Reclaiming the Commons

Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth lays out the scientific, legal, political, and cultural struggle to defend the sovereignty of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge.

Two decades ago, at the height of globalization, there was an attempt by corporations, and the countries which represent their interests, to privatize and enclose our biological and intellectual commons. The result of this effort has become the massive destabilization of communities all over the world with the expansion of patents and intellectual property rights into the domain of biodiversity.

Today, there is a renewed attempt by global corporations to establish a regime in which biological and intellectual resources flow freely from poor countries to rich ones; and from the poorest communities to the richest corporations, with-out regulation. Reclaiming the Commons details the thirty-year cultural, political, scientific, and legal journey to protect biodiversity and indigenous knowledge from the unethical framework corporations impose on humankind in order to lay claim to life on Earth.

Vandana Shiva masterfully articulates the devastation this corporate greed has inflicted not only on agricultural communities, but on our planet and our very existence. Ultimately, she poses that the recovery of the commons is essential in restructuring our society into one that can flourish, while protecting and honoring all life on Earth. This, she says, lies in the collective recognition of common creativity and the rediscovery of our place within Nature.