As a variety of ecological/environmental human crises engulf the world, discussions of climate crises, sustainability, food and water justice are moving towards the center of social science theorization in the Global North. The growing recognition of indigenous knowledge traditions are also contributing to some of the shifts in thinking about environment and sustainability (see Abhayawickrama, Mayes and Villafana 2024). However, as a new stream of publications seek to capture “new” thinking, the long existing critiques and insights in other parts of the world are only sporadically included.
My paper tries to present the approach of a globally known activist scholar from India, Vandana Shiva whose work offers a holistic approach to thinking about environment beyond its colonial structures. Her efforts to decolonize South Asian agriculture and agriculture in the Global South by challenging Western Hegemony in knowledge systems makes her one of the biggest proponents of decolonization in South Asia. However, her corpus of writings and speeches-including on neoliberal globalization, environment, facets of earth democracy, colonial control of knowledge, indigenous knowledge and practices-remains mostly at the margins of the canon in the Global North.
In the academic scholarship of the Global South, particularly South Asia, the name Shiva is also synonymous with ecofeminism, decolonization, biodiversity, self-reliance. Additionally, her life is an embodiment of her decolonization perspective as she challenges the activism and scholarship dichotomy. This is because her activism (though much talked about) is deeply rooted in her academic scholarship, and her activism in turn nurtures and gives direction to her academic scholarship (in Western academia, you can either be a scholar or an activist but not both). Hence, my paper tries to study decolonization of knowledge systems in South Asia, particularly in the arena of environmental conservation through Shiva's works using her theorisation and case studies of her activism.
