Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace by Vandana Shiva

Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace Reviews

• 
  C.

  While I agreed with most of the ideas this book was promoting, I felt that it was badly organized and highly repetitive. I also felt that Shiva was guilty of over-romanticizing the past, as she seems to suggest that, before the rise of capitalism and industrialization, there was some workers utopia, with farmers and laborers connecting to their non-commodified duties. Reading her book, you would think that exploitation was invented by modernization, rather than merely taken to a greater extreme. When one is promoting collectivism and worker lead industries (ideas I strongly support) one must go out of one's ways to avoid coming across as naive -- since many people think those goals are naive by definition.
• 
  Natalie

  The ideas in this book are brilliant, foundational, and very important. Shiva focuses on a few of the ways globalization and the global elite are devastating life for the rest of the planet - the destruction of biodiversity, the privatization of water, the takeover of food production, and the incalculable harm being caused to the planet.
  
  I really appreciated the distinction she draws between the 3 different economies in play in the world: the natural economy (the work done by nature to provide resources for all life), the sustenance economy (the right of all people to the means of life), and the market economy (the buying and selling of commodities for commercial gain). She illustrates how the latter economy has come to dominate the other two, threatening life and livelihood for thousands of people and other forms of life.
  
  It was a very satisfying combination of ecological concerns with human issues concerns. I also really appreciated that she didn't focus just on the depressing stuff (like Eduardo Galeano). She spent ample time talking about resistance and counter movements. It's good to be inspired after being made really really angry.
  
  That said, the structure and delivery of the book was incoherent and sometimes boring. The chapter distinctions didn't seem to mean much, since she sorta talked about the same big theme in every chapter. And she was veeery repetitive. Still, you learn an important lesson through reading it lots of times, right?
  
  The most important thing about this book was that it was able to convince my husband to finally, after years of conversation, give up Coke products. Yay!
• 
  Brian Griffith

  Shiva is a kind of Mama Kali, defending her village farmers and their environments with cool resolve or fact-spitting outrage. Coming off a series of victories over corporate bio-pirates, she shares the state of struggle for the local nature-workers of India to manage their future. Here are a few of her lines:
  
  "What has been called the tragedy of the commons is, in fact, the tragedy of privatization" (p. 55).
  
  "The enclosure of biodiversity and knowledge is the latest step in a series of enclosures that began with the rise of colonialism. Land and forests were the first resources to be enclosed and converted from commons to commodities. Later, water resources were enclosed through dams, groundwater mining, and privatization schemes. Now it is the turn of biodiversity and knowledge to be "enclosed" through intellectual property rights (IPRs)" (p. 39).
  
  [In the Navdanya movement] "More than 200,000 farmers are working to enrich the earth, create prosperity for rural producers, and provide quality food to consumers. ... [Their work] reintroduces bio-diverse farming to both replace chemicals as fertilizers and pesticides and to increase the productivity and nutritional value of crops. ... Navdanya farmers are able to reduce their expenses by the 90 percent that was used to buy chemicals and create corporate profits. ... The incomes of Navdanya farmers are three times higher than the incomes of chemical farmers..." (pp. 67-68).
  
  "Ecological security is our most basic security; ecological identities are our most fundamental identity. We ARE the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe. And reclaiming democratic control over our food and water and our ecological survival is the necessary project for our freedom" (p. 5).
  
• 
  Jo

  Having read and enjoyed Stolen Harvest I was really looking forward to this one but even though it contains many idea and concepts I agree with and support, there were several shortcomings which other reviewers also seem to have felt, There is a lot of repetition which almost feels like padding in order to make this longer and some of the concepts are stretched for idealistic purposes, such as the whole idea of the commons being peacefully shared by people in the past or again in the future. It’s a nice idea but I’m not convinced. Farmers have committed suicide in India and around the world because of globalization but calling it genocide seems a step too far and there is quite a lot of material that is repeated from Stolen Harvest to do with patenting and seed sharing although she can’t assume people have read that book.
  
  I agree that globalization has caused irreparable damage to livelihoods and people’s ability to be self- sufficient, to the environment including soil, water and species decline and particularly to women and those who live in the South. She makes the case that religious fundamentalism has also emerged from the inability to provide for yourself and frustration with the powers that perpetuate this. I was continually angered by states complicity in this and the way bodies like the WTO manipulate and pressure countries into submission.
  
  I enjoyed reading about the Terra Madre festivals focusing on slow and local food and I appreciated hearing about the protest movements that have led to change and Vandana Shiva’s optimism in believing that we can all make a difference in combatting corporate greed and plunder. Looking back from 2021, it’s hard not to be cynical, the Tehri Dam, she mentions in this book went ahead despite protests, the River Link Project, also in India, looks likely to go ahead and cause massive devastation but this focus on the local rather than the global does seem to have gained some traction over the past fifteen years, at least on a small scale.
  
  So overall, lots of powerful ideas and interesting material but you had to sometimes search for them amongst repeated phrases and concepts that could have been streamlined in this readers opinion.
• 
  Kate Savage

  I found myself skimming the ideas and reading the specific examples with great interest.
  
