An author and eco-feminist put a new spin on living green by relating gender issues to the scarcity of water.
"Water and the water crisis is a story of how creating a well for some deprives most," Vandana Shiva said.
Shiva talked about women's rights, the right to water and peaceful protests to an audience of about 175 Monday night in the Lewis Katz Building. The School of International Affairs sponsored her lecture.
Shiva focused on third-world countries and the reactions of women to the lack of fresh drinking water.
Women in India often walk many miles to obtain drinking water for their families, Shiva said. However, they usually go no further than 10 miles to do so. At that point, they take action, she said.
A participant of the 1970s Chipko Movement, Shiva talked about the nonviolent attempt to prevent deforestation in India.
"Forests used to be about revenue and timber, but then it was about water," she said.
Women were among the first to notice a connection between deforestation and a lack of water, Shiva said. As the homemakers, women were in charge of collecting drinking water. However, after deforestation campaigns, they often noticed a severe decline in the resource, Shiva said.
"She provides a very creative relationship between women, soil and water," Chao Huang (graduate-international affairs) said.
Shiva also rallied against strip mining in India, she said.
Though the then-Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, condemned strip mining in the Himalayan Mountains for its "ugliness," Shiva said she took action to prevent damage to water.
"In the limestone, caves and cavities and bodies of water would form. Strip mining stole the water storage system provided by nature," she said.
Shiva told of a 75-year-old woman who had been beaten for preventing bulldozers from further stripping the mountains. Despite her injuries, the woman carried on, calling to mind Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent practices, Shiva said.
"We strip foliage from trees and the leaves return. We are a part of nature, why wouldn't we bounce back as well?" Shiva said.
Shiva also discussed the importance of organic farming and the harm of the Green Revolution.
Philip McConnaughay, dean of the Dickinson School of Law, called Shiva a leading activist for women of third-world countries, farming and water sovereignty. He said he hopes students will learn from her work and activism.
"They should see the primary importance of pure ecosystems and sustaining life as we know it. Also, the potential of collective activism by individuals who aren't the most powerful, but care the most. Her example was women and mothers," McConnaughay said.
Though the lecture was not directly related to the modern developed world, "she said, 'I believe anything in 2009 is modern.' That statement really impacted me," said Kolby Kurt Nelson (graduate-international affairs).
