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Vandana Shiva of India leads a movement in the global south called ecofeminism. She is a writer and science policy
advocate and director of the Research
Foundation for Science, Technology and
Natural Resource Policy. She serves as an
ecology advisor to several organisations including the Third World Network. In
1993 she received the Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize. "She recently shared her vision of Central and Eastern Europe with the Bulletin editor Pavel Antonov.
What should be the position of the European Union in the current debates with the United States in the World Trade Organisation (WTO)? I think the first thing the EU should do is actually call for changes in the WTO rules that even allow disputes like the one over GMOs to be initiated. This is such a clear example that the WTO is available to dismantle security and force the opening up of markets, but it's not available to protect food safety, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and the health of people. What should be the place of Central and Eastern Europe in this dispute? Central and Eastern Europe is definitely in danger in the accession process. The main reason why there will have to be compensation is to enlarge the subsidy structure for bad farming, and to compensate farmers who are uprooted. The European enlargement should accept that CEE has elements that need to be preserved to save Western Europe. I especially refer to biodiversity, small farms, organic farming and the countryside, which are not as devastated in EasternEurope as in Western Europe. These need to be turned into capital. Enlarge- ment should actually turn around -- directing Western Europe's development toward sustainability. But at this point it is assumed that European enlargement will mean expansion of industrial agriculture, expansion of large-scale farming, destruction of biodiversity and uprooting small farmers. And that would be a tragedy. So is there something you think can be done in order to turn it around? I think the main thing that is needed is a movement of farmers and environmentalists in CEE working in solidarity with the western movement to make enlargement fulfill the environmental criteria. Not the current approach destroying first and then putting money into protection. The proper way should be to protect first, and ensure that development is based on preserving natural habitat. Do you think that the developing world has some arguments that can be useful for the countries in the CEE? I've always felt extremely sad that the very natural links that should be there with the East, with the ex-Soviet Union, and the South, have not really materialised in an important enough way. I think what we have in common is that societies in the East and societies in the South are both aspiring to create a system beyond the state-controlled Soviet-style system, beyond the market and corporate-controlled system to a people-led system based on environmental protection and the well-being of people. Not abstract growth indicators that leave people more impoverished and nature more devastated and create growth for a handful of interests, but a people-centered, nature-centered development. We have not totally lost it yet and I think there's a lot we can gain by much more mutual exchange. Do you think it is possible to convince Eastern Europeans to rethink the currently overwhelming neoliberal ideology? It is very possible. If they are going after a market-driven, capitalistic economy, it's because they are fed up with what they experienced in the past and they have not seen any alternatives. But there are many alternatives based on local decentralised economics. Because both statecentred and profit-centred economies are centralised, they destroy the environment and democracy. We need democracy-preserving and environment-preserving systems which must by logical imperatives be decentralised. And we need to put diversity as the central defining feature of many kinds of alternatives. |
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