  I don't know that I completely share Shiva's trust in the inherent goodness of nature and peasant societies. But I am very grateful for the work she does.
• 
  Natanya

  really interesting, accesible look at current environmental and social problems. Her ideas are clearly linked that of other progressive environmentalist scholars, but with a unique emphasis on democracy and common humanity
• 
  Rosa Handscomb

  Although written 15 years ago, this book still provides a really useful layout of some of the ways that local agriculture and food production are being affected by globalisation in plain and accessible language. Shiva provides a deeply intersectional viewpoint that has really changed how I think about so many things. Please do read, even if it takes you a while because of needing time to process everything!
• 
  Maria Aprile

  Surprisingly, I loved Shiva's book. She talks in circles a bit, but I enjoy, her almost stream of consciousness reflection on sustainability issues. Her writing style is either a love or hate relationship. It's very florid. Of course, its this that I love about it. It's a love letter to humankind about the earth, and the grievous wounds we have caused her. I think the earth should be held dear to our hearts as human beings. As I reflecting in my reading of the book, if we treated our mothers the way we did our mother earth, desecrating her children and inflicting such grievous wounds both in physical destruction and in the collective psyche of humans and animals, I would be thoroughly ashamed of myself. The book brought up a lot of issues I was not aware of and was a great starting point to indulge and drove my personal research and investigations on issues I wouldn't have know to ask about. I think it's so important to see that its not just about love of nature but of people.
• 
  Kathy

  I love Vandana Shiva's environmental and food-related philosophies, and have wanted to read her for a while. Earth Democracy, while definitely resonating with me philosophically, was a little too touchy-feely and unfocused in my opinion. Nonetheless, the book added to my knowledge base, and intertwined the concepts it claims in its title into an intelligent argument for greater consciousness of the multiple costs modern practices inflict on people and our world.
• 
  Pau

  I wish Shiva would give more concrete examples instead of repeating herself so much, but it was very nice reading a book on development that was optimistic and provided a framework of solutions. The framework can be a bit vague, but the point is that one-size-does-not-fit-all.
• 
  Carmen

  This reads like a speech given to the United Nations Council or at some other world conference dedicated to saving us all, or a sermon at an eco-revival. Her writing is strong, clear-headed and to the point, no punches pulled, and if McCain had chosen her for his veep pick, I would be a republican now.
• 
  Shaz_Neel

  Yet another book I'm reading now...The first part is very general - a lot of moralistic-stand-up-against-injustice platitudes. But it starts to get better once she traces some of the history behind environmental destruction, exploitation, and injustice. If you're loyal to the Brits, this might cause you some earth-shattering discomfort.
• 
  Lauren

  A passionate indictment of capitalism from a human rights and ecologist perspective. Her most powerful chapter is her first, where she deftly points out the market economy's reliance on (and Faustian destruction of) the living economies of nature and sustenance.
• 
  Violet

  I read this for my ecofeminism class, and it was really interesting. Even more so than Shiva's other books, it really outlines what an alternative system (Earth Democracy) looks like. Informative and Inspiring.
• 
  Benjamin

  Some radical and different ways of thinking which I could agree with. But her writing style is very repetitive, and her proposal for an alternative economic system sometimes feels idealistic without the a clear theoretical basis for its potential success.
• 
  Carianne Ragozzino

  Vandana Shiva is one of the most profound voices in the contemporary environmental movement. When reading this book, be prepared to get angry.
• 
  Julia Glassman

  Everything she has to say is fantastic, but she didn't say it very well in this particular book.
• 
  Colleen Mccreight

  It is a really good book. Important to read to be informed about the issues.
• 
  Thomas Wikman

  There are a lot of boogeymen in the author’s narrative; corporations, capitalism, free trade, globalization, the green revolution, WTO, GMOs and more. She uses strong words in her castigations, crimes, war on farmers, genocide, etc. She claims that poverty, starvation, war and violence has spread because of these boogeymen. However, the opposite is true. The rate of undernourished people in the world has gone from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015, despite the world population doubling. Cereal yield per acre in the world has gone from 1.4 ton per acre in 1961 to 4 ton in 2014. Wars and violence have decreased, people live longer and healthier lives all over the world. China’s rise is an example of the blessings of trade (for China). In the past people died from disease and starvation, especially children, and wars and violence were frequent and severe. That’s why the population didn’t grow, and the average life span was below 30. When that started happening to a lesser degree the population increased, it was not the other way around, as she claims regarding past centuries. Of course, when the living standard and health have reached a certain level the population growth dampens again.
  
  She claims GMOs are hazardous to health (not accurate). On page 136 she blames mad cow disease, the swine and avian flu, on genetic engineering. On page 86 she claims the Cartesian, mechanistic worldview allows for the violent imposition of one’s position on others, which is just a bizarre claim. She claims there is a demand for chemical free food. As most science educated readers know, all food is chemicals. She frequently state what she considers “myths” and then try to “debunk” these “myths” using specious reasoning or cherry picked data that leaves out the big picture. That made me wonder if the myths are true.
  
