Vandana Shiva

EARTH DEMOCRACY Creating living economies, living democracies, living cultures

This essay trains the lens differently upon the phenomenon of globalisation by focusing upon the long-term effects felt by the people of the south when their very livelihood is threatened by policies and practices of multinational corporations. The rationale for framing this debate in terms of popular culture is to show that such systemic and systematic impoverishment results in sowing the seeds of terrorism. By connecting globalisation to terrorism, and suggesting a solution through democratic and localized forms of reform, the article brings to light the need for immediate ethical action, both by the state and by the masses.

The problem: the inseparability of globalisation and terrorism

Globalisation and terrorism are the dominant terms of our times. They are usually treated as separate, but are intimately interconnected at multiple levels as they reinforce each other and create vicious cycles.

Globalisation as economic terrorism

To terrorise is to fill with terror and fear, to coerce by threat or violence. Terrorism is the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion. Globalisation in the form of coercive rules of trade and trade liberalisation, whether embodied in the structural adjustment conditionalities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), or in the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is clearly a form of terrorism. The financial conditionalities of the World Bank and the trade sanctions of the WTO are the systematic use of terror against the poor and the Third World to coerce them to give up what little they have and transform it into the property and markets of global corporations. This terrorism is particularly vicious in the area of vital resources such as biodiversity and water, and basic needs such as food. In this sense globalisation is genocidal. But it is also suicidal, as recorded in the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, Vivendi and other corporations.

Globalisation as source of insecurity and exclusion, the context for the rise of terrorism
Globalisation is a war against people, especially the poor, as the economic exclusion and economic insecurity intrinsic to globalisation also create a climate of fear and
South Asian Popular Culture Vol. 2, No. 1, April 2004, pp. 518 ISSN 1474-6689 print/ISSN 1474-6697 online 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/1474668042000210483

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hopelessness, especially among those who are unable to grasp the roots of their insecurity in the terrorism of globalisation. The negative economy of globalisation creates a culture of despair and fear. It integrates markets globally, but excludes people from the economy and from democratic decision making. Consequently, movements for the defence of peoples rights to livelihoods and basic needs are the democratic and peaceful response to the terrorism of globalisation. These are movements based on hope they strive to create a better world, because they focus on economic injustice by seeking to correct it through democracy. I want to engender systematic social movements that seek to correct such rampant modes of globalisation that produce systemic economic exclusions and end up creating political, social and cultural exclusion, and insecurity. Exclusion and insecurity provide fertile ground for breeding extremism, terrorism and fundamentalism. It is a child of economies built without concern for people. From another angle of critical scrutiny, it is evident that democracy emptied of economic freedom and ecological freedom becomes a potent breeding ground for fundamentalism and terrorism. Over the past two decades, I have witnessed conflicts over development and conflicts over natural resources mutate into communal conflicts, culminating in extremism and terrorism. My book Violence of the Green Revolution was an attempt to understand the ecology of terrorism. The Harvest of Rage drew similar links between the Oklahoma bombing and the US farm crisis, to explain how aggressive state policies create fertile ground for extremist fundamentalist ideologies and actions.

Globalisation and the rise of xenophobic fundamentalist politics

When democracy is emptied of economic content, and national politics is emptied of economic sovereignty by shifting power and decision making outside national boundaries to the WTO, World Bank, IMF and global corporations representative democracy feeds on and nurtures a politics of divide and rule on the basis of ethnicity, caste and religion. Class issues and economic justice disappear, only to be replaced by the politics of identity. In a democracy, the economic agenda is the political agenda. When the former is hijacked by the World Bank, IMF or the WTO it is democracy that is decimated. The only cards left in the hands of politicians eager to garner votes are those of race, religion and ethnicity, which subsequently give rise to fundamentalism. And fundamentalism effectively fills the vacuum left by a decaying state system that refuses to nourish its people on real dividends of livelihoods. In an inverted scale, impoverished democracy breeds fundamentalisms of all kinds. I have fought the explosive tendencies in economic globalisation that erode cultural diversity and identity, and which assault the political freedoms of citizens. Instead of integrating people, corporate globalisation is tearing communities apart. Social and political polarisations are also useful threats that serve as diversions and smokescreen to push through the agenda of corporate globalisation against which there is worldwide resistance and backlash. There is in fact a comfortable partnership between the supporters of globalisation and the promoters of the politics of hate. By keeping peoples energies diverted from issues of basic needs and economic democracy, xenophobia and communalism help keep an unjust and inequitable economic order in place. And the rise of terrorism is used to push forward the free trade globalisation agenda. In Seattle in 1999, where I forcefully represented the Global

