Thanks to the Serna Center Speaker Series and the Department of Environmental Studies, Dr. Vandana Shiva was able to share insight for a lecture on cultivating diversity, freedom and hope in the University Union at Sacramento State.

Shiva attended the University of the Punjab to study physics and later received her Ph.D. in quantum theory from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Since then she has written and edited over 10 books and dedicated her life to defending the freedom of biodiversity.

Viridiana Diaz, director of the Serna Center Speaker Series, strives to have speakers at Sac State who give a different perspective to students on campus.

Diaz said she was gratified to have Shiva come to campus because of her important research surrounding the environment and because she is a role model to students.

Kyle Harris is a student at Sac State who was required to attend the lecture for a class but said he was glad to attend regardless, learning new things about nature and politics.

“[I learned] to be more aware about the world itself and to stay more engaged in political stuff,” Harris said.

Shiva talked about how important nature is to our society, everything from seeds, soil and pollinators, and how without it we wouldn’t be able to live.

She explained how there was a law that was going to be passed making local seeds illegal to grow and trade. Shiva immediately started to inform farmers and got over 100,000 signatures on a petition, and took it to parliament saying they weren’t going to support a law abolishing local seed growth.

“Nature gives these seeds for free, our ancestors have worked with nature to evolve the diversity that supports our life today,” Shiva said. “We will not accept any technology that attacks this diversity either through chemicals,… or through genetic engineering that contaminates the diversity itself.”

Shiva takes a stand for food and the right to know what goes into food, explaining how fertilizer goes into soil to grow our food, but is also being made in the same factories as the ones used to create explosives.

“Without those soil organisms,… our brains wouldn’t function right, that’s why there is a social brain connection scientist are making,” Shiva said. “There needs to be much more research. You can’t poison the world out there and expect healthy bodies and healthy brains, we are connected.”

She argued that farmers are responsible for the production of food, growing and tending to farms, and how wrong it is that they get what seems like nothing in pay for the work they do. Not only farmers but nature is taken for granted. Often times people do not appreciate or treat nature fairly because without plants humans would not have oxygen or food to live.

“And food freedom and seed freedom means the freedom of diversity,” Shiva said. “The freedom of diversity means both recognizing that without those bees and butterflies that are being exterminated by pesticides and drowned out, we’re not going to have food. They contribute $200 billion worth of our food system.”

Shiva’s sense of humor in her lecture kept the audience entertained as well, creating a connection between people and biodiversity.

“Not only do we need to love the earth, we need to celebrate the earth because they are the condition of our being, whether it be the soil organism of the pollen eaters or it be the other cultures,” Shiva said.

After the lecture, Shiva received a standing ovation and answered questions, as well as took pictures and talked to audience members.

“It is time to realize that cultivating diversity is not a luxury, it’s the very rendition of our being, our joy, our happiness, our peace,” Shiva said.