Dr Vandana Shiva also was awarded the Golden Plant Award, the international award of ecology. She is currently director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology which is involved in research, advocacy and action for the protection of biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and people's rights. Dr. Shiva is also known for her active association with Chipko and the World Rainforest Movement. She is also a consultant with the UN University at Tokyo. During her recent visit to Goa, she spoke on a number of issues.
Globalisation is quite clearly the biggest environmental problem.
Globalisation requires that we start to export things that we've never exported before, and start to import things we've never imported before. Importing things like toxic wastes. This means India provides an environmental subsidy to global economic growth, precisely by not counting that destruction. Because the destruction is borne by local communities, and by the destruction of local livelihoods. That, in a global economic system has no place to enter.