Vandana Shiva on The Occasion of The Blue Planet Award Ceremony 2007

by Vandana Shiva

I greet you from my country India, which I am currently not able to leave by reason of a sudden illness. The doctors have imposed a strict ban from travelling on me.

How I would have loved to join the Blue Planet Award Ceremony - I am very happy about the award and thankful to everyone who has intended it for me. My special thanks go to the famous artist Otto Piene who designed this original artwork for me. I receive the Blue Planet Award 2007, representing all the people who are committed to peace, justice, sustainability and against exploitation, genetic engineering and the subjugation of the earth to the controlling interest of corporate organizations.

My thanks go to the ethecon foundation for their outstanding work in our common aims and I encourage you not to fade in your fight for a better world. We need people like you. Do not give up. For it is about time to postulate enforceable rights for every life form on the planet. The increasing marketing of water, foods and clothes has to be stopped and taken from the big companies. Because in the areas where water has been passed into private hands, its price has increased tenfold. Especially the Nestlé corporation is responsible for this fatal development. The bottling of water for sale as practised by Nestlé is nothing else but water theft. Nestlé is also responsible for the burning rain forests in Indonesia. Because Nestlé is one of the main consumers of palm oil which is grown in huge plantations on the acreages of the ruined rain forest. Palm oil is an ingredient of junk food and Nestlé is willing to habituate children in poor countries to this junk food by means of dubious advertising campaigns - in their own interest and against the children's health.

Justifiably we can state that Nestlé is destroying the planet and the health of the future generation. In so far I absolutely agree with the conferment of the Black Planet Award to Nestlé, this corporation has more than deserved it. Another negative aspect is that this entire unjust system of corporate dominance is even subsidized by public means. We need to make sure this public money, therefore o u r money, will serve the ecological agriculture of peasants. Other than that, I hope the European population will strike back at the importation of gene-modified foods. The northern administrations should make sure big companies will keep out of the food production. But the opposite is taking place.

The American government and others ignore international agreements concerning the abolition of starvation, also for the sake of personal integration: Many members of the government used to be employees of the aforesaid companies. This is a danger to democracy. The poor countries are an immense, even the biggest business market for the products of the agro industry.

The corporations force off license fees from our farmers, money for patented seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Simultaneously, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund regulate the conditions for the foreign trade. The Indian population, for example, pays twice as much for their grain as their exporters. As a result, my fellow countrymen and women starve, because they are refused the foods they produce themselves.

How can it be that farmers who grow foods suffer from starvation and that they cannot even keep their own food for themselves and their families? This difficulty stems from the dependence on seeds, fertilizers and pesticides which are bought by the agro industry for dear money. This does not only lead to starvation, but it also causes the destruction of nature. Thousands of farmers commit suicide, because their burden of debt is crushing them. Besides, some people told me they sold their wives or their children, others sold one of their kidneys. We need a new sustainability system. The key issues should be: How can the soil be used best, and without genetic engineering? What is the healthiest way, what is just, how can we best benefit from diversity of species?

Dear friends, I wish for your meeting in Berlin to be a great success and my thoughts will be with you. Thanks again for the great honor you are granting me. The Blue Planet Award should be a symbol of a better world. I will cherish it and I send my best regards to you.

ethecon - Foundation Ethics & Economics
Akeleiweg 7, 12487 Berlin,
eMail info@ethecon.org, Internet www.ethecon.org
Donation account GLS Bank 8023 314 500, Bank Code 430 609 67

judythpiazza@newsblaze.com

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