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South, democratic forces ground the WTO to a halt. We had jokingly referred to it as the World Terrorist Organisation. However, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were used to resurrect a failing WTO and even enlarge its powers. As a Third World country representative has stated: September 11th is an act to be lamented by all humanity, but what gives cause for even greater regret are the economic benefits that were extracted by the industrialised countries out of this disaster. I would even venture to say that if September 11 had not happened, the Doha ministerial declaration would not have contained even half of its obligations. (Quoted in Aileen Keva, Power Politics in the WTO, Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, November 2002: 11) During the WTO ministerial talks at Doha, Pakistan was silenced by a one billion dollar plus aid package to reward Pakistans support of the US in Afghanistan. President Musharraf was in Washington while talks were underway one day after the conclusion of the Doha negotiations, and the aid package was ignored in Washington. India, too, was silenced at the last minute by making the accusation that opposing a new round for enlarged WTO powers implied supporting terrorism. While India and Pakistan were silenced in Doha, communities were divided and pitted against one another in the subcontinent, which in turn promoted a climate of insecurity. At a local level, geo-corporations made huge strides during the worst ethnic violence since Indias independence, wherein both General Motors crops and a new Patent Act were cleared. India, one of the largest democratic nations, was silenced by the subversive, imperial voice of corporations under the guise of free trade. It is a little known fact that the Homeland Security Act has been used to create corporate subsidies for the information and biotechnology industry, and has been used to give immunity to the pharmaceutical industry. In India, all anti-legislation in key sectors was passed when the communal frenzy was at its peak. Those responsible for corporate globalisation are increasingly trying to criminalise dissent and democracy by identifying the movements for justice and peace with terrorism. The war against terror becomes a war against people fighting the terror of globalisation. The arrest of 20 young activists of the anti-globalisation movement in Italy on 15 November 2002, using old laws from the fascist period, a few days after the very successful and totally peaceful rally of a million people in Florence at the European Social Forum, is an example of how all democratic protest against undemocratic, brutal economic globalisation is being criminalised and labelled as terrorist. In the language and perception of those supporting corporate globalisation, defence of democracy = terrorism. Instead of addressing the root causes of terrorism and fundamentalism in the growth of economic insecurity and collapse of economic democracy by ensuring that peoples needs are met and their livelihoods protected, states across the world are equipping themselves with laws to shut down democracy and freedom in the name of fighting terror. Whether it is the Patriot Act in the US, Prevention of Terrorism Act in India (POTA), or the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Society Act in the UK (ATCSA), new laws created after 11 September 2001 are not just laws against terrorists they are also laws against citizens democratic defence of their fundamental freedoms that are being

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trampled upon by the forces of globalisation. Fear and violence are currently the dominant forms of human expression, and ruling through fear and violence are becoming the dominant mechanism for governance. In another period, it would have been described as the rise of fascism and totalitarianism, with the totalitarianism of corporate control over markets combining with totalitarianism of militarised states taking away from people their fundamental rights and freedoms. My role, as I see it, is not to stop globalisation but to demand an equitable sharing of resources and profits, and demand accountability from organisations such as the WTO at a structural level.

