Dr vandana shiva biography sample

Dr.Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned ecological feminist and activist who has campaigned against GMOs, intellectual property rights and free trade. Time magazine named Dr. Shiva an “environmental hero” in 2003. This article outlines her early life and education and then moves on to her various fields of activism. Afterwards, the institutions founded by her have been discussed along with a few of her selected works. The article concludes with a list of Dr. Shiva’s major achievements and awards received over the span of her career.

Vandana Shiva: Early Life and Education

Vandana Shiva was born in 1952 in Dehradun. Her father was a forest conservationist working for the Indian government and her mother a farmer. She attended St. Mary’s Convent High School in Nainital and later the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Dehradun. In the early 1970s, Vandana Shiva participated in a women’s tree-hugging movement that was campaigning against the deforestation of highlands in Northern India.

In 1972, she graduated with a bachelor’s in science after studying Physics at the University of Punjab in Chandigarh. Afterwards, she pursued a master’s in the philosophy of science from the University of Guelph.  She wrote her thesis on “changes in the concept of periodicity of light” in 1977. The following year, she received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Dr. Shiva’s dissertation was on the topic “hidden variables and locality in quantum theory”.

Later, she shifted her focus to inter-disciplinary research in various fields of science, technology and environmental science. Dr. Shiva studied these disciplines at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Science (“Dr. Vandana” n.d.).

Vandana Shiva: Activism

Seed Freedom

Dr. Shiva supports the concept of seed freedom that refers to the rejection of corporate patents on seeds. She campaigned against the WTO 199

Dr. Vandana Shiva was born in the forests of the Indian Himalayan Region, her father a forester and mother a farmer. “I literally grew up between the forest and the farm,” she says. “That was my childhood–there was continuity between the forest and the farm because we worked with biodiversity.” But as she grew up, she learned that there were entities actively breaking that continuity. Right before moving to Canada to pursue her PhD in quantum physics, Dr. Shiva journeyed on a trek through her beloved Himalayan forests. “I found a forest that had been familiar to me, and it was gone, and the stream there was just a trickle,” she says. “That’s what really woke me up to the destruction of nature.” It was a moment that set her on a decades-long path as an activist and food sovereignty advocate where her passion for the harmony of the natural world and her interest in science emerged.

Dr. Shiva could not get that decimated forest out of her mind. On the outset of her travels to Canada, while waiting to catch her bus to the airport, she was talking to a chaiwala—tea vendor—at the stop and he mentioned the Chipko movement. “Chipko, which means ‘hug,’ is a movement from the women of my region [Uttarakhand] who protected trees by saying that they were going to hug them,” she says. The Chipko movement was a 1970s women-led non-violent collective action fight against the government’s policies that allowed industry to clear-cut forests. Forest destruction led to floods and landslides that destroyed farms. Out of necessity for survival, women of the region–who were traditionally charged with cultivation and livestock–banded together to form the Chipko movement which eventually grew to international renown. After that initial introduction to the movement, Dr. Shiva returned to India every school break to work with Chipko. “That’s what moved me into

My ecological journey started in the forests of the Himalaya. My father was a forest conservator, and my mother became a farmer after fleeing the tragic partition of India and Pakistan. It is from the Himalayan forests and ecosystems that I learned most of what I know about ecology. The songs and poems our mother composed for us were about trees, forests, and India’s forest civilizations. My involvement in the contemporary ecology movement began with Chipko, a nonviolent response to the large-scale deforestation that was taking place in the Himalayan region. In the 1970s, peasant women from my region in the Garhwal Himalaya had come out in defense of the forests. Logging had led to landslides and floods, and scarcity of water, fodder, and fuel. Since women provide these basic needs, the scarcity meant longer walks for collecting water and firewood, and a heavier burden. Women knew that the real value of forests was not the timber from a dead tree, but the springs and streams, food for their cattle, and fuel for their hearths. The women declared that they would hug the trees, and the loggers would have to kill them before killing the trees. A folk song of that period said: These beautiful oaks and rhododendrons, They give us cool water Don’t cut these trees We have to keep them alive. In 1973, I had gone to visit my favorite forests and swim in my favorite stream before leaving for Canada to do my Ph.D. But the forests were gone, and the stream was reduced to a trickle. I decided to become a volunteer for the Chipko movement, and I spent every vacation doing pad yatras (walking pilgrimages), documenting the deforestation and the work of the forest activists, and spreading the message of Chipko. One of the dramatic Chipko actions took place in the Himalayan village of Adwani in 1977, when a village woman named Bachni Devi led resistance against her own husband, who had obtained a co

Indian philosopher, scientist and environmentalist

Vandana Shiva (born 5 November 1952) is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and anti-globalization author. Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. She is often referred to as "Gandhi of grain" for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement.

Shiva is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization (with Jerry Mander, Ralph Nader, and Helena Norberg-Hodge), and a figure of the anti-globalisation movement. She has argued in favour of many traditional practices, as in her interview in the book Vedic Ecology (by Ranchor Prime). She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, Spain's Socialist Party's think tank. She is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society.

Early life and education

Vandana Shiva was born in Dehradun. Her father was a conservator of forests, and her mother was a farmer with a love for nature. She was educated at St. Mary's Convent High School, Nainital, and at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Dehradun.

Shiva studied physics at Punjab University in Chandigarh, graduating as a Bachelor of Science in 1972. After a brief stint at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, she moved to Canada to pursue a master's degree in the philosophy of science at the University of Guelph in 1977 where she wrote a thesis entitled "Changes in the concept of periodicity of light". In 1978, she completed and received her PhD in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, focusing on philosophy of physics. Her dissertation was titled "Hidden variables and locality in quantum theory" in which she discussed the mathematical and philosophical implications of hidden variable theories that fall outside of the purview