SHIVA: EARTH DEMOCRACY
KEY TERMS
1. Commons: Territories regarded as areas to be shared by a community; areas
controlled by a community for shared production towards a common good.
2. Enclosures: Territories, area, fields, etc., fenced off from the commons and
claimed as privately owned. The first enclosures occurred in England in the
16th century in what became known as the “enclosure movement.”
3. Privatization: Turning over to private ownership facilities, services, territories,
and equipment that had once belonged to the state or the public or the
people in common. In short, it is transferring to private ownership what
had been publicly owned.
3. Biopiracy: The corporate practice of patenting genetic material found in plants
and animals that have been used for centuries by native peoples all over the
world. Very often, indigenous peoples then must pay a royalty to the
corporation holding the patent to continue using their tradition food and
remedies.
4. Intellectual Property Rights: The rights of inventors, artists, musicians, and
writers as determined by copyright, trade mark, and patent law.
5. World Social Forum (WSF): A yearly meeting of indigenous and progressive
organizations for social change. It usually meets in Porto Alegre, Brazil, but
it has also met in Mumbai, India, and Nairobi, Kenya.
6. World Economic Forum (WEF): A yearly meeting of corporate leaders, bankers,
economists, and their invited guests (Bono attends every year) in Davos,
Switzerland, to discuss and plan the future of global capitalism.
7. World Bank: A multi-lateral lending agency established in 1944 to provide
capital for the reconstruction of Europe. (Its real name is the International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development—IBRD.) Since the 1960s, its
chief function has been to provide development loans to poor countries in
the global south.
8. IMF (International Monetary Fund): Created at the same time as the World
Bank to regulate currencies after World War II in order to enable
international trade. The World Bank and IMF together are frequently called
the “Bretton Woods institutions” for the name of the place they were agreed
to.
9. World Trade Organization (WTO): The primary oversight committee for international trade. Its major task is to appoint tribunals to adjudicate trade disagreements among its 160 or so member nations.
10. Terra Mater: Mother earth.
11. Terra Nullius: Empty Land.
12. Agreement on Agriculture: A stipulation in the WTO that calls for the immediate
abolition of tariffs on agricultural products being imported into poor
countries but only gradual reductions of tariffs on agricultural products
being imported into North American and European countries and Japan. It
also requires the end of government subsidies to farmers in poor countries
but not in rich countries.
13. Precautionary Principle: The idea that it is better to be safe than sorry; don’t
introduce new products until their safety and volatility have been fully
tested.