Roots of terrorism
Even though globalisation and terrorism are interconnected and support each other, the dominant system emphasises that the roots of terrorism lie not in economic insecurity and political exclusion or economic globalisation but in artificially constructed insular identities. This Cartesian essentialising is doubly convenient. On the one hand, it divorces terrorism from its roots by separating it from the context of insecurity and exclusion engendered by globalisation. On the other, it allows the disease of globalisation to be offered as the cure for the symptoms of terrorism that it has given rise to. However, extremist violence and religious intolerance are growing rather than disappearing as economic globalisation spreads. It is helpful to pause and reflect on the context which creates violence, because that can help us find ways to build cultures of non-violence. Violence and non-violence are not essential characteristics of particular groups of people or cultures. They are potentials which emerge according to the context. Just as quantum measurement influences the property of quanta, the political and economic context create potential for violence or non-violence. The year 2001 will be etched in our memory as a year in which the vicious cycle of violence was unleashed worldwide the Taliban bombing the 2,000-year-old images of peace, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, of terrorists blowing up the World Trade Center on 11 September, of attempting to blow up the Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir on 1 October, and the Indian Parliament on 13 December, of a global alliance bombing out what remained of Afghanistan after two decades of superpower rivalry and civil war, of Pakistan and India threatening to go to war as 2001 gave way to 2002 indicating that globalisation in its current economic mode is certainly not the route to one world. Terrorism cannot be identified with any particular group, race or religion. We have had terrorists of every race and religion. To understand terrorism we need to understand the roots of terrorism. Why is violence engulfing us so rapidly, so totally? Why has violence become the dominant feature of the human species across cultures? Could the violence characterising human societies in the new millennium be linked with violent structures and institutions we have created to reduce society to markets and humans to consumers?

The solution: ethical globalisation

If terrorism is the dominant category of our times, negativity is the dominant trend. Suicide bombers have become the metaphor of liberation in our age of negativity.

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Negative economies, negative politics, negative cultures are drawing sustenance from each other, pushing our lives into insecurity and non-viability. Negative economies are taking the resources of the poor and converting them into corporate property. They are destroying the earth, spreading non-sustainable production and consumption patterns worldwide and making people dispensable and redundant in every society. They are negative with respect to people and nature, taking more than they return, destroying more than they produce. However, the destruction is externalised, and growth is created artificially. Ironically, as more soil surfaces across the globe are desertified, more biodiversity disappears, more small farmers are uprooted, more people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, more growth appears in the form of super profits for agribusiness. Negative economies are being supported by negative politics inverted states which create freedom for foreign investors and destroy the freedoms of their citizens, corporate states which deregulate corporate activity and over-regulate the everyday life of citizens. Negative politics is also expressed in the death of economic democracy and economic nationalism and the rise of fundamentalist ideologies and cultural nationalism. Negative economies and negative politics feed on and fuel negative cultures and identities. Cultures have been shaped by the land, wherein cultural diversity co-evolved with biological diversity. Cultures have shaped positive identities a sense of self based on sense of place, in ecosystems and economies. As identities are displaced and insecurities grow, identity is shaped by insecurity culture is experienced through negation of the other, since culture as self-expression is destroyed by corporate globalisation. Humanity defines itself through its inhumanity, and this is not an essentialist or romanticised concept of self but rather one that advocates a conscious regeneration of self through legitimate paths of ownership of person, of culture, and of community. The survival imperative demands that we make a transition from negative to the positive from vicious cycles of violence to healthy cycles of non-violence, from negative economies of death and destruction to living economies that sustain life on earth and our lives, from negative politics of corruption and totalitarianism to living democracies which include concern for and participation of all life, from negative cultures that are leading to mutual annihilation to positive cultures based on caring, compassion and conservation. Earth democracy allows the emergence of living economies, living democracy, and living cultures. Ending the madness requires, first, not living under the illusion that globalisation is natural and inevitable and hence nothing can be done about it, but rather that globalisation is a political project and it needs a political response. The political response from us needs to put human beings in all their diversity at the centre of economic thought. We must not allow the annihilation of citizens rights and human rights by all-powerful global corporations. We must stop treating corporations, markets and capital as people for whose protection all the necessary safeguards can be removed from human beings. And we need to evolve an inclusive agenda for human rights which includes all humans and all rights. All liberation movements in recent history have been partial and exclusivist. They excluded other species, they excluded diverse cultures and they excluded womens

