Indian activist Shiva: eco-icon with questionable views


fact finder

Status: 13.12.2022 06:34 a.m

For decades, the Indian activist Vandana Shiva has been courted by environmental organizations, politicians and the media – above all because of her commitment to green genetic engineering. She also spreads disinformation and conspiracy myths.

By Pascal Siggelkow, ARD fact finder editors

“Rock star of the eco-movement”, “Monsanto’s nightmare”, “Gandhi of the grain”: many media are not lacking in superlatives when they report on the Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva. A documentation of her life story has also been shown in German cinemas since December, with the telling title: “Vandana Shiva – A Life for the Earth”.

Numerous environmental organizations and politicians have already adorned themselves with the Indian activist: Among other things, she was invited to speak at the federal party conference of the Greens, Green Member of the Bundestag Renate Künast wrote the foreword of Shiva’s autobiography and Great Britain’s King Charles III. is even said to have a bust of her in the garden of his family home in Highgrove. Shiva is anything but undisputed.

Simone Peter and Cem Özdemir thank Vandana Shiva (middle) after her speech at the federal party conference of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in Hamburg. (Picture from 11/22/2014)

Image: picture alliance / dpa

“Genetic changes are permanent”

Shiva is often portrayed as a resistance fighter – after all, she has been fighting with large corporations such as Monsanto (today Bayer) in agriculture for decades and is propagating a system change in the global agricultural economy. One of their main concerns is the fight against the use of so-called genetically modified organisms (GMO) in agricultural plant production – also known as green genetic engineering. In Shiva’s eyes, green genetic engineering is the “death knell for biodiversity and agriculture”, GMO stands for “God, Move Over” (in English: God, go to the side).

Green genetic engineering is initially just a faster and more targeted form of breeding, says Jochen Kumlehn, head of the Plant Reproductive Biology working group at the Leibniz Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben. “Genetic material is constantly changing. All organisms only came into being and are so diverse because dozens of genetic changes occur in each individual.” The assumption that genetic changes are something unnatural is therefore fundamentally wrong.

In any case, the romanticization of the term nature is a fundamental problem in the genetic engineering discourse: “Natural genetic changes occur randomly and properties can arise that are advantageous, while many more changes lead to disadvantages. So nature is by no means good in principle, but neutral at best . For example, the most toxic poisons we know of come from nature.”

Faster breeding possible with genetic engineering

Christoph Gornott, Head of the Department of Agroecosystem Analysis and Modeling at the University of Kassel and Head of the Working Group on Adaptation in Agricultural Systems at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), points out that humans have been influencing natural selection since breeding began thousands of years ago. “For the last 10,000 years of our human history, we have selected the largest, best or tastiest seeds when breeding.” However, that was a very slow process.

Over time, new methods emerged to speed up the genetic modification of seeds. The plants are exposed to stress in order to trigger mutations: through chemicals, dehydration, high salt concentrations or even radioactive radiation. Green genetic engineering is the latest development for breeding new seeds. “The speed to complete a new variety is critical,” says Gornott. “And green genetic engineering allows foreign genes to be introduced into plants, for example Bt cotton or Bt maize. This is not possible with conventional breeding and does not occur in nature.”

Bt stands for the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, whose genes have been transferred to the cotton and corn plants. As a result, these plants produce a specific protein that turns into a toxic variant in the gut of certain pests, killing the pests. This allows him Reduced use of pesticides will. This protein has been shown to be harmless to humans.

No evidence of more suicides among Indian farmers

Bt cotton has long been a thorn in activist Shiva’s side. It has been used in its home country of India since the early 2000s and is now used by the majority of farmers. Shiva blamed Bt cotton and its seed company Monsanto for the suicide of hundreds of thousands of farmers because they were financially bankrupted by Bt cotton. However, there is no empirical evidence for this accusation – moreover, the Suicide rate among small farmers after introduction of Bt cotton remained constant.

