 afternoon and welcome to the second episode of the school resistance and I will take the world habitable. My name is Lara Sahl, I'm a curator, maker, researcher and writer, more than happy, to enter in conversation with climate activist Anna Sheetan and Vanessa Nakati. I will introduce in a bit more detail with Sahl while I'm continuing this introduction. I'm I think one of you has a microphone with quite some point. I'm not sure if Anna or Vanessa, if it's one of you, maybe you could just switch off your microphone for a moment, mute yourself so that we don't have fantastic. Thank you so much, but please stay with us. So I will continue the introduction. Today I was supposed to be hosting the session together with Milo Rao, director, author and artistic director of IPM, International Institute for Political Murder and Antigantic in Belgium, and the initiator of these series of conversations, but unfortunately due to personal circumstances he cannot be with us today, which he regrets enormously. Some words on these series, which is called again the School of Resistance, we take the dipping of the oil price below zero on April the 20th due to the COVID-19 crisis as a beginning to reflect upon the possible scenarios this current crisis could lead to, and we invite experts of change around the world, like artists, activists, politicians and philosophers. This project is funded and made possible by Antigant IPM, Académie der Kunst de Berlin, Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Medical International and Murder for Life. The School of Resistance is about facilitating open life classes on resistance in order to exercise ourselves in listening. Today we will talk about the climate catastrophe due to the lockdowns everywhere in the world caused by COVID-19, our carbon footprint dropped rapidly, as the world's biggest polluters have been shutting down most of their industries and cutting back their use of fossil fuels. Suddenly international traveling and the daily traffic from home to work slowed down radically, but whether or not the environment will eventually benefit from today's crisis is anything but a certainty. Crucial climate conferences and negotiations that were to take place in the next coming months are being cancelled and the mantra of economy first might replace climate concerns in the minds of the public and those in power. Today we will talk with environmental activists from Dana Sivam and Vanessa Nakate about what the possible strategies at this very moment are if it comes to changing our relation to our environment drastically. You can ask questions for everyone who's listening by mailing to schoolofresistance at anti-gantt.be or commenting under the live stream on facebook or by a twitter by putting hashtag school of resistance and you can either ask questions to both of my guest or one of them. Let me introduce both of you properly. Vundana Siva is an Indian scholar anti-globalization author and an environmental activist advocating for organic and ecological farming and the protection of biodiversity, seed sovereignty and social justice. In 1982 she founded the research foundations for science technology and natural resource policy investigating sustainable methods of agriculture. In 1991 she founded Navdana which means nine seeds for diversity and also the new gift which stands for recovery of the biological and knowledge commons. Navdanya has created 150 community seed banks and helped millions of farmers make a transition from fossil fuel intensive chemical intensive agriculture to biodiversity based agroecology producing more nutrition healing the broken carbon and nitrogen cycles that have led to climate change and regenerating the soil. Vanessa Nakate is the first fridays for future activists in Uganda and the founder of the rise up climate movement. Vanessa Nakate seeks to amplify the voices of climate activists from across Africa. She also spearheaded a campaign to save Congo's rainforest and is currently working on a project to install solar panels and stoves in schools. Vundana my first question to you so please open your microphone so we can immediately hear you and maybe you could both unmute yourself because maybe you want to also respond to each other in case we have a lot of sound I will mention it again and we'll see what we can do. Vundana in a text that you wrote for the international day for biological diversity on the 22nd of May you write and I quote we stand at the precipice of extinction will we allow our humanity as living conscious intelligent autonomous beings being extinguished by the greed machine it does not know limits and is unable to put a break on its colonization and destruction and a bit later you write and I quote do we continue protecting yourself because maybe you want to also respond to that's funny I heard a double loop of myself I will just start again with the second quote do we continue protecting the conditions for our survival or do we extract all life for profit leaving a dead planet in our way on our way to our own funeral I wonder Vundana if you could speak a little bit more about this greed machine that we of course have a lot of associations but I would be very interested in hearing how do you define this greed machine what is it precisely and what kind of manifestations does it take and then if it comes to the possibility of a dead planet and our own funeral where do you feel we're standing at the moment are you rather hopeful or rather pessimistic um so I I don't define a greed machine it's too long a process in history and has too many faces and and too many names but it is a process and when you come from countries like Vanessa does or India we know colonialism was based on the green green machine it was colonialism but grabbing the resources and wealth of countries of that time what were much richer than colonizing Europe whether it was Spain or England India was 25 percent of the global economy with our spices and our textiles and that's what Columbus was sent out to get and that's what East India Company was created for so it's definitely colonialism is a greed machine and it hasn't stopped just because the formalities of it don't seem to be there but all exploitation of the greed machine is still a colonial enterprise it's based on slavery I mean 1600 is when the East India Company is created 1619 is when the first slave ship set same for the Americas it's exactly around that time that the commons start to get enclosed against the law because the commons belong to the people and even one person saying no to the enclosure could block it it took 200 years of trying to undo the common law passing law after law after law in parliament to make the enclosures and the creation of private property through theft the pattern all this was happening at the same time and then of course coal came along and a little later the oil so the greed machine is fueled by fossil fuels and it gave rise to a structure of being able to do work not just with the slaves that were working in the cotton plantations but the energy slaves that were now working in the factories according to Emery Love and long ago you know he had said one American has behind them hundreds of energy slaves so when we see the productivity it's really the productivity of energy slaves which we don't count and it's those energy slaves that are leading to all of the additional greenhouse gas emissions people human beings don't emit greenhouse gases fossil fuel based industrialism emits greenhouse gases and this also includes the area of agriculture where my study like soil not oil has shown that if you add the production of chemical fertilizers the production of industrial products and commodities invasions into forests and burning of the Amazon or the Congo or the Indonesian rainforest for an agribusiness that's what the invasions are happening for you add it all up what we are witnessing then is 18 percent of the greenhouse gases are coming from what they call land use and then you add the metal the aluminium the plastic everything used for packaging and long-distance transport I have called it food miles and finally a lot of food thrown away this is part of the green machine where you take the most basic need food and turn it into a money-making enterprise I was just reading today they are now trying to have an impossible burger with about 20 patents on it patenting and turning you know private property on land with enclosures was the first but patents on seed which is why I started Nafanya is the next and patents now on our human beings are the new enclosures the mechanical mind is part of the green machine because you need to break up integrated systems of relationships in the earth that sustain the earth and support our lives you have to break it