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politics of making change through everyday life. For the first time we have an opportunity to seek freedom in inclusive ways, in our diversity, to seek freedom for humans in partnership with other species and to seek freedom non-violently. This inclusivity, this freedom of diversity, is the alternative to the current mode of globalisation. In order to think through an equity-based globalisation model we must ask ourselves a few questions. Why are we as a species destroying the very basis of our survival and existence? Why has insecurity been the result of every attempt to build security? How can we as members of the earth community reinvent security to ensure the survival of all species and the survival and future of diverse cultures? How do we make a shift from life-annihilating tendencies to life-preserving processes? From the ruins resulting from a culture of destruction how do we build cultures that sustain and celebrate life? A major source of threat to our ecological survival and growing culture of insecurity is the rule and domination by abstract constructions, and a denial of the real, the concrete, the life giving. This escape from our biological species/being is historically rooted in the Cartesian/Newtonian divide between mind and matter, between objective and subjective, between primary and secondary qualities. In the reductionist, mechanistic worldview, the constructed has primacy and is more real than reality itself. This domination of abstract construction over lived reality is based on a blindness, a division and separation, decontextualisation and disembeddedness to the disintegration that result from separation of that which is interconnected. Atomisation has become the dominant thought and dominant practice. The false assumption of separability based on abstraction allows the emergence of life-threatening technologies like genetic engineering, and terminator seeds. It allows the dominance of corporations a carefully constructed legal fiction over the lives of real people and citizens. It allows the destruction of real wealth, of soil, water, biodiversity, good food, rich cultures for the creation of fictitious wealth of more than $3 trillion a day, which is nearly 100-fold more than the real goods and services it can command. Closely linked to the rule and reification of abstraction are dominant traits which threaten life in its diversity, self-organisation and self-renewal the monoculture of the mind and the law of the excluded middle. The monoculture of the mind pushes to oblivion and extinction biological and cultural diversity which are the very preconditions of ecological and cultural security. The law of the excluded middle becomes the basis of the legitimisation of exclusion of ecocide and genocide. It shuts out in-between species in nature and culture, and denies the existence of biodiversity on farms, and food from forests. Once we break free of this mental prison and see the world in its interconnectedness and non-separability, new alternatives emerge despair turns to hope, violence gives way to non-violence, and scarcity transforms into abundance and insecurity to security. Globalisation, a paradigm based on competition and war, has created a world of many wars and multiple conflicts; it is time to re-envision this kind of globalisation. We need once more to feel at home on the earth and with each other. We need a new paradigm to respond to the fragmentation caused by various forms of fundamentalism. We need a new movement which allows us to move from the dominant and pervasive culture of violence to one of non-violence, creative peace and life. That is why in India we started the Earth Democracy Movement. Earth democracy involves the reinvention of cultural identity, politics, and the economy. Currently, identity, politics and the economy have all become negative,

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where, most frequently, cultural identity and politics are symbolised by suicide bombings and ethnic cleansing. The global economy is symbolised by corruption scandals, the stock market and destruction of jobs and livelihoods. Cultures, governance systems and economies mutate into negative systems when they are determined and shaped by external forces. Globalisation is, in fact, the replacement of selfdetermined, self-organised systems with externally manipulated systems. Cultures stop growing from a place from the earth; they are invented through globally financed, globally organised fundamentalist ideologies. Earth democracy is based on creating living economies that protect life on earth and provide basic needs and economic security to all. It is based on living democracy which is inclusive. The Earth Democracy Movement is a commitment to go beyond the triple crisis of economic injustice and inequality, ecological non-sustainability, and the decay of democracy and the rise of terrorism. Earth democracy provides an alternative worldview in which humans are embedded in the Earth Family; we are connected to each other through compassion, ecological responsibility and economic justice as objectives of human life. In Earth democracy our primary identities come from the earth, from a sense of place, of rootedness, of limits of sharing within those limits. In Earth democracy positive systems ensure the fundamental right to life of all species, and all peoples are defended. The maintenance of life in its diversity and integrity rather than limitless extraction of profits through monopolies over biodiversity and water and all vital resources is the basis of relationships in Earth democracy. Earth democracy transforms our mind and our actions, and liberates us from patterns of thought and paradigms which have pushed us to our contemporary predicament. It helps to address exclusivist monocultural modes of dominant thinking that lead to: (a) the destruction of resources and the creation of monopolies over land, biodiversity, water and food; (b) the deepening of poverty and the exclusion of millions from livelihoods and economic security; and (c) the destruction of democracy, peace and cultural diversity. Earth democracy enables us to transcend the polarisation, divisions and exclusions that place the economy against ecology, development against environment and people against the planet and against one another in a new culture of hate. In India, it means actively fighting against religious polarisation when Hindus visit a Muslim shrine on their pilgrimage to Sabarimala and Wasiffudin Dagar, when a Muslim singer prays to Durga and Shiva, keeping the ancient Dhrupad tradition alive for a composite culture. It is symbolised in farms rejuvenating biodiversity and in species acting in mutuality to benefit one another. Earth democracy recontextualises humans as one member of the Earth Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbhakam), and diverse cultures in the mosaic of cultural diversity which enriches our lives. I advocate re-embedding humans in the ecological matrix of biological and cultural diversity, which reopens spaces for sustainability, justice and peace by reorganising relationships, restructuring constellations of power and revitalising freedom and democracy. Reclaiming and re-creating the indivisible freedom of all species is the aim of the Earth Democracy Movement, and it embodies two indivisibilities and continuums. The first is the continuum of freedom for all life on earth, and all humans without discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, class and species. The second is the continuum between, and indivisibility of, justice, peace and sustainability without sustainability and a just sharing of the earths bounties there is no justice, and without justice there can be no peace. Earth

