Born in Dehradun India in the foothills of the Himalaya, Shiva got her training at the University of Western Ontario in Canada as a physicist. In 1982, she shifted her focus to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy and moved back to India. Dr. Shiva is the founder of Navdanya, a participatory research initiative dedicated to the preservation of native crop species, the rejuvenation of indigenous culture and knowledge, and to support and direction for environmental activism. She is the author of more than 20 books including Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades including the 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

On March 29, 2014, Dr. Shiva spoke at the North Centennial Community Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada at the invitation of a local collective known as Power House Producers in association with the Women’s and Gender Studies Students Association, and the University of Winnipeg’s Womyn’s Centre. Her speech followed a so-called Feast of forgotten foods which highlighted a meal prepared by local activists with organic ingredients all provided by local farmers for an audience of about a hundred people. Preceding the talk was an announcement about a Bill moving through the Canadian House of Commons known as Bill C-18, the Agricultural Growth Act which critics argue undermines traditional farm practices by ensuring the intellectual property rights over new varieties of seeds to the plant breeders that generate them and force farmers to pay a royalty to them when crops from those seeds go to market.