up into fragments to then extract it so the economy is extractivist the worldview is mechanical and all of this is the nuts and bolts of the green machine which has now actually taken huge advantage of the corona pandemic so if you look at the US data 40 million people became unemployed in the two months of the lockdown the billionaires walked away with 434 billion additional wealth that's the green machine today the fact that when I wrote my book oneness versus one percent it was about 300 billionaires controlled half the wealth of the world the next day became hundred something and it just kept dropping three years ago four years ago it was 32 became 16 8 5 so we are talking about an ever showing a number of people controlling the green machine and even they really don't know how it's been driven because so much of it they agreed they know they agreed they know they want to control the earth they know they want to continue to control people as if we are still their slaves but most importantly they have no idea of what this machine is doing to the planet and to people and all they can do is remove their responsibility get into denialism for me in responsibility of the polluting industry is part of denialism and I just want to make a correction yes in our cities it looked like the pollution went down but overall globally greenhouse gas emissions only declined 7 to 17 percent there's a little uncertainty on that and in fact deregulation has been put on fast forward in every country whether it be brazil germany india everywhere new coal plants i mean there's a big fight going on in india where the elephant corridor has been leased out for a coal mine so we are in not very good shape if we think of the world in the hands of the green machine but when we realize we are in the hands of gaya after all i see both the corona epidemic as well as the climate change as really gaya's very angry voice saying hey wake up kids you forgot that not only am i alive because your mechanical assumptions assume that i was dead matter to be exploited not only am i alive but i am in a rage right now and these are little things i said to wake you up but then when we see ourselves as the citizens we see ourselves as living organisms on a living planet with other beings then we start to do things that we can create hope in spite of all the negative trends and that's the work i do so i cultivate hope on a daily basis thank you so much i was indeed about to ask like if you're summing it up it just feels so dark um how how does one keep hope in that but um we will continue talking about that in a bit um i'm very happy to go to venessa um venessa somewhere you have been writing uh and i quote you the amazon burns and the whole world talks about it california burns and the whole world talks about it congo rainforest burns and the young girl talks about it um i wonder you've been in your work putting emphasis on um the importance of the congo rainforest in relation i mean we all know the amazon is this symbol of the green lungs but the congo rainforest is as much important if it comes to climate in the world how have you been raising awareness about this until now and what are your dreams if it comes to the future in order in order to mobilize more people if it comes to the to the congo rainforest and climate catastrophe in general well thank you so much when it comes to the congo rainforest it is the largest rainforest in africa and my interest in it basically is uh the fact that it represents all the forests in africa when you look at most african countries they do not have the resources or even the finances for some of the modern solutions to climate change so you find that the hope is in the forests of the continent the hope is in protecting the forests that are literally the carbon sinks that we have so when i started reading more about the congo rainforest i realized that it was facing massive destruction and the fact that the entire world was so focused on the amazon it literally showed that a lot is going on in the congo rainforest but then we are not seeing much about it yes the amazon represents the lungs of the planet but so does the congo rainforest and the rest of the forests because at the end of the day every forest matters whether it's in whether it's in the amazon whether it's the congo whether it's the indonesian forests all the forests matter so when i realized that the congo rainforest was in danger and that many people heavily depend on it over 80 million people depend on the existence of this forest and by this i mean those who are who relate with it directly we all depend on it but then there are communities ethnic groups that are over 150 that heavily depend on this forest they depend on the existence on the survival of this forest for food for medicine for fresh waters among others and it doesn't just stop that 10 000 species of animals depend on this forest 10 000 species of plants depend on this forest over 1000 species of fish depend on this forest as well so you look at how many people depend on it how many other living beings depend on this forest we cannot afford to lose it it has some of the most endangered species for example the okapi it is known as the forest giraffe and it can only be found in the congo rainforest clearly showing that if we lost the forest that means we would lose this okapi also known as the forest giraffe we won't be able to see it anymore we won't be able to even think about it the coming generations will only hear about it in history but they won't know that it actually existed you know so that is why i really got um the passion and desire to speak out for this forest and calling this campaign save congo rainforest was the fact that it is the largest in Africa and it would be a great representation for all the forests in the african continent so what i did i started striking for the congo rainforest i used to do daily strikes because i thought that if i did weekly strikes it would take a very long time without getting people you know to get involved and people to realize and i did these strikes for i think many people got to find out about them on the 15th day and many of them were actually saying they didn't know about the existence of this forest to me this was very disturbing because if you don't know the existence of something how will you protect it so that means that if many people do not know that the forest actually exists then we will have few voices speaking up for its protection this forest has minerals like petroleum you know there are constructions of gas pipelines and what as we've had miss bandana saying that this is the greatest grid that we have in the world right now for the fossil fuels so even the fact that i haven't been in that forest i know that there are companies that are doing so much to extract that petroleum at the cost and at the expense of the trees of the animals and of the people and also of the continent and the future generations so this is a strike that has been going on for over a hundred days and this is a strike that actually got many other people to be involved we have climate activists from europe who strike specifically for the kongorean forest their activists in africa their activists in india and basically the way that i can build the momentum for this campaign is to continuously talk about it and create the awareness and also to continue doing the strikes and supporting every activist who is fighting for the protection of the kongorean forest i'll show you one of the signs i have it here so we usually have signs like this and they say save kongorean forest and this is a campaign that you can do daily or you can do once in a week or you just choose the number of days that are okay for you you just have to write save kongorean forest and then you do the strike and right now we are doing online strikes so that is how i started striking for the kongorean forest and that is how far the campaign has gone it started last year in october and it's still going and the movement is growing thank you oh you're muted thank you sorry yes because they told me i have some sort of strange sound in the in the area so that's why i was muted sorry thank you so much vanessa and i would be very interested to hear more about how you are hoping to mobilize internationally and and create this movement but let's first go back to van damen i will quote you again on your blog your writing on 18th of march we must now de-globalize the food system which is driving climate change disappearance of species and a systemic health emergency and then further on your writing let us make this de-globalization permanent let us make a transition to localization of course we've been because of the covid 19 crisis we've been talking a lot about globalization