VANDANA SHIVA
Turning Scarcity Into Abundance
Click here to go directly to the YES! Magazine article,
Turning Scarcity Into Abundance by Vandana Shiva.
One of the principle purposes behind the work of
The Great Rethinking/Prophets organization is to encourage and support
our family of participants in becoming active in both their spiritual
as well as in their material realms of being - to become Spiritual
Activists. And why we do this is because fundamental change in every
aspect of living is being called for as never before.
So often we find ourselves overwhelmed by the daily news and our daily
schedules and routines, and many of us feel alone and fearful and in
need of a supporting community. Often we find our spiritual practices
are not enough, but we simply do not know what else to do for ourselves
- confusion and despair may come into our lives causing many of us to
just shut down and put up a protective shell and extinguish our
excellence.
When we see our leaders indulging in inhuman acts of war and torture;
when we see a disregard for living things in favor of financial gain;
and when we see starving children and the financial exploitation of the
food and water needed for their survival, we become deeply saddened and
often feel numb in the face of such massive degradation. This
tumultuous time can be really tough.
But this unprecedented time is also a powerful time of opportunity for
us to step forward with courage and grasp our higher spiritual selves
and put them to work in creating personal and planetary transformation.
But in order to do this, we need both community and we need Spiritual
Activist models. We need to become empowered with higher purpose
through gathering together and being uplifted by the examples of people
such as Vandana Shiva.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is someone we can learn from and emulate in our
conscious evolution into our own expansive spiritual activism. She is
one of the world's most dynamic and provocative thinkers on the
environment, women's rights, and international affairs. A physicist,
ecologist, and spiritual activist, she won the Right Livelihood Award,
also known as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize, in 1993. She directs
the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource
Policy, and is an Associate Editor of The Ecologist.
You are encouraged to become a Spiritual Activist and to find others
with whom to work in creating empowering avenues for positive change by
joining with Vandana Shiva at The Great Rethinking Oxford. As a member
of the exceptional faculty being called together to rethink and reshape
our collective future during the weekend of the 10th through 12th of
September, Dr. Shiva will be presenting her exemplary, motivating and
inspiring work at the legendary Oxford University Union in Oxford,
England.
Full conference information is available for you at:
greatmystery.org/ox04.html
Dr. Vandana Shiva on NOW with Bill Moyers
Praise for Vandana Shiva
One of India's leading physicists…a leading thinker who has
eloquently blended her views on the environment, agriculture,
spirituality, and women's rights into a powerful philosophy.
-Utne Reader
One of the world's most prominent radical scientists.
-The Guardian
The primary threat to nature and people today comes from
centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is
made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability,
justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in
our times: it is a survival imperative.
- Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva completed her Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science in
1978. After that she did research at the Indian Institute of Management
in Bangalore until 1982, when she left to set up her Research
Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in her
home town of Dehra Dun in the foothills of the Himalaya.
Dr. Shiva's record has been that of the totally committed, very
productive and effective activist-advocate-intellectual. As an activist
she has co-coordinated, supported and learned from grassroots networks
on a wide range of issues across India. As an advocate, especially in
international forums, she has proved one of the most articulate
spokespersons of counter-development in favour of people-centered,
participatory processes. As an intellectual she has produced a stream
of important books and articles which have done much both to form and
address the agenda of development debate and action.
Our September Oxford gathering is being presented in association with
the highly acclaimed sponsors, The Club of Budapest, Resurgence
Magazine, Caduceus Journal, Positive News, Sacred Hoop Magazine, and
Cygnus Review and the faculty will include Vandana
Shiva, Helen Caldicott, Peter Russell, William Bloom, Satish Kumar,
Ervin Laszlo, Thom Hartmann, Rupert Sheldrake, Alberto Villoldo, Lynne
McTaggart, Christopher Hansard, and Danah Zohar.
greatmystery.org/ox04.html
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Turning Scarcity Into Abundance
by Vandana Shiva
I have witnessed the conversion of my land from a water-abundant
country to a water-stressed country. I saw the last perennial stream in
my valley run dry in 1982 because of the mining of aquifers in
catchments. I have seen tanks and streams dry up on the Deccan plateau
as eucalyptus monocultures spread. I have struggled with communities in
water-rich regions as pollution poisoned their water sources. In case
after case, the story of water scarcity has been a story of greed,
careless technologies, and taking more than nature can replenish and
clean. Over the past two decades, I have witnessed conflicts over
development and natural resources mutate into communal conflicts,
culminating in extremism and terrorism.
