Environmental hero Vandana Shiva lined up for Oct. 22 speaker series

Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva

Members of the York community will have an opportunity to engage with world-renowned academic, author and activist Vandana Shiva on Oct. 22 when she is the featured guest of the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) speaker series.

The event, “An Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva”, is presented by FES in the 2015-16 speaker series “Navigating the Anthropocene” and will run from 12:30 to 2pm in room 140 of the HNES building.

FES Dean Noël Sturgeon will conduct and up-close interview with Shiva, and relay questions from the York community. To submit a question for Shiva, visit fes.yorku.ca/AskDrShiva.

Shiva is recognized for her work and writings on the perils and promises of globalization, industrial agriculture, biotechnology, genetic engineering and biodiversity, and their connections with gender issues in the global south.

Founder of several effective research and advocacy organizations including the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun, Shiva is dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our time.

Shiva was named an environmental hero in 2003 by Time Magazine, and Asia Weekly called her one of the five most powerful communicators in Asia. In 2010, Forbes Magazine published her name as one of the seven most powerful women on the globe.

“We are very excited that, through our partnership with the environmental film festival, Planet In Focus, we have been able to have Dr. Vandana Shiva join us on campus,” said Sturgeon. “It’s short notice, but I hope people take this unusual opportunity to talk with one of the most pre-eminent environmental activists on the planet.”

The Navigating the Anthropocene speaker series is a forum for discussion on the many issue around this complex epoch: humankind is overwhelming and degrading the Earth’s life support systems, on which all life depends; much of the Earth’s fresh water is contaminated, in short supply and subject to competing claims; and the Earth’s climate is undergoing irreversible changes that raise questions of environmental justice.

The series presents guest speakers including Maude Barlow, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Tim Jackson, Peter Victor and many more.

Thematic highlights of the series will include: The Future of Water, Governance and Environment, Food Justice, Inuit Culture/the artic and climate change, Ecological economics, and city planning in the Anthropocene.

The speaker series is presented in partnership by FES, Planet in Focus and The Institute of Feminist Legal Studies at Osgoode Hall Law School.