what international exchange means if it comes to the future of our societies and your proposal to de-globalize is very attractive but of course we wonder like how how is this possible maybe this is also something psychological that we can only think in growth we can only think in more but thinking about that's a locality and not mobility and and exchange and movement is somehow difficult it's as if we have a gap in our imagination so how would you envision this like how would a globalized world on such a level internationally be able to undo i guess and relocalize itself it took one little virus to de-globalize the world not only our people not in you know they're not uh they're sitting alone in their homes yeah so when anyone who's saying oh how can we do it how can you do it well just remember a virus taught you how to do it and the point is now to do it consciously with conscious choices with ecological choices and with a full awareness that localization is a better way to be globalization is not the same as international trade i mentioned my country being the attractor of colonialism we were doing international trade we used to send our spices out all over the world till the middle ages europe had no way to be able to preserve so much of their meats it was the indian spices that helped them and one bag of pepper used to be exchanged for a bag of gold which is why they wanted to control the pepper and the textiles so international trade is when a country and the people growing you know the we were growing the fabrics the pepper you know the spice gardens of the western hearts are timeless they have existed forever and they were not destroyed because they didn't consume the earth you know they grow pepper and spices on one tenth of the land only and on the rest they grow their space staple food they don't trade in rice they grow they eat the rice they eat the coconut they trade in the spices so high value low volume trade chosen by the people who are producers engaged in by traders who do it with other traders through freedom that is international trade globalization was part of colonialism the first free trade agreement was written by the east india company to take over india 1716 i got involved in the globalization of the gat and world trade organization and we create an entire entire forum called the international forum on globalization and because there's you know your generations don't realize that we stopped the wto in seattle we said our world is not for sale our world is not your trade and commodity and cooperation should not rule the world cooperation should not decide what agriculture will be what food will be who'll own the seed that's you know since 87 i've been saving seeds that was a deglobalization action because monsanto wanted to own all the seeds of the world and i said no you don't own the seed you don't invent the seed you can't have a patent on seed we're going to keep seeds free and that's why navdanya means both diversity for nine seeds and the gift of the commons we created ecological systems without chemical fertilizers so no inputs that are bought from outside in the process we work more with biodiversity we grow more food our research is showing and this is real research with hundreds of farmers that if we work with nature we work with biodiversity without poisons without chemicals we can feed two times india's population and this will be exactly the same for africa if africa was allowed to practice as indigenous agriculture which is based on their league seeds on their seeds sovereignty on their knowledge of diversity africa could have two times the food um half of the people a billion people are starving right now half of them are farmers why are they starving because they grow commodities at very high cost they don't eat it they're in debt 400 000 indian farmers have committed suicide and then they buy bad stuff costly stuff so globalized agriculture is an agribusiness driven agriculture fossil fuel driven agriculture chemical driven agriculture and all chemicals are made from fossil fuels that's something that the climate movement really needs to recognize that the biggest use of chemicals of fossil fuel is an agriculture the biggest emitters as i already mentioned of greenhouse gases which includes nitrous oxide methane as well as carbon dioxide is industrial farming but it also invades into ecosystems and creates new epidemic diseases you invade into the Congo they're going to be new diseases you're going to have HIV you're going to have Ebola you're going to have SARS you're going to have Mars you're going to have corona you're going to have 300 new diseases have come this is a result of the greed machine and invading into forest ecosystems which should be left for the forest and it should be left for the beings in the forest including the forest people but this industrial food system is also destroying 75% of the planet i think it's even more since my two years ago because they've expanded more 75% of land and soil destruction 75% of water destruction 93% of biodiversity extinction in the last 30 years insects are disappearing bees are disappearing because you're using insecticides and then you're turning people into refugees driving them off the land and the people who are eating this food are getting sick chronic diseases are the biggest killers today a million people annually are dying of cancer 0.9 million are dying a dying of diabetes these are all diseases and if you look at the corona data if you get an infection from this virus the risks of your mortality is 0.5 or 1% but if you have diabetes it's 9.2% if you have cancer it's 7.6% so the agribusiness induced diseases are amplifying the risks of the corona which is also created by the greed machine of agribusiness delocalization deglobalization means localization it means seeds of rarity it means poison-free cultivation growing more food our farmers because they're not trapped in debt for seed they're not trapped in debt for chemical inputs and they're not trapped to the big players the big walmarts and the big car girls to sell low-cost commodities they're earning 10 times more because they have sovereignty over their distribution and so they're earning 10 times more but not just the farmers are doing better the soil is doing better if I was to read out to you the data on how much the soil and here is the link to climate change our soils have increased carbon content by 99% where it's gone down in chemical farms by 14% nitrogen content has gone up 100% that means we are pulling out the carbon dioxide and nitrogen from the atmosphere and healing the climate cycle that's what I say about healing the cycle and it's gone up 22% it's gone down 22% in the chemical farms but zinc and magnesium and other vital micronutrients that are necessary for health these are the deficiencies that are leading to lots of metabolic disorders they all go up with organic farming and they go down so we're producing very inefficiently 10 units of inputs of energy are producing one unit of food and this food is nutritionally empty and toxic and it's giving us hunger and disease and malnutrition so it's not a food system so we have to localize the food system and the beautiful thing about this moment is I've been doing this work agriculture work for 35 years ecological work for 50 years when I used to talk about localization the people of the north used to say oh it's easy for you you have peasants yeah we've lost our small farmers at the Navdanya earth university where we have courses on how to return to the earth and learn how to live peacefully with the earth we had a lot of young people and I'm now getting letters in I was at your school 10 years ago and now I have a farm and I was at your school 15 years ago and now I run this campaign for localization so this movement for localization is growing and during the lockdown it's only where local food systems were in place that people had food because the long-distance supply chains had crashed I think just one last thing on this while we are realizing that de-globalization is vital for the planet as well as our health for avoiding pandemics as well as climate change those who created all these problems are looking for the next step of industrialization and the next step of globalization they're not talking about farming without farmers and food without farms but if industrial food has already given us diseases because they forgot our gut is a rich diversity of 60 trillion microbes our gut microbiome is called the second rain and it's damaging that that is causing the diseases if we start eating fake food not only will we keep destroying the planet we will have very sick people which makes total sense for agribusiness because the people who sell the chemicals and make