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democracy is the democracy of all life, not just humans, and definitely not just humans privileged through class, race, gender and religion. Corporate globalisation ruptures these continuities. It establishes corporate rule through a divide-and-rule policy, and creates competition and conflict between different species and peoples and between different aims. Since other species do not vote, cannot lobby, and have no purchasing power in the marketplace, Earth democracy creates an obligation on us as humans to take their well-being into account. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama said on his 60th birthday: All beings have a right to well being and happiness. We have a duty to ensure their well being. This creates human responsibility as trustees and stewards, instead of the dominant notion of mastery, control and ownership. Earth democracy also nourishes diversity by going beyond the logic of exclusion, of apartheid, of us and them, of either/or, of the law of the excluded middle. It is in the included middle where diversity and creativity flourish in nature and in culture. The law of the included middle also implies multi-functionality, the logic of and of inclusion. It transcends the false polarisation of wild versus cultivated, nature versus culture, or even the false clash of cultures. It allows for the forest farm and the farmed forest, it recognises that biodiversity can be preserved and also support human needs. Gandhis concept of Swadeshi of economic freedom and economic democracy is one of the principles at the core of Earth democracy. Earth democracy puts responsibility and duties at the core of our relationships, with rights flowing from responsibility instead of the current dominant paradigm of rights without responsibility and responsibility without rights. The separation of rights and responsibility is at the root of ecological devastation, and gender and class inequality. Corporations that earn profits from the chemical industry, or from genetic pollution resulting from GM crops, do not have to bear the burden of that pollution. The social and ecological costs are externalised and borne by others who are excluded from the decisions, just as they are excluded from the benefits. Earth democracy is based on those who pay the price having a say, and those who carry responsibility having the rights. This creates the need for direct or basic democracy. On the one hand, this implies decisions moving downwards, from global institutions and centralised governments to local communities. On the other, it implies a shift in our interpretation of sovereignty. Rights to natural resources for maintaining life are natural rights. They are not given by states nor can they be extinguished by states, the WTO or by corporations, even though, under globalisation, attempts are being made to alienate peoples rights to vital resources of land, water and biodiversity. Earth democracy shifts the constellation of power from corporations to people, and rebalances the role and functions of the state which is increasingly taking on undemocratic forms. Earth democracy is about life, and natural rights to the conditions of staying alive. It is everyday life and decisions and freedoms related to everyday living the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the water we drink. It is not just about elections and casting votes once in three or four or five years. It is a permanently vibrant democracy. It combines economic democracy with political democracy and ecological democracy. Earth democracy is not dead, it is alive. Under the present mode of economic or corporate globalisation, democracy, even of the shallow representative kind, is dying. Governments everywhere are betraying the mandates that brought them to power. They are centralising authority and power, both by subverting democratic structures of constitutions and by promulgating ordinances that stifle civil liberties. The Earth

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democracy movement is about living rather that dead democracy. Democracy is dead when governments no longer reflect the will of the people but are reduced to antidemocratic, unaccountable instruments of corporate rule under the constellation of corporate globalisation, as the Enron and Chiquita cases make so evident. Corporate globalisation is centred on corporate profits. In contrast, Earth democracy is based on maintaining cooperation and freedom for all species and people, and operates according to the ecological laws of nature, limiting commercial activity to prevent harm to other species and to people. Earth democracy is exercised through decentralised power and peaceful coexistence, with the greatest powers at the lowest level, and power being delegated upwards on the basis of subsidiarity. This shift is also an ecological imperative. As members of the Earth Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbhakam) we have a share in the earths resources. Rights to natural resources for sustenance are natural rights. They are not given or assigned, and are recognised or ignored. The eminent domain principle inevitably leads to the situation of all for some corporate monopolies over biodiversity through patents, corporate monopolies on water through privatisation and corporate monopolies over food through free trade. The most basic right we have as a species is survival, the right to life. Survival requires guaranteed access to resources. Commons provide that guarantee. Privatisation and enclosures destroy it. Localisation is necessary for recovery of the commons. And Earth democracy is the movement to relocate our minds, our production systems and consumption patterns from the poverty-creating global markets to the sustainability and sharing of the earth community. This shift from global markets to earth citizenship is a shift of focus from globalisation to localisation of power from corporations to citizens.

