Culture

Vandana Shiva talks about Ecology, the Universe and our place in it, today at the Forum of the Future

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Vandana Shiva

DR

Dr Vandana Shiva is the keynote speaker of the Forum of the Future, today at Rivoli, at 9pm. Vandana first committed to ecological struggle in 1984. Author and activist, Vandana Shiva talks about deforestation, biodiversity and sustainability.

In her book "The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics", she documents the making of money as the curse of farming in the state of Punjab, destroying soils, water, leading to the disappearance of water, trees and endangering peoples' livelihoods to a path of ecological catastrophe.

Vandana Shiva has been on a journey through ecological activism for 40 years, and she has no doubt in affirming that money has been the propeller to ecological destruction, and that agriculture is now war.

"A live tree does not count for GDP, but a killed tree does, and that is the basis of why the more our economies grow, the more people and our planets suffer", Vandana once stated.

The Physicist & Environmental Activist explains that "before the green revolution, agriculture was all about a culture identity, in connection with the Earth; past the green Revolution, it brought money making into agriculture, money driver agriculture, leading farmers in India to commit suicide, this was designed only to make money, not to protect people".

This day, the Forum of the future kicks off with Wu Tsang, at 5pm, at Rivoli. The American, filmmaker, installation artist, activist, and performer is currently based between New York and Berlin. Her artwork addresses issues in the transgender and LGBT community, such as gender identity, social spaces and the tension between film and art. In 2018, Tsang received a MacArthur "genius" grant.

Also at Rivoli, at 7pm, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University will address audiences on issues as an anthropology of the otherwise, from the perspective of the politics of recognition.

She is the author of books and essays of critical theory as well as a former editor of the academic journal Public Culture.

All sessions are entrance free, upon production of the corresponding ticket, up to the limit of two tickets per person.

See here the Forum of the Future programme.