money giving us cancer are also big pharma who controls the cancer medicines the same people who've given us the corona will control the drugs antiviral drugs through patents and the vaccines through patents to control it so big ag poison cartel big pharma are one continuum and they want people to be sick they don't want people to be healthy because healthy people are not a market healthy people are healthy people yes thanks you for this Vandana this is indeed your analysis on the on the poison cartel and the cycles the kind of closed deathly cycles that you describe that would be interesting to hear a bit about more and also I was wondering like I mean you've been touching upon that but indeed what does it mean for us thinking locally again does that really influence our lives our food pattern should we all start to grow food I mean what are the implications because I think we we love to to listen like people like you and think like it's all possible and you know re-energize while while listening to your strong voice and on the same time I feel we are in need of let's say practical tools like what are the implications and how can we also change you know also in the global north ourselves but before we continue on that Vanessa I would be interested in hearing a bit more um Vandana is also describing like the the situation in in in India could you share a bit the situation in Central Africa if it comes to climate catastrophe you've been already describing but in one of the uh interviews you're talking also about the rise of water levels of Lake Victoria for example and there are other elements so could you describe a little bit what let's say concretely the effects are in in Central Africa and maybe also respond to Vandana's proposal to if it comes to the changing agriculture going to biodiversity regenerating the soil like how are you listening to that are those strategies that you feel could also work in Central Africa or how are you thinking about this thank you um when it comes to Africa I would say that Africa as a continent heavily depends on their natural resources and this cuts across every part of the African continent so from where I come from which is Uganda and the neighboring countries climate change is really really threatening two major things and that is water scarcity so water security and food security this is because climate change is disrupting the weather patterns and disrupting the distribution of rainfall in the different parts of the African continent so you find that because of the increasing temperatures in the atmosphere there is so much over an even distribution of rainfall meaning that we are experiencing shorter rainy seasons and longer dry spells so literally areas that were receiving rainfall and now receiving shorter rainfall patterns and this come in form of heavy rainfall exactly what is happening in Uganda and Kenya the countries that connect to Lake Victoria because we know that water warms up and expands when it warms up it expands so that's also contributing to the increasing water levels but then the fact that through that warming there is evaporation taking place that means there is so much of condensation going on and then receiving of more rainfall back into the lakes so there are many many effects that come after this because really increasing water levels of Lake Victoria many people's homes have been destroyed because the water is encroaching in people's homes people's farms and people's lives you know so you find that many people have been left displaced with no homes and many people have lost their farms as I said that climate change greatly it greatly affects the food sector when it comes to the African continent since many people depend on that their livelihoods depend on that and then with that with the increasing water levels comes an opportunity or I wouldn't call it an opportunity it's more of a challenge of diseases to rise up for example this lake when the water rises up it also submerges the toilets in the areas and you find that many people depend on the water from the lakes so they are being pushed to using contaminated water and this brings about more challenges diseases like cholera that kill children below five years every day in our countries you know many other diseases waterborne diseases so with the fact that the the climate crisis is increasing the temperatures and also causing water levels to rise many people's homes are being threatened and these are going to be caused to migrate to look for better places of survival but in most cases these people find themselves in slums or impoverished areas and then you see that many of them lose their farms that means they lose their source of food and they are pushed to a point of either starving or the point of surviving on just one meal a day or the point of eating today skipping a meal tomorrow and then eating the next day and it doesn't just stop on that many are also affected in form of having access to clean water because there is an issue of water scarcity not everyone can survive on contaminated water so with all these things it's more like how you see an organization structure so when the climate crisis affects the food sector and the water sector more problems are birthed from that because a family that doesn't have access to food how do you expect the children to go to school on a hungry stomach so that means from the climate crisis there is also a secondary effect of education being affected so a child cannot go to school on a hungry stomach you know some of them have to stay at home to help out their parents to help out their families in recovering they lost funds in trying to grow crops and be able to get something that they can survive on in the coming days or in the coming years so many of them are going to be pushed to leave school they're going to be forced to leave school and what happens when this when this takes place we are going to continuously see people move in a poverty trap you know because with education people are able to study get employed and get jobs but then with these problems and education being affected you're going to find that communities that are already vulnerable are going to be pushed into more vulnerability i'll also speak about the issue of of equality when it comes to this so many of the people in the african continent i think it's the same thing when it comes to india it is the women who who are in charge of the food and the water provision of food and water for their families they they carry out they're growing they carry out the planting of the crops so you find that many of these women lose lose their only lose their hard work to climate change because they lose their funds so that means they have to either work so much in order to recover what they have already lost or some of them have to walk very long distances in order to get water when i saw the the water stress in chennai and how people were struggling to get water i will say that if it was out of a hundred percent 90 percent of those people were women so the climate crisis is also affecting the the improvements that are being done on gender equality so we are seeing that women are still pushed more into our vulnerability places because of the climate crisis and then there is an issue over children brides as a result of climate change in the african continent we've so much had about children brides and early marriages for teenagers but then climate change is also pushing the early marriages at a very very fast rate because when a family loses everything that means they are left with no other option but to give up some of their children for marriage in order to get bride price that can help them recover or in order to reduce on the number of the children at home and this i say because i read it from an article that was clearly stating how climate brides come about and it was so hard breaking to see that many of these families painfully give away their children because they have this thing that when i give out my child they'll be able to survive in another person's home and then i'll have fewer children to take care of and unfortunately it is always the girl child again going back to the issue of gender inequalities so there are so many issues that come with the climate crisis i have seen street children in my country i have seen them in nigeria and you realize that most of these people now i'll speak from my country they are pushed to the streets not because they want to but because of poverty but then some of this actually most of the poverty is being driven by the climate crisis we won't be able to achieve we won't be able to eradicate poverty without addressing climate change because now in my in my country when you look at the street children most of them look like