From dying economies to living economies

The first shift that needs to be made to create living economies from the ruins of dying economies is to value real wealth, not fictitious wealth. Real wealth is our soil, water, biodiversity, it is our creative, productive work, it is our human relationships based on mutuality and love; these are part of the web of life. This real wealth has been destroyed by fictitious wealth that is concentrated in a few hands, and globalisation has accelerated the substitution of real wealth and real value with fictitious wealth and false value. All economic value is therefore reduced not only to market prices but also to global market prices the dollar. In this global dollar economy the world is borderless for capital but not for people. It is based not on productive activities but speculation. For every $1 circulating in the productive world economy, $2050 circulates in the economy of pure finance. The daily trade in goods is only $2025 billion, but the trade in finances is $800 billion to $1 trillion. Creation of money thus becomes hugely unrelated to the creation of value. Having said this, the economy based on speculation has power to destroy the real economy in which people provide for themselves on a daily basis. Hence, the three economies of nature, people and market have been reduced not only to the market but also the phenomenon called the global market, which is dominated by trade in dollars. This dollarisation of the economic value of nature, and products necessary for human survival, is an essential part of globalisation. It is a trend in India, for example,

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made evident in recent advertisements which equate natural resources with dollars and yens. Ecological and social costs, and values, disappear and are destroyed. And the destruction does not register in the global trade figures. The creation of fictitious wealth is destroying work, employment and livelihoods. It is facilitating the takeover of biodiversity through bio-prospecting and of water through privatepublic partnerships. Fictitious wealth is a construct to facilitate the welfare of another fiction the corporation as a person. Over time, all corporate responsibilities have evaporated into a system of absolute rights and absolute irresponsibility. Reclaiming the community and the commons is at the heart of building living economies. The second shift is a shift from labour productivity to resource productivity. Both unemployment and poverty, and, equally important, ecological destruction are rooted in replacing people with machines, toxic chemicals, and fossil fuels. This not only robs people of their livelihoods, and thereby creates poverty, it also ravages the planet and leads to climate change, and is the cause of resource wars. Treating labour alone as an input in production also gives power to capital, and creates a false illusion that more is being produced, when in fact more resources are being consumed. Ecological agriculture can produce 100 units of output using 5 units of input. Industrial agriculture uses 300 units to produce 100 units. Living economies protect resources and peoples livelihoods, they give meaning to us as creators and producers they do not reduce us into two classes, namely a class of consumers and a class of disposable people.

One model for living democracies

Living democracy for us has become a process for building alternatives, while taking back power. To relocate control and decision making over knowledge and biodiversity from the multinational corporations to these self-governing Panchayats, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology and Navdanya launched a movement called the Jaiv Panchayat: Living Democracy, on World Environment Day, 5 June 1999. More than 20,000 people from 200 villages of Uttaranchar gathered at Agastyamuni, Uttaranchal, for the rejuvenation, conservation and protection of biological diversity and knowledge, and adopted the Mandakini Milan Declaration, after the Mandakini River, on the banks of which it was made (see p. 15). A key element in living democracy is the recognition that the right to vital resources is a natural right. It is not given by nation-states, and so it cannot be taken away by corporations through privatisation. As a natural right, the right to life and lifes sustenance is also a common right. Hence, it is both the duty and the right to commons the commons of water of biodiversity, of air. Resisting the privatisation of biodiversity through intellectual property rights (IPRs), the privatisation of water through structural adjustment programmes and trade in services and corporatisation of food and agriculture needs a combination of strategies at local, national and global levels and a shift in the constellation of the power and rights of states, corporations and citizens: (1) At the local level, the recovery of the commons needs the strengthening and assertion of local community rights and peoples sovereign and natural rights to vital resources such as water and biodiversity. (2) At the national level, the recovery of the commons requires a recognition of local community rights and a reinvention of sovereignty, and a shift from states