Shiva is also one of the most prominent critics of the so-called Golden Rice – a project with which vitamin A deficiency in children in emerging and developing countries is to be combated with genetically modified rice. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Hundreds of thousands of children go blind every year because of this malnutrition – many of them die. Whether the provitamin-A-fortified Golden Rice will actually help remains to be seen. Field trials have repeatedly been prevented by activists, which has contributed to the fact that this rice could be cultivated for the first time in 2022 – a good twenty years later than planned.

Bill Gates as the enemy

Shiva also made a link between autism, GMO use and the herbicide glyphosate – although there is a link for that too no scientific evidence. The influence of environmental factors plays according to the Max Planck Institute also play a minor role in autism.

One of their biggest enemies is the US billionaire Bill Gates, as is the case with many conspiracy ideologues. According to Shiva, he is part of a kind of conspiracy among the richest one percent of people who “want to destroy the economy with wrong food”. Gates also has the WHO under control.

She spreads her theses in interviews with the conspiracy ideologist Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who has already been on a Corona denier demo in Berlin occured. In June 2021, she told the Russian state broadcaster RT Deutsch in an interview in the direction of German readers with a view to Monsanto, which now belongs to the Bayer group: “Be careful! Back then you had Hitler and now you have Bayer! Don’t let that happen Bayer will be your invisible government.”

Worldviews instead of facts

The discussion about genetic engineering is often less about facts and more about world views, says social psychologist Pia Lamberty, managing director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS). “Genetic engineering is a topic that can trigger fears. These are extremely complex processes that many people don’t really understand. And then it’s often just a matter of gut feeling.” There are also strong parallels with the esoteric: “On the one hand there is the good, the natural and on the other hand the evil, the artificial.”

Lamberty sees the creation of enemy images as particularly problematic, as Shiva does with Gates, among others. “The narrative ‘Those up there are evil’ can be found in many milieus. However, it prevents a critical debate if a conspiracy is suspected to be behind everything. That no longer allows any opposing position.” Legitimate criticism is right and important, but if there is no differentiation from conspiracy ideological positions, this legitimizes them.

It happens too often anyway that people are celebrated too quickly and get a huge reach, says Lamberty with regard to Shiva. “Perhaps we should just get to the point where we have a differentiated perspective on people. You may be right on some points, but that doesn’t make the others any less problematic. And that’s where I think it’s important to have a clear stance to have.”

“Green genetic engineering is a cog with a lot of potential”

According to physiologist Kumlehn, a crucial misunderstanding in the discussion about green genetic engineering is that possible limitations and risks, which also affect conventional breeding, are only held against genetic engineering – for example, that pests can develop resilience against new varieties. He would like the debate on the subject to be more factual and less emotional.

“The claim of zero risk that is often encountered is unrealistic for any given life situation, and no serious scientist has ever claimed that green genetic engineering is a panacea,” says Kumlehn. “On the other hand, there is a consensus in science that firstly, green genetic engineering does not involve any greater risk than conventional breeding and, secondly, it is just one of many cogs in plant breeding, but one with great potential for agriculture from which comprehensive improvements are expected.”

However, according to agronomist Gornott, green genetic engineering can also promote negative developments. This has to do mainly with the agricultural system. Because in conventional agriculture it is particularly important to have the highest possible output, even if a lot of resources have to be used for this, he says. In addition, biodiversity often suffers in agricultural systems in which green genetic engineering is used. In order to keep the yield high despite changing environmental conditions, new varieties would have to be bred again and again.

“Actually, we should rely more on more resilient systems that are able to deal with various threats, such as pests and climatic changes,” says Gornott. “In particular, the challenges that we are facing as a result of climate change require rapid action, in which breeding is one component among many others. We have to rebuild the entire agricultural system, which cannot be solved with old cultivation practices alone. We have new problems and for that we need new and holistic answers.”

source site