they come from the same region of the country and as i grew up i had so much about this region and it was known to be a semi arid region but with the increasing temperatures what if things are worse now and they're trying to survive they are running away from the from the high temperatures in their communities that don't favor food production that don't favor human survival so they're trying to go to the streets in order to survive but some of them as i said they're either pushed to the slums in pulverized regions or some of them stay on the street whereby they survive on the coin that they give them i mean and not everyone actually gives up that money it's very few people who decide to okay i'll give you a coin to help you for the day so the climate crisis it doesn't just have primary effects it comes with secondary effects as well but the primary effects being the fact that it affects the natural resources and Africa being a continent that depends on natural resources that means food security is being affected water security is being affected and where there is no water more problems are birthed diseases women having to walk long distances children having to give up school something with food security where there is food scarcity many children will be pushed to leave school many will be pushed into early marriages and then with that i've seen so much especially in this period of the pandemic that the climate crisis actually makes any other crisis more dangerous we are experiencing this crisis but there are communities that are suffering with climate change so they are dealing with two challenges at the same time for example in cassese we've seen the rivers burst flooding people's homes swept away people's funds swept away and people are being left with nothing i mean if the guidelines of the wh are telling us to stay at home how will people stay at home if they have lost everything to the climate crisis how will people try to stay safe if they have lost everything to the climate crisis so the climate issue affects any other issue and it makes any other crisis more dangerous and about the issue that miss bandana talked about i believe in regenerative agriculture i believe there are better ways of doing food production crop growing that not only benefit the people but also ensure the protection of our planet because we see some of the agricultural processes and the agricultural methods that are used in the end of the day they affect so much of the climate they affect the environment you know you hear that the agriculture sector contributes so much to climate change just after the fossil fuel industry it takes so much of the water it takes so much of the land so a lot goes on with agriculture that is why i believe in what miss bandana said we need better principles of doing agriculture that will ensure that people get clean food enough food as well as protecting the planet but we can only drive some of these processes with the help of the leaders not all the farmers are able to drive these processes not all of them have the funds to build such systems but with the leaders i believe that if they are willing to help we can be able to see the agricultural sector provide food for the people but not at the expense of the planet thank you yes um i think this last point that you raised um and it must be so frustrating to be in a place where the consequences of let's say the global north industries fossil fuels are so apparent um but maybe the feeling of power powerlessness if it comes to how to have really an impact on these globalized policies and you're speaking about leaders and people in power and i think it would be interesting to to dive a bit deeper in that like how is the political situation in what way are you feeling that do you have a thing to be heard or not heard um but maybe first go back by the way we have two beautiful questions of the audience people that are watching us for both of you but i postponed it a little bit uh to the end um so i would like to go back a little bit from dana to um our former uh point if it comes to concrete implications for our lives but also to uh what this momentum is due to the corona crisis you were talking about both positive and negative so at the one hand let's say um regulations that are falling away uh things are getting worse and on the same time you write uh in the same text that you wrote international day for biological diversity that the corona crisis creates a new opportunity to make a paradigm shift from the mechanical mechanistic industrial age of separation domination greed and disease to the age of gaya that you were talking about um before so um do you see indeed this period as specifically an opportunity um as you were saying before also i mean we've seen it's possible due to uh um this disease that suddenly nation states start to act um or are you actually more pessimistic if it comes to the momentum because we on the same time see things are actually getting worse worse if it comes to climate um i've never been a pessimist i have taken very seriously uh the power of those who are engaging in willful destruction of this planet our only home uh and destruction of lives on a very very very large scale um if you think of it just the lockdown is costing 1.9 billion people their livelihoods out of the 3.3 working billion people in the world who work according to the world food program 130 million people will be pushed to starvation every day 300,000 are going to die if we don't act and shift the system so again the point is the issue of action a we are citizens and we've been reduced to consumers you know now to consume basically roots of the word consume is to destroy the word consumption in the middle ages in europe used to mean that you're going to die of tuberculosis you know the word tb was called he has consumption and now the whole planet is dying of consumption and people are dying of consumption we've been made to forget that we are creative beings we've been given hands and we've been given heads and we've been given hearts and when you take the integrity of our heads and hearts and hands everything that the earth wants us to do we can do yes everyone should grow food just for the sake of learning once again that you can grow food and you are part of the earth if nothing else take a pot in your balcony put some salt put a seed take your favorite plant could be a basil could be a tomato if you have a little patch grow a garden when grease was collapsing a young person said i've lost my job what do i do i said grow a garden in your balcony wrote to me later i'm feeding my whole street a boy in michigan said i am homeless i have no job and detroit is collapsing as the automobile industry and i've written soil not oil and i've written in that the best thing we can do is be soil builders because in that lies the climate solution because when we build the soil that's regenerative agriculture we pull that carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere where excess amount does not belong and we put it in the soil where the soil is safe that's our fertility i need that nitrogen and that nitrogen doesn't come from synthetic fertilizers which were the same process that made ammunitions in Hitler's Germany our nitrogen fixing crops our pulses and beans can fix nitrogen with absolutely no violence but even more importantly your earthworms and solar bacteria give you nitrogen um so make begin by growing your food create a community garden and from what i said if you think of where the the the green machine which doesn't know when to put a food stock you know they are a cancer on this planet and the cancer cell is a cell which doesn't know when to stop growing all the healthy cells in our body they they're born and they die and they and they replenished our body is replenished every few hours healthy cells come and go come and go come and go the cancer cell doesn't know when to grow stock stop growing the green machine doesn't know when to stop growing and because they're now looking at our food they destroyed our agriculture now they want to make money out of every muscle we eat with patterns and extraction and GMO seeds and impossible burgers they are going to attack your health this is a direct war against your body and that's why if you're politically active you want to be in a school of resistance stand your ground to take care of your health take care of the sovereignty of your community and of course you'll have to work but all resistance means joining hands all resistance means finding our creative potential and I want to give you a little story which connects Vanessa's country and mine uh India is the biggest growing bananas and Uganda's the second I used to go to Uganda to advise them on globalization policies and