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Mandakini Milan Declaration 5 June 1999 Agastyamuni, Distt. Rudraprayag, Garhwal, Uttaranchal Today, on 5th June 1999, on the auspicious occasion of World Environment Day, we, the people of Agastyamuni, take the solemn pledge that we will continue to protect our plants, trees, animals, cattle, and our entire diverse biological wealth, as a revered gift and our ancestral heritage. This pledge assumes more significance as it is being taken in Agastyamuni, the sacred land of Rishi Agastya, who through his dedication and research stabilised the mighty Himalayan mountains (therefore the name Agastya the stabilising force). Both humanity and nature have greatly benefited from the diligent research of Maharishi Agastya, Maharishi Jagdamni, Rishi Atri, Mata Anasuiya and other saints. Their work has contributed to the conservation and sustainable use of all kinds of medicinal plants and floral wealth and other precious biodiversity of these mountains. The research has been further enriched by Maharishi Charak and other saints and health practitioners who compiled the volumes of Samhita and Nighantu detailing the uses and properties of our biological resources. These volumes were bestowed to the community for well-being and continue to live through the Ayurveda. From our forefathers we have inherited the right to protect the biodiversity of our Himalayan region and also the corresponding duty to utilise these biological resources for the good of all people. Therefore we pledge, by way of this Declaration, that we shall not let any destructive elements unjustly exploit and monopolise these precious resources through illegal means. So that in our communities and countries we can truly establish a living peoples democracy wherein each and every individual can associate herself/himself with the conservation, sustainable and just use of these biological resources in her/his everyday practical living. This tradition of sharing shall be kept alive through the Jaiv Panchayat the living democracy. The Jaiv Panchayat will decide on all matters pertaining to biodiversity. Through such decentralised democratic decision-making we will make real the democracy for life. Cows, buffaloes, goats, sheep, lions, tigers and in fact all animals, birds, plants, trees, precious medicinal plants and manure, water, soil, seeds are our biological resources and we shall not let any outsider exercise any control over them through patents or destroy it through genetic engineering. As a community, we shall together be the guardians of our biological heritage. functioning on the doctrine of eminent domain to states functioning on the doctrine of public trust. (3) At the global level, the recovery of the commons requires a movement of people to keep water and biodiversity beyond monopoly, ownership and commodification, which in turn prevents patenting of life forms and privatisation of water. These principles need to be enshrined in international law and policy. They become the source of popular democratic pressure to reform the WTO and the

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World Bank to implement the review of TRIPs in which countries of the South are calling for an exclusion of life forms from patentability, and to review structural adjustment programmes which impose export-led agricultural strategies and policies of water privatisation. (4) The citizen treaties to defend water and biodiversity as commons will have democratic power and substance to the extent they reflect the recognition of, and strengthen, local community rights at the global level. Global commons not built from or based on local commons constitutes an ecologically and democratically fraudulent category. The global commons is merely a recognition and reinforcement of local community rights. It is not the level at which rights are exercised or assigned. (5) Since sovereignty based on the doctrine of eminent domain is becoming the conduit for global usurpation of peoples resources and the undermining of peoples sovereign rights, reclaiming the biodiversity and water commons must go hand in hand with reclaiming sovereignty, and redefining a new partnership between people and governments on the basis of subsidiarity and the public trust doctrine. We build our living Earth democracy campaigns concretely as Anna Swaraj (Food Sovereignty), Bija Swaraj (Seed and Biodiversity Sovereignty), and Jal Swaraj (Water Sovereignty). Real democracy, real freedom or self-rule and Swaraj (self-governance) also create a duty to resist unjust laws and unjust rule. In periods of injustice and external domination, when people are denied economic and political freedom, reclaiming freedom requires peaceful non-cooperation with unjust regimes. This is the most persuasive agenda for bringing the people into an active democracy, and building coalition for equitable globalisation. For us, it has meant refusing to ethically, intellectually or legally accept patents on life and monopolies on seed. On 5 March 1999 Navdanya launched the Bija Satyagraha (Seed Sovereignty) non-cooperation with immoral, illegitimate patent laws. The movement was part of the campaign for Bija Swaraj Seed and Biodiversity Sovereignty. Bija means seed and Satyagraha means the struggle for truth. Incidentally, 5 March 1999 was the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhis Salt Satyagraha (Salt March), which was initiated to protest against the colonisation of salt as an Indian resource by the Salt Laws imposed by the British Empire. The Salt Satyagraha was Indias refusal to cooperate with the unjust Salt Laws and an expression of Indias quest for freedom with equity. The Bija Satyagraha is the refusal to accept the colonisation of life through patents and perverse technologies, and the destruction of food security through the free-trade rules of the WTO. It is an expression of the quest for freedom for all people and all species, and an assertion of our seed and food rights. To conclude, then, my activism to advocate an ethical globalisation is to work through Earth democracy and its principles of justice, sustainability and peace: We are all members of the Earth community. We all have a duty to protect the rights and welfare of all species and all people. No humans have the right to encroach on the ecological space of other species and other people, or treat them with cruelty and violence. Intrinsic worth of all species and peoples: all species, humans and cultures have intrinsic worth. They are subjects, not objects of manipulation or ownership. No humans have the right to own other species, other people or the knowledge of other cultures through patents and other intellectual property rights.

