The theme of the Festival 2010

Indeed, it has become vital to question this binary and conflictual way of thinking which opposes masculine-feminine, man-nature, reason-emotion…and which in our world justifies the ascendancy of masculine over feminine, man over nature, reason over emotion, left brain over right brain…with the resulting damage which we now know! It’s time to set up a paradigm which is not based on duality, a paradigm where the feminine moderates the excesses of the masculine, where yin and yang balance each other, for women as well as for men, to moderate the predatory or destructive aspects of the male, and animate the creative energies of the feminine.

Around the world, today as in the past, it is women who create links and who are close to the secular values involving respect for the Earth and solidarity between all living beings. It is also women who find themselves in their daily lives confronting fundamental questions concerning food, education and ecology.

Recently, when faced with more and more pressing ecological crises and after the Copenhagen summit, the decisions of which remain disappointing, we see in numerous countries women who are self-determined to choose their fate by proposing alternative ways of life and by making essential choices for themselves, for their entire society, and for the future of the planet.
A feminine way of thinking is not the exclusivity of women; we also see men standing up to carry out remarkable work towards ecological and social change.

Here are several examples of action worldwide: In Iceland, after the financial crisis which brought down their country, women created structures to pool food, clothing, and housing, to prevent their fellow countrymen from ending up in the street. These Icelandic women even took back in hand their banking and financial system, so that all new investments have an ethical and healthy base. Iceland so became the test case for women’s action when faced with a crisis.

And it doesn't really make a difference to determine whether masculine and feminine behaviors come from nature or from nurture! Here at Honest Planet ,we think that it is urgent to opt for a third way which unites supposed opposites: a median way, which no longer obscures the feminine, but develops a responsible and transversal thought, where feminine and masculine become allied in a humanist and enlightened lucidity, to put their intellects and respective qualities in harmony with life.

In Kenya, Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize winner, nicknamed "the Tree Mother of Africa " created thirty years ago the "Green Belt", an NGO (NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION) which has planted 30 million trees across Kenya to prevent the erosion of soil. She incites all the people in power that she meets at the UN (United Nations) and throughout the world, to pull up their sleeves, to dig a hole and to plant (at least) one tree. In Qatar, the literacy rate of women increased from 50 to 90 % in the space of 15 years, thanks to the action of one woman, Sheikha MOZAH, wife of the emir of Qatar, who incited her country to massively invest its petrodollars in education, with free and compulsory schooling until the end of middle school (junior high), in order to counter extremism and frustration, and to aim for a more just society.

In Brazil, Chico Mendes’ movement and a part of the Funai still mobilize to get Native Indian women out of the prostitution traffic generated by garimpeiros (gold-diggers), in particular in the region of Xingus.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, doctors work in free health centers, protected by servicemen, looking after and taking in women who are victims of excision.

In India and Bangladesh, the organization "Frères des Hommes" (Brotherhood of Men—a male organization) fights to defend the rights of women.

These examples and so many others testify to the necessity of thinking globally and of acting locally. When faced with crises, cataclysms and pollution of all types, it is no longer a question of pointing fingers to find who is to blame. It is urgent to think and to act with a conscience, to anchor an eco-feminine and united world: a world which saves life in all its forms and protects our earth, in particular through this sense of the sacred, too often forgotten in West, but which Indigenous Peoples have passed on to us for generations.