The water cycle connects us all, and from water we can learn the path
of peace and the way of freedom. We can learn how to transcend water
wars created by greed, waste, and injustice, which create scarcity in
our water-abundant planet. We can work with the water cycle to reclaim
water abundance. We can work together to create water democracies. And
if we build democracy, we will build peace.
Since the 1950s, the Green Revolution has been hailed for its success
in expanding the global food supply, particularly in developing nations
such as India and China. High-yield miracle seeds were promoted all
over the developing world, and the Green Revolution was praised for
preventing the starvation of millions of people. The ecological and
social costs of the Green Revolution were largely ignored. Through its
emphasis on high-yield seeds, this agricultural model replaced
drought-resistant local crop varieties with water-guzzling crops. The
Green Revolution led to water drawing down aquifers in water-scarce
areas.
In the Deccan area of south India, sorghum was traditionally
intercropped with pulses and oilseeds to reduce evaporation. The Green
Revolution replaced this indigenous agriculture with monocultures.
Dwarf varieties replaced tall ones, chemical fertilizers took the place
of organic ones, and irrigation displaced rainfed cropping. As a
result, soils were deprived of vital organic material, and soil
moisture droughts became recurrent.
In drought-prone regions, ecologically sound agricultural systems are
the only way to produce sustainable food. One acre of rice uses as much
water as three acres of sorghum. For the same amount of water, sorghum
provides 4.5 times more protein, four times more minerals, 7.5 times
more calcium, and 5.6 times more iron, and can yield three times more
food than rice. Had development taken water conservation into account,
sorghum and millet would not have been called marginal or inferior
crops.
Prior to the Green Revolution, groundwater was accessed through
protective, indigenous irrigation technologies, which relied on
renewable human or animal energy. These were identified as
“inefficient” and were replaced by oil engines and electric pumps that
extracted water faster than nature’s cycles could replenish it.
Water is available only if water sources are regenerated and used
within limits of renewability. When development philosophy erodes
community control and instead promotes technologies that violate the
water cycle, scarcity is inevitable. In India, even as investment was
being poured into water projects, more and more villages were running
out of water.
Since the 1990s, the World Bank and other aid agencies have been
aggressively pushing privatization and market-based distribution of
water. The result has been an accelerated extraction of groundwater.
Across India, wells powered by fossil-fuels and electricity have
mushroomed as part of an informal privatization of groundwater. After
the 1972 drought in Maharashtra, the World Bank heavily subsidized and
mechanized water withdrawal systems. The Bank also gave credit for tube
wells that were to feed commercial irrigation and reduce water
scarcity. The result was an explosion of sugarcane cultivation. In less
than a decade, sugarcane cultivation converted groundwater into a
commodity and left people and staple food crops thirsting for water.
While sugarcane is cultivated on only 3 percent of Maharashtra’s
irrigated land, it consumes 80 percent of the irrigation water and
eight times more water than other irrigated crops.
Although the shift from rainfed, coarse-grain production to a
water-hungry cash crop has increased average household income, the
costs have been great. In Manerajree village, for example, a new water
scheme with a potential supply of 50,000 liters was commissioned in
November 1981 at a cost of $14,000. The water supply lasted only one
year. To increase production, three 60-meter power pump bores were
drilled near the first well, and they supplied 50,000 liters per day in
1982. By November 1983, all three bores were completely dry. More than
2,000 privately owned wells in this sugarcane region had also gone dry.
Since 1983, continuous tanker service provides water to the area.
Ecological democracy
Everyone agrees that the world is facing a severe water crisis.
Water-abundant regions have become water scarce, and water-scarce
regions face water famines. There are, however, two conflicting
paradigms for explaining the water crisis: the market paradigm and the
ecological paradigm. According to the market paradigm, if water could
be moved and distributed freely through free markets, it would be
transferred to regions of scarcity, and higher prices would lead to
conservation. As Terry Anderson and Pamela Snyder state in Water
Markets, “[A]t higher prices people tend to consume less of a commodity
and search for alternative means of achieving their desired ends. Water
is no exception.”
Such abstract arguments miss the most crucial point—when water
disappears, there is no alternative. For Third World women, water
scarcity means traveling longer distances in search of water. For
peasants, it means starvation and destitution as drought wipes out
their crops. For children, it means dehydration and death. There is
simply no substitute for this precious liquid, necessary for the
biological survival of animals and plants.
The water crisis is an ecological crisis with commercial causes but no
market solutions. Higher prices under free-market conditions will not
lead to conservation. Given the tremendous economic inequalities, there
is a great possibility that the economically powerful will waste water
while the poor will pay the price. Market solutions destroy the earth
and aggravate inequality. The solution to an ecological crisis is
ecological, and the solution for injustice is democracy.