WTO policies and it was fascinating to see that Uganda is the only culture in the world whose staple is the banana they eat banana at breakfast and lunch and dinner and they have hundreds of varieties in India we have hundreds of varieties so of course the green machine Bill Gates finances an Australian scientist who has pirated a banana from the Pacific Island to then genetically engineer bananas in India they wanted to sell it as a iron deficiency banana that will save women from dying in childbirth we fought it we stopped it so they ran with it to Uganda and to do now it's a vitamine banana suddenly the same and genetic engineering from iron rich had become vitamine rich but it was the same companies it was the same patterns and I hope it hasn't made progress and Vanessa I would love to work with you to make sure the GMO banana does not destroy your banana biodiversity which is your food sovereignty I think we are at a very very unique moment not only because multiple crises have descended on us together it is a new coronavirus but it's an old series of infectious diseases from the same pattern of invasion building on the same chronic diseases that are only a gift to humanity from the last 30 years we didn't have these epidemics before inequality where a tiny group of people control so much well and we've never seen these levels Vanessa described it's so deeply about what this green machine means in taking away basic lives and livelihoods from people so the inequality question and at the same time the question of a food crisis even in the rich countries where access to healthy good food is becoming more and more difficult because the system has gone industrialized when I write about the age of Gaia I don't mean that now Gaia will come alive she's alive all ages have been ages of Gaia that's why I have never agreed to the word Anthropocene I think Anthropocentrism is part of the green machine that humans are superior to other species and we have a right to annihilate them annihilate the forest we are superior but Anthropocentrism is also built into defining this age as Anthropocene because we'll always be small players even climate havoc is the rage of Gaia those storms are her screaming and shouting she's not a passive dead earth she's an active Gaia that's why she's called Gaia by James Hansen who realized oh my god she organizes herself she's alive well our cultures always knew the earth is alive and all ages are ages of Gaia but when I talk about age of Gaia now I mean it as a human consciousness that we need to get out of the fossil fuel imagination of industrialism and a dead earth to a recognition that the earth is alive we are members of the earth family and we can regenerate we have a duty and to regenerate power to regenerate that's where we avoid getting into despair and hopelessness and pessimism recognizing the power of Gaia because it means everything is rest on us most of it rests on her or what rests on us is gratitude to her recognition of her rights recognition of her power and giving back to her that art of giving back is ecological agriculture it's called the law of return it's taking what she gives and saying here it is for organic manure for you and in this process I facilitated you for doing the work you do so brilliantly of pulling that carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide out of the air and getting rid of fossil fuel so there are no new emissions we have an amazing living earth system we just have to start becoming humble players in it rather than arrogant masters I couldn't agree more um Vanessa I would be interested like Fondana is almost proposing to start a collaboration with you if it comes to the banana maybe much more you were mentioning the leaders Fondana gives a clear let's say spectrum of how to think differently how to think the earth as a living organism how to start growing our own garden but if we are pessimistic or yeah how to say it maybe dark minded we could say yeah this is still very much on the individual level and this poison cartel Fondana is talking so much about our such strong powers that we cannot beat them or how to beat them you were also describing how the people suffering are not the people that have the energy busy with activism as they are struggling for survival so you took on that job how are you seeing strategies possible strategy if it comes to these big powers you were talking about leaders how do we get their attention how do we make this paradigm shift Fondana is talking about possible thank you so much and I'm so willing to work with you miss Fondana I really appreciate that then about the the powers and the people who literally hold the systems of the planet I must say that we as citizens we have voices but unfortunately we don't have the authority to change some of these systems at the end of the day it is our voices that will drive the change and also our actions that will drive the change because you find that we may want all these things I'm sure before the current activists spoke about the dangers of the planet there have been so many other activists who have been speaking up for very many years but at the end of it all changing these systems is not in our hands unfortunately it's in the hands of the people that are in power so the first tape is putting the right people in power many times most of the people or activists speak so much about the best candidates for a specific position in government they endorse the candidates maybe on their social media platforms but the issue is they never step out to do the voting and that is mainly for the younger activists they never step out to do the voting so I think that the only way that we can get the attention of these leaders are not just attention because right now of course we have the attention they know that we exist they know of the work that we are doing but they're not willing to do the change they're not willing to give up this whole fantasy of the fossil fuel industry so that means we will have to vote the right leaders into power but we do not vote on social media we can't vote from social media your posts won't vote your tweet won't vote you actually have to step out especially for the young people as you do the endorsements on social media go to the ground and carry out the voting that is the way that we will put the right leaders into power and then the other way is by using our voices because we have seen so many movements from way back I've read so much about past movements I've read about some that were so successful some that weren't successful and when you look at those that were successful you realize that they were clear about their demands and they never gave up they kept on speaking they kept on pushing regardless of what the leaders say you may be in your country and you're doing activism but you feel like you are not hard the thing is you are actually hard they just don't want to show you that you're actually doing something so you just have to keep speaking and we have to be clear with our demands we don't have to give up we have to keep pushing we have to be focused because if you're walking a distance of a thousand maybe a thousand kilometers and you probably walk 500 kilometers and you decide to go back you realize that when you walk when you go back you would have walked the whole distance to your destination so this is not the time for us activists to keep silent especially in this time we are looking at this pandemic and we see so much focus is in the current pandemic and for some reason people have actually forgotten about the existence of the climate crisis so this is where the activists come in they shouldn't stay silent they should keep speaking on their online platforms we have to create awareness in everywhere possible don't just stop on doing awareness online go to local communities go to schools you know it's like you're sowing a seed in those people at one point that seed will go and those people will demand for action because if we are many people demanding for the same thing our collective will will help us get the change and the actions that we need from our leaders so we need to make sure that we create more awareness in our activism but we shouldn't stop in our own circles we need to actually go to the local communities especially those that are the frontline of the climate crisis and in this we need to also up front the indigenous knowledge the indigenous wisdom we need to understand how they've been able to preserve some of these ecosystems for a very long time and with this knowledge that is how we shall present this to the government leaders we need to present this knowledge we need to present this wisdom to them whether they like it or not and then i think the other way that we can get attention