Ten Thousand Things
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"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

Alter-globalist, Ecofeminist, & Biodiversity Activist VANDANA SHIVA wins 2007 Blue Planet Award

"Let the seed be exhaustless, let it never get exhausted, let it bring forth seed next year."
– Indian peasant prayer

Global environmental activist, physicist, & author Vandana Shiva has been presented
the 2007 Blue Planet Award, an international environmental award, by the Berlin-based Foundation for Ethics and Economics (ethecon).

First known for her support for indigenous peoples' rights in India and traditional Vedic culture, Shiva also championed the role of women in ecological activism, similarly to Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt movement. During the 1970's, Shiva participated in the Chipko movement, spearheaded by women directly affected by deforestation, that sought to reclaim traditional forest rights. In 1993, Shiva received the Right Livelihood Award,"...for placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse."

Earlier, Shiva founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology and Navdanya, which seeks to protect biodiversity, small farmers, and the earth. In 2007, Navdanya began interventions in the suicide belt of Vidarbha, seeking to undo the demoralization of small farmers overwhelmed by the inhumane corporate-based GMO-based chemical monocultures of cotton by supporting their transition back to traditional biodiverse organic farming. In 2008, they will hold their first harvest of hope at the "Seeds of Hope Festival" in Mumbai.

Shiva became globally renowned for her successful 2000 challenge, in the European patent office, of a neem fungicide patent granted to US firm WR Grace and Company and the US Department of Health between 1994 to 2000. After the patent was revoked, WR Grace appealed, but lost again in 2005, after the Indian government fought back, arguing that neem medicinal use is part of traditional Indian medicine. Now the Indian government is "racing" to catalog traditional Indian knowledge to prevent further misappropriation after discovering that the US patent office has granted thousands of patents on products based on traditional Indian plants.

Shiva has also been a global leader in anti-biopiracy movement that views seeds as something that naturally belongs to all people, not just a few large corporations who seek to control them, thus the people dependent upon them for sustenance. Ethecon cited this as part of the reason for awarding her the Blue Planet Award: "Ms. Shiva is fighting an ardent struggle against the pirate practices of multinational corporations for the preservation of safe seeds and against genetically manipulated seeds." The German advocacy organisation also includes Shiva's efforts to encourage global sustainability, diversity and fair trading as well as suppport for peace and democracy movements, particularly in Burma.

Shiva's 2005 book, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace asserts that the privatization of land, starting in 18th-century Britain, with the Enclosure Movement that forced rural people off commonly held grounds, was the attitudinal source of disposability of environmental resources, human beings, and cultural diversity. She says we see the 21st century outcome of the idea of disposability in genetic engineering, the privatization of natural resources, and the theft of collectively created cultural knowledge.

Shiva edited Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed, published this year by South End Press. Based on the biannual Terra Madre World Meeting of Food Communities, the book lays out a socially and ecological framework for agriculture and food.

An advisor to the International Forum on Globalization, one of Shiva's publication at their website confronts the outsourcing of toxic waste to Third World countries.

Shiva's acceptance speech:

Vandana Shiva on The Occasion of The Blue Planet Award Ceremony 2007

"I greet you from my country India, which I am currently not able to leave by reason of a sudden illness. The doctors have imposed a strict ban from travelling on me.

"How I would have loved to join the Blue Planet Award Ceremony – I am very happy about the award and thankful to everyone who has intended it for me. My special thanks go to the famous artist Otto Piene who designed this original artwork for me. I receive the Blue Planet Award 2007, representing all the people who are committed to peace, justice, sustainability and against exploitation, genetic engineering and the subjugation of the earth to the controlling interest of corporate organizations.

"My thanks go to the ethecon foundation for their outstanding work in our common aims and I encourage you not to fade in your fight for a better world. We need people like you. Do not give up. For it is about time to postulate enforceable rights for every life form on the planet. The increasing marketing of water, foods and clothes has to be stopped and taken from the big companies. Because in the areas where water has been passed into private hands, its price has increased tenfold. Especially the Nestle corporation is responsible for this fatal development. The bottling of water for sale as practised by Nestle is nothing else but water theft. Nestle is also responsible for the burning rain forests in Indonesia. Because Nestle is one of the main consumers of palm oil which is grown in huge plantations on the acreages of the ruined rain forest. Palm oil is an ingredient of junk food and Nestle is willing to habituate children in poor countries to this junk food by means of dubious advertising campaigns – in their own interest and against the children's health.

Justifiably we can state that Nestle is destroying the planet and the health of the future generation. In so far I absolutely agree with the conferment of the Black Planet Award to Nestle, this corporation has more than deserved it. Another negative aspect is that this entire unjust system of corporate dominance is even subsidized by public means. We need to make sure this public money, therefore our money, will serve the ecological agriculture of peasants. Other than that, I hope the European population will strike back at the importation of gene-modified foods. The northern administrations should make sure big companies will keep out of the food production. But the opposite is taking place.

The American government and others ignore international agreements concerning the abolition of starvation, also for the sake of personal integration: Many members of the government used to be employees of the aforesaid companies. This is a danger to democracy. The poor countries are an immense, even the biggest business market for the products of the agro industry.

The corporations force off license fees from our farmers, money for patented seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Simultaneously, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund regulate the conditions for the foreign trade. The Indian population, for example, pays twice as much for their grain as their exporters. As a result, my fellow countrymen and women starve, because they are refused the foods they produce themselves.

How can it be that farmers who grow foods suffer from starvation and that they cannot even keep their own food for themselves and their families? This difficulty stems from the dependence on seeds, fertilizers and pesticides which are bought by the agro industry for dear money. This does not only lead to starvation, but it also causes the destruction of nature. Thousands of farmers commit suicide, because their burden of debt is crushing them.
Besides, some people told me they sold their wives or their children, others sold one of their kidneys. We need a new sustainability system. The key issues should be: How can the soil be used best, and without genetic engineering? What is the healthiest way, what is just, how can we best benefit from diversity of species?

Dear friends, I wish for your meeting in Berlin to be a great success and my thoughts will be with you. Thanks again for the great honor you are granting me. The Blue Planet Award should be a symbol of a better world. I will cherish it and I send my best regards to you.

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