Scarcity and abundance are not nature-given—they are products of water
cultures. Cultures that waste water or destroy the fragile web of the
water cycle create scarcity even under conditions of abundance. Those
that save every drop can create abundance out of scarcity. Indigenous
cultures and local communities have excelled in water conservation
technologies. Today, ancient water technologies are once again gaining
popularity.
There are more than 25 types of irrigation and drinking water systems
built by the diverse communities of India. To this day, these ancient
systems are the mainstay of survival in ecologically fragile zones. The
tank systems of southern India are some of the most enduring indigenous
systems, lasting over centuries. They consist of several hundred linked
reservoirs forming continuous chains that prevent the monsoon rains
from running off the land.
In pre-British India, irrigation systems were managed by social
organizations within villages. In south Bihar, both construction and
maintenance of water systems, known as goam, were collectively managed.
The villagers were responsible for water allocation in their community.
A system known as parabandi regulated distribution of water among the
villages from a common source. In cases involving large works, the
rights of each village were formally recorded. In others, regulations
were largely customary, and conflicts were resolved according to local
procedures.
The British, whose agricultural system did not depend on irrigation,
had no knowledge of water management when they arrived in India.
Indifference to and ignorance about local ecological conditions led to
the failure of many engineering projects during British rule. After 30
years of disastrous efforts to restore the Grand Anicut dam on the
Kaveri River, Sir Arthur Cotton, the founder of colonial irrigation
programs, reverted to the more effective indigenous methods.
While water privatization is the preferred policy by governments and
global financial institutions, masses of people across India and around
the world are mobilizing to conserve water and regain community control
over their resources. The Pani Panchayat movement, launched by the NGO
Gram Gaurav Pratisthan (GGP), for example, aims to create an equitable
and ecologically sustainable water system in a drought-prone area.
The movement began in 1972, after Maharashtra’s severe drought. While
the government focused on famine relief and continued to rapidly
exploit water resources, GGP founder Vikas Salunke recognized strict
water control and soil conservation as the most effective tools to
survive the drought.
The Pani Panchayat believed in the rights of all residents to water.
Under the movement’s program, water was treated as a community
resource, and the number of family members, not the size of one’s land,
determined how much water residents could receive. A patkari (water
distributor) was appointed to ensure fair day-to-day allocation. And
while members of the Panchayat were otherwise free to decide how to use
their water, sugarcane cultivation was regarded as an irresponsible use
of resources and was banned.
Movements for water conservation are spreading all over India. In
Gujarat, where nearly 13,000 villages have no dependable source of
water and where groundwater is saline, women members of water councils
are taking the lead in creating water harvesting systems. The people’s
investment in water conservation has also helped recharge groundwater,
fill rivers, and increase crop production. In 1994, the Arvari River
came back to life as result of recharge by 500 johads, the traditional
earthen check dams that catch the monsoon rains and hold the water
through the dry season. Water from johads percolates down into the
soil, raising the watertable. Similarly, Ruparel, once a dead river,
has been flowing since 1994 and is now the leading source of water for
250 villages. It was replenished by 250 johads.
The Swadhyaya movement of Gujarat, aimed at self-development at all
levels of organization, including individuals, communities, and
countries (see YES!, Winter 2001), has led to the construction of 957
percolation tanks known as nirmal neers. As a result, close to 100,000
wells have been recharged. The Swadhyaya villagers endorse bhakti, the
principle of volunteerism, and believe in 100 percent contribution.
During the drought of 2000, Swadhyaya villages did not run out of
water. Through their free labor and commitment to bhakti, the villagers
have created an alternative to capital-intensive, nonlocal projects.
Man-made water scarcity and ubiquitous water conflicts can be minimized
with the recognition of water as a common resource. Water conservation
movements are also showing that the real solution to the water crisis
lies in people’s energy, labor, time, care, and solidarity. The current
war against water scarcity can be won only through massive movements
for water democracy. People’s movements have shown the possibility of creating abundance out of scarcity.
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As excerpted from Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit (2002) and reprinted in the Winter 2004 edition of Yes! Magazine www.yesmagazine.org. Used with permission of South End Press www.southendpress.org.
Vandana Shiva is a physicist and activist who directs the Research
Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy. www.vshiva.net. Her other books include Stolen Harvest: The Highjacking of the Global Food Supply and Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Earth Democracy is her forthcoming book with South End Press to be released in the spring of 2005.
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An interview with Vandana Shiva by Bill Moyers on his NOW program series on the Public Broadcasting System in the US.
www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_shiva.html
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The Great Rethinking Oxford is a co-sponsorship with
The Club of Budapest, Resurgence Magazine, Positive News, Caduceus Journal, Sacred Hoop, and Cygnus Review.
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