, Vitamin A rice is a hoax, and will bring further dispute to plant genetic engineering where public relations exercises seem to have replaced science in promotion of untested, unproven and unnecessary technology... This is a recipe for creating hunger and malnutrition, not solving it." Adrian Dubock says that golden rice is as cheap as other rice and vitamin A deficiency is the greatest reason for blindness and causes 28% of global preschool child mortality.No, Zac Goldsmith, golden rice is not 'evil GM'. It saves people's lives, Adrian Dubock, The Guardian, 4 November 2013. Shiva has claimed that the women of Bengal grow and eat 150 greens which can do the same,Can Biotechnology Help Fight World Hunger?, CONGRESSIONAL HUNGER CENTER BIOTECH BRIEFING. Washington D.C., Capital Hill, 2012. while environmental consultant Patrick Moore suggests that most of these 250 million children do not eat much else than a bowl of rice a day.By opposing Golden Rice, Greenpeace defies its own values – and harms children, The Globe and Mail, 15 October 2013. In the 2013 report "The economic power of the Golden Rice opposition", two economists, Wesseler and Zilberman from LMU Munich and the University of California, Berkeley respectively calculated that the absence of Golden Rice in India had caused the loss of over 1.4 million lives in the previous ten years.
GM, India and suicides
In a 2013 opinion piece, Shiva wrote, "Soaring seed prices in India have resulted in many farmers being mired in debt and turning to suicide." She goes on to say that, "The creation of seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of superprofits in the form of royalties, and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures has created a context for debt, suicides, and agrarian distress." She then states that, "According to data from the Indian government, nearly 75 percent of rural debt is due to purchased inputs. Farmers' debt grows as Monsanto profits grow. It is in this systemic sense that GM seeds are those of suicide."
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) twice analysed academic articles and government data and concluded the decrease and that there was no evidence on "resurgence" of farmer suicide.
Ecofeminism