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Diversity in nature and culture: defending biological and cultural diversity is a duty of all people. Diversity is an end in itself, a value, a source of both material and cultural richness. Natural rights to sustenance: all members of the Earth community, including all humans, have the right to sustenance to food and water, to safe and clean habitat, to security of ecological space. These rights are natural rights, they are birthrights given by the fact of existence on earth and are best protected through community rights and commons. They are not given by states or corporations, nor can they be extinguished by state or corporate action. No state or corporation has the right, through privatisation or monopoly control, to erode or undermine these natural rights or enclose the commons that sustain all. Earth economy is based on economic democracy and living economy. Earth democracy is based on economic democracy: economic systems in Earth democracy protect ecosystems and their integrity; they protect peoples livelihoods and provide basic needs to all. In the earth economy there are no disposable or dispensable species or people. The earth economy is a living economy. It is based on sustainable, diverse, pluralistic systems that protect nature and people, are chosen by people, for the benefit of the common good. Living economies are built on local economies: conservation of the earths resources and creation of sustainable and satisfying livelihoods is most caringly, creatively, efficiently and equitably achieved at the local level. Localisation of economics must be social and ecological imperatives. Only goods and services that cannot be produced locally, using local resources or local knowledge, should be produced non-locally and traded long distance. Earth democracy is based on vibrant, resilient local economies, which support national and global economies. The global economy does not crush and destroy local economies. Living democracy: Earth democracy is based on local living democracy with local communities, organised on principles of inclusion and diversity and ecological and social responsibility having the highest authority on decisions related to the environment and natural resources and to the sustenance and livelihoods of people. Authority is delegated to more distant levels of governance on the principle of subsidiarity. Earth democracy is living democracy. Living knowledge: Earth democracy is based on earth-centred and communitycentred knowledge systems. Living knowledge is knowledge that maintains and renews living processes and contributes to the health of the planet and people. It is also living knowledge in that it is embedded in nature and society; it is not abstract, reductionist and anti-life. Living knowledge is a commons, it belongs collectively to communities that create it and keep it alive. All humans have a duty to share knowledge. No person or corporation has a right to enclose, monopolise, patent, or exclusively own living knowledge as intellectual property. Balancing rights with responsibility: in Earth democracy, rights are derived from and balanced with responsibility. Those who bear the consequences of decisions and actions are the decision makers. Globalising peace, care and compassion: Earth democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict. Earth democracy globalises compassion, not greed, and peace, not war.

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Vandana Shiva is a Particle Physicist by training and a renowned ethicist in practice. She is one the worlds leading activists, championing the rights of disenfranchised peoples of the global south on issues ranging from safeguarding water and food supplies to battling the World Trade Organization and World Bank on Intellectual Property Rights and the granting of Patents. She sits on the board of the WTO, and is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology, and Navdanya: Seeds of Freedom organization in New Delhi, India. She runs short educational seminars in India on biodiversity, water conservation, and earth democracy, and is also active in the struggle for equity for women in the home and in the work-place. Address: A-60 Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India 110016. [email: vshiva@vsnl.com]