of the people in power is by actually bringing the most affected communities on the stage because most times the the affected communities are spoken for by the people who actually don't face the direct impact we need someone we need that farmer from that village somewhere from that local region from that rural area we need that farmer on this stage to actually explain what they're going through we don't need someone who is going to just give a picture of what is happening we need someone who has actually experienced or even seen what is happening on the ground because some of those people in power they need to be held accountable by the very people who are affected by the climate crisis i must say that what we've seen so far and what we are seeing now the people who are holding the the powers accountable most of these people are not even directly impacted by the climate crisis so maybe that's why some of those powers don't give much attention because they think that okay if the most affected people are not saying something um why do we have to do something your life is already well off so we need the victims we need those at the frontline we need to bring them to hold those powers accountable for the climate crisis yeah very clear very powerful to hear you both speak about the importance of working on the ground of maybe not only think in abstraction about this bigger system surrounding us but in a way it also always comes down to going to the people around you um emancipation spreading the word but but going out to the streets doing that work which i guess under the current circumstances with the virus it's quite harsh and difficult because of course we're very much limited through our digital to the digital realm that we try i think with platforms as this one to i mean empower as much as possible and i would like to go to some questions of of people watching us i have a question two questions for you bandana let's start with the first one and see how far we go come so someone is asking if you could talk more no there's someone saying sorry i was looking for the white one someone saying i admire your force and energy you give and you're given since years and years to the fight for justice and for the earth and its living species could you talk about how you personally re-energize yourself and your sense of optimism i think we forget that you know the the universe is energy and if we work in alignment with gaia we weren't in alignment with our conscience we don't get depleted yeah that everything about life is about renewable energy life renews itself a seed is planted grows into a plant we ourselves are renewing themselves do you get up in the morning and say oh my god i'm dead how will i work you sleep you rest your back again you know so it is in the nature of every living autonomous self-organized being to be able to renew their energy as part of their life years ago you know i had to do a study for on mining for our ministry of environment and um and the women uh there was a group of women who came to uh me why did you leave our mine out and i said we didn't leave it out it wasn't in the map so they said if we do a civil disobedience will you join us i said i will of course i will they've sat and blocked the equipment and the bulldozers an earth moving machine and then they were attacked because violence is the nature of the greed machine it cannot work without violence it's not a market force i think we should never use the term market for this it is a war machine it's a violent machine and the women had been attacked and i was told so i rushed and i found i thought they'd be in their homes you know someone with a bandit someone with a hand in a fracture and they were sitting right there at the protest camp and the sitwari devi who's no more she was the old woman who was leading this protest because the mining was destroying their water and uh and i asked exactly that's a question i said how do you get how did you get the energy been beaten up yesterday in your backyard to protest and she said something so beautiful she said we are walking on the grass it bounces right back every day we take leaves from the trees to feed our animals the trees come right back the power in nature which we call prukrti is the power in us which we call shakti and that i think has to be the power in every resistor to stand your ground because i can tell you that after this covid virus the greed machine is going to become more violent they're going to take away more liberties they will use more force and now they will use a lot of surveillance systems a lot of control systems and we have to be even more strong in standing our ground and our ground is our being beautiful um it makes me think of what you said you wrote also about how let's say microsoft through patents start mining our bodies uh in order to understand better how we consume that you already um metaphorically explained as as as destroy and wake um so i thought that was very interesting is also i mean again wake up call if it comes to how we let ourselves govern also um and one more thing i want to just add to what Vanessa was saying you know in democracy people bring change and it's when people create enough of a shift that systems change i have worked for so long against the poison cartel they didn't want an organic movement but not only do i work with six states in my country that want to go organic at the government level europe has just passed a new farm to fork policy part of it is getting rid 50 of pesticides our poison free campaign says by 2030 we must get rid of all pesticides and all chemicals and fossil fuels and agriculture we need to keep pushing them if we can bring them to 50 percent we can bring them to 100 percent exactly another question for you Vanessa someone is asking you can you talk more about what it means for you and people from Congo Uganda to do a strike and how do you strike and what are the sacrifices in relation to more privileges privileged parts of the world well um i'll speak from my own perspective and where i come from that is Uganda of course it's very it's very hard to do the strikes simply because getting permits is uh it's literally impossible especially if you have no big organization behind you so you're literally on your own as an activist or as a group of activists and uh it's very hard to get the permits so i must say that most of the strikes that have been part of uh they have been uh more of risky strikes whereby you just go to the street and uh expecting anything because you don't have a permit and uh you know if you have to explain yourself so much to the authority in case they're too in case they're bothered by your strike and uh they come to ask questions and of course the strikes in my country they are not the strikes that we see in the global north it is literally impossible to do such large strikes of students simply because uh most of the students first of all they are in the boarding sector and then those who are in the day sector when i mean boarding like they they they stay at school they only come back for holidays and then uh for the day sector uh the day section sorry you find that many students they find a difficult in walking out of the schools to do the strikes simply because education is so upheld in my country and uh it's literally the key to success that is what they tell us as as we grow up that is the key to success so it is very hard to convince a student who clearly knows what education means to them to walk out of school to do a strike and then the other thing many of them are afraid because walking out of school to do the strikes and um walking out of the gates or even disrespecting their security guard at the gates to walk out would subject them to either suspension or expulsion so you weigh in all this and uh you understand the students you understand the fear that they have you understand the respect that they have for their parents because most of their parents um they struggle a lot to make sure that their students are in school so you put all these factors together and you you understand why they cannot walk out to do the strikes and then um the fact that we never have permit so what we do we usually do the strikes in very small numbers but in different locations so you can find that someone is doing a strike in Kapala, someone is doing a strike in Chiwaka, someone is doing a strike in Namgongo, someone is doing a strike in Gaza, we literally uh cover different places at the same time to try and uh drive the impact and the change because of how complicated of how complicated it is so when it comes to the privilege of doing the strikes it is not the same thing as it is in the global north and the fact that many people in the African continent they have so many