ABSTRACT
Dr Shiva calls for an Earth Democracy movement as a new public imagination. This addresses deep and multiple crises, reclaiming humanity, freedoms, and earth citizenship. Earth Democracy offers a necessary alternative to destructive corporate globalization. The real necessity is the creativity of bodies and minds, not the “innovation” of tools made to control nature and society. The worldview of separation combined with an illusion of limitless extraction and exploitation of nature is pushing humanity to an ecological precipice. Patents on seeds are pushing people across diverse cultures, farmers, to suicide and diverse living beings, millions of other species, to extinction. Sowing the seeds of real freedom in imagination and in daily lives calls for the integration of Satyagraha, Swaraj, and Swadeshi. “Satyagraha”—the force of truth—is Gandhi’s word for non-cooperation with systems, structures, laws, paradigms, policies that destroy the Earth and rob humanity of its freedoms. Swaraj is self-organization, self-rule, self-governance, autopoiesis—it is the basis of real freedom in nature and society, beginning at the smallest scale and emerging over time at higher levels. Swadeshi is self-making, based on local resources, indigenous knowledge, and community. Shiva concludes that these practices resist divides and cultures of fear and hate non-violently, yielding real freedom.
