We, Diverse Women for Diversity, diverse in culture, race, religion, socio-economic conditions, have one common goal: biological and cultural diversity as the foundation of life on Earth. We stand for self-sufficiency, self-reliance and solidarity, locally and globally.
Diverse women from all walks of life are creating a new solidarity, showing that women-led cultures have long existed on this Earth in peace. At the 1996 World Food Summit the DWD declared in the face of industrial agribusiness that food sovereignty must be kept in women’s hands – that they were creating unnecessary disease, hunger and ecological destruction. Coming from all over the world, the Diverse Women For Diversity movement has continued to gather and share the belief that differences, contexts, the variety of voices, and the variety of ways that they express care, are key to resisting the imposition of industrial uniformity. It is diverse cultures that will lead the way to the future.
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Synopsis of the Ecofeminst Manifesto – Making Peace with the Earth
Executive Summary of the Ecofeminist Manifesto – Making Peace with the Earth
Estratto dal Manifesto Ecofemminista “Fare Pace con la Terra
In March 2023, the DWD gathered at the Navdanya Biodiversity Conservation Farm in Dehradun, India to celebrate the unique and rich diversity of life, cultures, food and knowledge, to share the struggles, victories, and actions in defense of the Earth, biodiversity, and food. Over 150 women gathered, from more than 20 countries, from 21 states of India, Latin America, North America, Europe, Japan, Africa, and Australia, among many others. There were farmers, bakers, poets, archivists, indigenous leaders, travelers, fisherwomen, archaeologists, gift economists, geneticists, academics, doctors, mothers, and more. There were women in their twenties and women in their eighties. We celebrated our Sacred Mother Earth by planting a Garden of Hope with seeds from all over the world, cooking and sharing Breads of Freedom. Women shared seeds, prayers, music and dance. It was a celebration of Nature, the sacred laws of Ecology, and the regeneration of the Earth Family through women’s creativity and power. The celebration also became the space for everyone to reflect on the state of the world and the answers to all the overlapping crises in Mother Earth.
Today, women are again in the vanguard of defending biodiversity, seed freedom, and food sovereignty. Women activists, scientists and scholars are at the forefront of shaping new scientific and economic paradigms to reclaim seed sovereignty and food security across the world. As seed keepers and food producers, as mothers and consumers, women are engaged in renewing a food system that is better aligned with the ecological processes of the earth’s renewal, the laws of human rights and social justice, and the means through which bodies may stay well and healthy.
It is time that those in power start listening to the women and the small-scale farmers protecting their plants, seeds and cooperating with Mother Nature to live in harmony with the Earth. Food is life, and it will continue to be defended. Diverse women stand for the promotion, protection and practice of diversity: biological, cultural, economic, political, and knowledge.
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