issues that they they have to deal with some of them have daily needs that they have to meet so you find that not all of them will be interested in doing climate activism because they'll ask you what do I gain and of course you you understand them because they are literally living to survive some people live their days to survive whatever they are daily is what they eat on that day so they'll ask you what do I gain from doing activism and you have nothing to tell them you tell you have to tell them there is nothing to gain you're just doing this for the planet and that's already a discouragement to them because they want to get involved in something that brings in some money for them or for their children or you know for their families and then there is an issue of awareness that has also affected the strikes not everyone knows about the climate crisis not every local farmer not every person understands the connection between the fossil fuels and the climate crisis and of course me as an activist and other fellow activists we have tried to do their awareness through going to schools themselves and talking to students within the schools going to local communities but we cannot reach everywhere it is hard to reach everywhere because most of us are doing this by our own selves we don't have any organization behind us so we reach the places that we are able to reach but we can't reach everyone so that is also an issue so there is not much privilege when it comes to to the climate strikes in Uganda and I think it cuts across the the African continent but I must say that a single voice is able to drive change just like one match from a matchbox is able to cause an explosion a single voice is able to drive change so the fact that we are few doesn't mean that we are powerless it means that even in our small numbers even in our strikes that almost seem impossible we are actually powerful and we are able to drive change in our communities yeah very impressive to hear you talk about it especially because then it's hard to imagine the risks you're taking to speak for so many you can't I would like to do one last round but I have to ask you an opportunity to try to be a bit short because of time but I would like to have these last two questions from the audience included so Vandana someone is asking if you could address how to provide agency to local communities that are traditionally marginalized from broader policymaking discussions so we know you've been working with with a lot of communities with the seed banks so maybe you could tell us a bit more concretely short how you are working with those and then Vanessa I have a question maybe I just collect them someone is saying you talk about the importance of listening to indigenous knowledge where would you position the knowledge of the scientists is it a matter of combining both and how do you make their knowledge available for those that are less educated on the matter so I guess how do you amplify this indigenous knowledge and wisdom you were talking about so please Vandana and then Alessandro yeah short but as strong as you both can I've already said that everything living is has agency the earth has a whole as agency a latin is microbe as agency yeah otherwise how could one little virus even though it's not a full living being uh how could a virus bring the whole planet to a halt you're going to argue with me it doesn't have agency it has agency so I think we've developed this vocabulary of inertness of the other you know a dead earth people without I think our role is a to remove the forces of disempowerment the forces that rob people of agency and second because some of us are in positions where we get to know what's going on in the systems of power I came to know about the patenting of seat I took it to the communities they on their own decided they were going to save their seeds 200 villages gathered and said how they a WTO allow companies to patent our seeds these are our family we are going to create a living democracy movement in our village we will decide that all living beings are part of our family and every pirate is a thief and those movements are what brought the bio pirates to their knees so main thing is we don't have to empower this everyone has power we have to remove the disempowerment and we have to have solidarity that's what we have to do we have to uncover the agency that is there thank you so much Vanessa uh yes thank you um for that question I will I will try and use a human body to explain it so when you look at a human body it cannot be fully treated by maybe our a surgeon or a dentist I don't know if it's coming out to a what I'm trying to say is that every part of a human body needs a specific kind of doctor or a specific kind of specialist in medicine so you find that the eyes have their own specialist the teeth have their own specialist but then they all work together to make sure that the human body is okay so when it comes to scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge I'm trying to say that they too need to work together to address the climate crisis you find that there are communities for example in my country in my tribe there are very many people they are named after plants named after animals named after fish so this was a form of preservation science may not be able to understand this kind of wisdom but I must tell you that it was able to preserve these animals these trees these plants for a very long time but then also scientific knowledge is important to actually show us where we are where we stand when it comes to the climate crisis because it gives us the facts that we don't have but then we have to make sure that this scientific knowledge is brought to the local people to the indigenous people in a way that helps them understand you won't go and tell someone we have to make sure we keep the degrees below two you know below two degrees we have to make sure we keep the temperatures below two degrees not everyone understands that knowledge but actually when you mix that knowledge with indigenous knowledge and tell them okay you see that before we used to have this but now we don't have it science explains it in this way that means that we have to do something to protect the planet you bring it in the knowledge that they understand scientific knowledge is good indigenous knowledge is good something as a dentist is good an eye specialist is good a neurosurgeon is good you know I don't know who works on bones I don't know what they are called but they are also good the bone specialist they are also good but then they work together to make sure that the human body is okay someone can see someone can eat well someone can breathe well so it's the same thing with the climate crisis we need to integrate this knowledge we need to work together in order to be able to get the change and the action that we need every kind of wisdom is needed same thing I will also try to bring in the issue of intergeneration knowledge we as activists the younger activists we are good yes we play a part yes but even the older activists play a part so we are all needed to address the climate crisis we need more intergeneration in taking climate action in driving climate activism so it's the same thing with knowledge we all need to work together whether you you carry indigenous knowledge you are needed because you have your wisdom whether you are a scientist you have knowledge you have your wisdom and if we put that knowledge together we'll be able to ensure that the earth is alive the same way a human body is okay with every organ working perfectly thank you thank you so much from Dana Shiva Vanessa Nakate I think this last metaphor is very beautiful of the specialist looking at all the fragmented parts of the body knowing so much about this little thing but then I think what you're both being pleading for today is very much this idea of integration instead of fragmentation collaboration seeing how things are interdependent on of each other and I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to speak to you both to listen mostly and offer the opportunity of two other people to listen to to both of you um I will just round up by mentioning that the next episode the third episode will be live streamed on Thursday the 11th of June on six o'clock realized with the support of medical international and starting from the current living and working situation of textile workers in Pakistan and we will discuss the global production and supply chains of what we call global economy how is it really functioning and how can it be changed thanks again from Dana Shiva Vanessa Nakate and um let's continue our story together thank you Lara thank you Vanessa very nice meeting you both I'm looking for your collaboration let us know