Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis Features

Additional Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis Information

With Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva connects the dots between industrial agriculture and climate change. Shiva shows that a world beyond dependence on fossil fuels and globalization is both possible and necessary.

Condemning industrial agriculture as a recipe for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva’s champion is the small, independent farm: their greater productivity, their greater potential for social justice as they put more resources into the hands of the poor, and the biodiversity that is inherent to the traditional farming practiced in small-scale agriculture. What we need most in a time of changing climates and millions hungry, she argues, is sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are more resistant to disease, drought, and flood. In her trademark style, she draws solutions to our world’s most pressing problems on the head of a pin: “The solution to climate change,” she observes, “and the solution to poverty are the same.”

Using Shiva’s organization Navdanya—praised by Barbara Kingsolver as “a small, green Eden framed against the startling blue backdrop of the Himalayas”—as a model, Soil Not Oil lays out principles for feeding the planet that are socially just and environmentally sound. Shiva then expands her analysis to broader issues of globalization and climate change, arguing that a healthy environment and a just world go hand in hand. Unwavering and truly visionary, Soil Not Oil proposes a solution based on self-organization, sustainability, and community rather than corporate power and profits.

A world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva is the author of many books, including Earth Democracy, Water Wars, and Staying Alive. She is the editor of Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed.

What Customers Say About Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis:

Very well written. Vandana Shiva is a knowledgable and well respected scientist. She makes a convincing case for the disadvantaged and displaced poor and indigenous people of the world. I agree with her that we need to restore ancient customs and methods of agriculture and rural villages if we want a healthy planet.

Thank God for Vandana Shiva. In an insanely materialistic and rapacious world corrupted by corporate theft, her intelligence, depth and humanity are a breath of fresh air for decent people the world throughout. Read this book and others by someone who understands and articulates the consequences of a world where mindless corporate power is pillaging the globe in frightening Terminator II fashion.J.B.

This book is an amazing read. And presents the facts around the seemingly progressive environmental policies and protocols. Very important read.

Her perspective (being from India) is always intriguing and is definitely contrary to the North American mainstream. Vandana Shiva makes solid use of the 144 pages of her latest book: Soil Not Oil. Though Climate science is not her primary field of study, she does make great insights into the ways that instruments like carbon taxes are being used to benefit industry and those that own them rather than the planet and those that inhabit it. Her insights into the plight of poor, who happen to make up the vast majority of the planet are well constructed and executed. A must read if you are at all socially conscious.

The narrative which emerges in "Soil Not Oil" is of a world headed toward catastrophe. Perhaps because of this imbalance, the reader is required to re-think who the "our" is in "our standard of living." For example, although the Green Revolution introduced drought-resistant and pest-resistant high-yield-variety seeds which have mitigated starvation in South Asia, it also has been inextricably linked to a business model that benefits oil and agriculture oligopolies. Shiva's distress and disdain is palpable as she advocates change: "Agribusiness and the oil and auto industries. Whereas Friedman views globalization as an ameliorative process, one that makes life less Hobbesian--less "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"--Shiva is a realistic utilitarian who believes the globalized world is not "phat," not at all cool: not only is the earth heating up due to careless fossil-fuel addiction, but this addiction has also exacerbated the inequity between the haves and the have-nots.Shiva is a scientist, activist, feminist, philosopher, and community organizer who champions the rights of those whose lives are nasty, brutish, and short--those without a seat in corporate boardrooms. OZAFour years ago, Tom Friedman celebrated globalization with his best-selling "The World is Flat." While seeming to upend the status quo (after all, the world is round), Friedman emphasized the importance of multinational companies and their market-based economics.

Last year, in "Hot, Flat, and Crowded," Friedman acknowledged the problems of global warming, rising expectations, and population growth, but he continued to promote the free market, causing us to recall Einstein's quote: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."An antidote to this monocultural thinking is Vandana Shiva's "Soil Not Oil," a little book that questions conventional wisdom and demands environmental justice. Over the past two decades, she has established in India an organic-farming movement called "Navdanya." This movement is based on two principles of Earth Democracy: diversity and decentralization. OZA and RAJESH C. Food insecurity, peak oil prices, and climate change are the result of hubris, and because the lifestyle of global elites is neither scalable nor sustainable, cultures of violence will emerge locally and spread back to the center.

will use the climate crisis they have created to increase their market opportunities, even if it comes at the expense of the starving poor and pushes the planet into climate disaster." Because the book was published before the current global financial meltdown, its author's impatience with the carbon-cum-capitalist world system feels prescient."Soil Not Oil" brings a revolutionary perspective to the debate on how best to address the concurrent food, oil, and climate crises; indeed, some might view Shiva's earth justice activism as a poster child for South End Press's "read, write, revolt" tagline. Like the Mahatma, she holds fast to the truth as she sees it: championing the village scale rather than the global, embracing the time-tested elegance of simplicity, and encouraging nonviolence. The seat-less include the billions who go hungry every day, small-plot food producers who sustain themselves and their communities with local farming, the earth which organically provides this food, and future generations to whom we owe a healthy Gaia. For example, the automobile and highway culture of the West has found its way to India: "6 million people will die and 60 million will be injured over the next 10 years in developing countries, with India experiencing 30 percent of those accidents."As the "landscape [is] transformed from being centered on the sacred cow to being centered on the sacred car," the earth is seen as a source of food for cars, not people. And local production reduces the carbon footprint of food production and consumption.

The World is Not "Phat"SIDDHARTHA R. This activism pushes for grass-roots change: local agriculture, and independence from big corporations. Readers looking for a balanced assessment of soil and oil should look elsewhere; Shiva (who uses contemptuous phrases such as "corporate dictatorship" and "food fascism") is either unable or unwilling to concede that corporate innovation has improved our standard of living through advances in healthcare, nutrition, education, transportation, communication, and entertainment. Shiva's belief in bottom-up change reflects a faith in individuals to be the change they wish to see, rather than continuing the top-down structure that enables us to maintain our Anglo-American standard of living.In many ways, Shiva is one of Gandhi's modern-day apostles of satyagraha. Even when they seem to promote change, they are offering "false solutions," as in the case of ethanol. A compelling common-sense argument is made for this model, which grows more food and provides higher incomes to farmers. Indeed, he updated his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention ("people in McDonald's countries didn't like to fight wars anymore") to a high-tech "Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention" ("global supply chains in the flat world are an even greater restraint on geopolitical adventurism").

We suspect that Shiva would agree with Einstein that "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. Shiva suggests that those with seats in big oil, big agriculture, and big automobile boardrooms have a vested interest in maintaining a centralized model which enables profitable economies of scale based on standardization. Shiva argues that it takes 1.5 gallons of gasoline and 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. The diverse seeds allow the farmers to be independent of corporations which have built profitable businesses from non-renewable seeds. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction." Originally published in India Currents