Soil Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil, and Food Justice

2011 International Speaker Series
February 23, 2011 - 7pm at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland, OR

Vandana Shiva

Environmental Activist

Vandana Shiva is one of the world’s most respected environmental activists and feminists. A trained physicist, she received her PhD. at the University of Western Ontario, and since the 1970s, has been a vocal figure in the conservation movement.

Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin. She addressed the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, 1999, as well as the recent World Economic Forum in Melbourne , 2000. In 1993, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award). In 2010, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her commitment to social justice. The founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds, she also set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India.

Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India ’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics

She is the author of many books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997), Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992) and Staying Alive (St. Martin's Press, 1989).

Single tickets for Vandana Shive are on sale through the PCPA box office and Ticketmaster.