To learn more about the upcoming Special Edition of Satya and Call for Submissions, click here.

June 1997 The Satya Interview: Vananda Shiva on Rio plus Five

Photo courtesy of Vananda Shiva

Indian ecofeminist, physicist, and social justice campaigner Vandana Shiva has long been a voice against globalization and environmental destruction. Satya asked her for her reflections on what the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, achieved and how far Agenda 21, the plan governments agreed to in Rio, has been put into practice.

Q: What have been the biggest let-downs and what remain the biggest possibilities since Rio?

A: As far as the formal processes are concerned, it's been a downhill slide since Rio. Personally, I had put my highest expectations on the outcome of sustainable agriculture in Agenda 21. I had put in a tremendous amount of energy on the biodiversity convention [part of Agenda 21], which can still be a very transformative international agreement. But, in the last five years, we've seen everything in the convention being blocked.

    If we have seen anything happen in the last five years at all, it has been that the process of globalization has accelerated the kinds of problems that were leading to climate change. We are pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We are using up more fossil fuels. We are globalizing the United States' consumption and production patterns that we knew were part of the problem. In a way, globalization and the World Trade Organization have been used as an amnesia - to forget what we had learned environmentally.

    The same goes for biodiversity. We were learning that genetic erosion and factory farming are extremely inefficient methods of trying to do agriculture. They are non-sustainable. What has been done because of the globalization of agriculture is that "mad cow" and "mad pig" systems are being exported to the rest of the world. Herbicide use is being pushed as the best way to do agriculture. I think I agree with the group of non-governmental organizations that put out the statement this Earth Day that it is not "Rio plus five," but "Rio minus five."

Q: The Rio summit had a parallel indigenous peoples' summit. What has happened to that movement?

A: The movement of people mobilizing for the protection of nature, for the protection of their life-support base, and for the protection of their livelihoods and cultures has actually grown in these last five years. It has a larger number of people participating. It is more permanently in place. It is looking at deeper issues. In fact, it is the only political challenge available in the world right now.

Q: Have you seen any progress around the world in Southern countries that was stimulated by the Earth Summit?

A: I think it is in the area of biodiversity, because very few people were aware of patents and intellectual property rights at the time of Rio. Today, the issues of "No Patents on Life," stopping the piracy of indigenous knowledge, and the piracy of cells and blood of indigenous people, have become a major concern and movement worldwide. Similarly on biotechnology: there was a handful of groups that were looking at genetic engineering at the time of Rio. Today, we not only have many resources, but participants engaged in the issue. The movement is taking place on a very large scale across the world. The new technologies for agriculture and the new property regimes around intellectual property rights - these are stimulating mass-based movements in large parts of the world.

Back

Next