  She says some very harsh things about free trade and the WTO, but membership in WTO is voluntary and it facilitates sorting out trade disputes, and it works to prevent discrimination. They are not conducting a genocide or war against anybody. However, whenever two countries agree to trade there will be winner and losers in both countries and people in both countries will argue that the other country is taking advantage but go ahead and blame everything that doesn’t work out right on WTO. You could always not trade and see how that works out for people. Because her rhetoric is so one sided, so bombastic, and her argumentation frequently is flawed and, in my opinion, often dishonest, I cannot recommend this book.
  
  However, she still brings up some good points. The colonial powers did a lot of harm to their colonies. Biopiracy is an evil, patents on seeds are mostly ridiculous and dangerous, appropriation of water resources is evil, corporations do horrible things (as well as good things). We need soil preservation, we need diversity, the natural world matters, all of that is true. Fossil fuel subsidies that cheapens transportation harms the planet and also present an unfair advantage to foreign producers creating a false economy, that is also true. Things like predatory capitalism, the destruction of soils, overfishing, pollution, climate change, etc, are things that we as societies and communities need to guard for, and need to be allowed to guard for, the market cannot protect us from that because it’s not part of how it works. There are a lot of economic activity taking place outside of the capitalist market, and there are things, some extremely important things, that are not part of market decisions, such as nature, ecology, the atmosphere, oceans, soil preservation. There are economic externalities and if we cannot account for them the “free market” can do a lot of damage to society and future generations. This is a fact that is acknowledge by virtually every economist around the world, so I don’t need to take her word for it, but I am glad she brought it up.
  I view capitalism and the “free market” as tools, not as a God as the free market fundamentalists here in the US do. The free market can’t fix everything, it is not an all good magical force. It has to be regulated for the good of humanity. The question is how. I don’t think Vendana Shiva is giving us many practical answers. I would suggest pricing externalities such as a price on carbon emissions. I believe she has the heart in the right place but the rant that she presents in this book is not helpful. Two stars for not being an entirely bad book.
• 
  Hanna

  It’s hard to give this book a rating. On one hand, everything she writes about is so important and at its core holds the answers our current fragmentation globally regarding economics, climate, agriculture, politics, etc. On the other hand, the book was quite unorganized, jumbled, and repetitive. A heavy edit could bring the book down to less than 100 pages and then say more overall and have more impact- manifesto style.
  Also it was published in 2005 which made it feel out of date, and I would welcome a 2025 edition to see what has changed. Nevertheless, Earth Democracy is powerful, and I’m glad I read it.
  
  “Corporate globalization is based on contrived rules of trade which invade our autonomous and sovereign spaces- ecological, economic, cultural, social, political, ethical, spiritual. On one hand, globalization redefines life as commerce and the world as commodities. On the other hand, it limits our global experience to global markets and global institutions. But global can be understood differently. It can refer to our universal values as humans… It can refer to humans as one species among many, which both differentiates us from and connects us with other species. We can experience the global belonging to the earth family… by prioritizing people and nature above commerce and profits, ecology and equity above trade, citizens above corporations, local democracy above the global market, and people’s lived realities in their everyday life above the abstract constructions of corporate capitalism and multiple patriarchies.”
  
  “Localization is based on the interdependence between nature and culture, humans and other species, local and global, micro and macro. Localization treats every place as the center of the world, placing every person, every being as the center of ever widening circles of compassion and care.”
  
  “Localization does not imply isolation from the larger world, but self-determination with interdependence… every person, every group, every community is it’s own center, connected to others in mutuality and support.”
• 
  Clivemichael

  This is brilliant, people power. We can make a difference. She tells it like it is.
  "We consider the evolutionary potential of all life on earth and re-embed human welfare in our home, our community, and the earth family. Ecological security is our most basic security; ecological identities are our most fundamental identity. We are the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe. And reclaiming democratic control over our food and water and our ecological survival is the necessary project for our freedom.”
  "There are two reasons why ecological disasters and the number of displaced, destitute, and disposable people increase in direct proportion to economic growth. The first is the reduction of the visible economy to the market and activities controlled by capitol. Second, the legal rights of corporations have increased at the cost of the rights of people."
  "Globalization is, in fact, the ultimate enclosure—of our minds, our hearts, our imaginations, and our resources."
  "Living economies are based on working for sustenance. They put human beings and nature at the center. In living economies, economics and ecology are not in conflict. They are mutually supportive."
• 
  nia

  i would give this a 3.8, maybe? it's an excellent idea with some really strong real world examples that i appreciate so much. the only thing that bothers me is that it's way too long, because the further you get into the book, the more it's just Shiva repeating herself in a way that becomes exhausting even if you agree with her. :/ if she'd kept it short and sweet, it would be a much stronger piece.
• 
  Suzy H

  Interesting but repetitive
• 
  Phoebe Mrozinski

  There's many very good points but a lot of overlap with the documentary about soil and Water Wars