On the occasion of the International Day for Biodiversity and the start of UN talks on a possible sustainable development goal (SDG) on agriculture Brighter Green and the Global Forest Coalition have published a briefing paper to raise awareness of the negative impacts of rapidly expanding industrial livestock farming and large-scale cattle ranching on the world's forests and biodiversity. Industrial animal agriculture cuts across multiple sectors, affecting land use, water, food security, public health, and climate change. But too often these intersections are overlooked.

Brighter Green's Executive Director Mia MacDonald spoke about climate change and animal agriculture, and the ecological impacts of the global spread of factory farm operations, at the Seed Experience in New York City on May 18, 2013. She also screened Green's short documentary, "What's for Dinner?" Find out more about the film, including how to show it, here.

Executive Director Mia MacDonald's blog post on the U.S. National Climate Assessment and U.S. and global systems of food production was featured in the Huffington Post and was re-blogged on the American food system news website Civil Eats.

Brighter Green collaborated with Global Forest Coalition on an event and paper on the risks of industrial livestock production for the environment, communities (including indigenous communities), and animals at the World Social Forum in Tunisia.

Brighter Green guest blogger Wanqing Zhou's exploration of of the growing challenge of food waste in China ("Food Waste and Recycling in China: Too Easy, Too Hard"), including from animal agriculture, has been republished in English and Chinese on China Dialogue, an important, bilingual Web portal for global environmental news with a focus on China.

The winners of the two Katerva awards for innovation in sustainability have been announced. Mia MacDonald of Brighter Green served on the judging panel for the food security theme, and the project finalist she ranked highest, Backpack Farm, piloted in East Africa, came first in its category.

Brighter Green and Tribal Link hosted a successful fundraiser for the East African Girls' Leadership Initiative in December 2012. Over $3,000 were raised to help support two girls' education, living costs, rights training, mentoring, and leadership skill workshops for one year. Singer-songwriter Joy Askew performed at the event and Grace Koutimet, from SIMOO spoke about the role of Maasai women in the community and how educating Maasai women greatly assists the communities' progress.

Brighter Green's Mia MacDonald's blog post on COP 18 and the conference's failure to address the negative effects of industrial food systems, particularly industrial agriculture, on climate change appeared in the Huffington Post on December 6, 2012.

Brighter Green's Mia MacDonald participated in and moderated a side event to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP18) in Doha, Qatar in December 2012. The side event entitled "Climate Change & Ensuring Sustainable, Humane, Equitable Food Systems: Views from the North and South" focused on climate change and livestock farming. Xie Zheng, featured in Brighter Green's short documentary "What's for Dinner?" also spoke at the event. For more information on Brighter Green's research on climate change and the globalization of farming click here.

Executive Director Mia MacDonald attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 18) from November 26 to December 2, 2012. Mia shared Brighter Green's research on climate change and the globalization of intensive animal agriculture.

Brighter Green has just become a member of Climate Action Network-U.S. (USCAN), in the lead up to the COP18 climate summit.

What's for Dinner was mentioned in Veg News magazine's Media Lounge section in the November+December 2012 issue.

Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization held its first International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition in attempts to raise awareness of the contribution of forests to food security, economic development, and ecosystem services; an issue mostly overlooked by policymakers.

With edible plants, fruits, mushrooms, insects, and wild animals, forests are a substantial food source for more than a billion people. Ensuring forest conservation is vital in helping meet United Nation Millennium goals of reducing world hunger by 50 percent by 2015.

In addition to nutrition, forests play other significant roles in rural societies.

It has been a month since the first case of the human-infected influenza A (H7N9) was reported. By May 1st, the virus had been diagnosed in 128 people and has killed 27 people since March. Recently, a booklet called Don't be Scared of Birds was published in China to inform the public about influenza A (H7N9) and how to protect themselves from it, although many details of the virus remain unknown.

[Note: this blog was published originally on the Huffington Post.]

It's Earth Week, a good time to celebrate the natural environment and also examine some of the ways we use -- and abuse -- Earth's resources and climate. Food systems are an important area for scrutiny. New agricultural ideas and actions are essential amid rising climate stress, a growing human population, widespread degradation of ecosystems, and rampant food insecurity; nearly one billion people regularly don't get enough to eat.

Pastoralists in Kenya, rice farmers in India, and industrial feedlot operators in the U.S. are contending with increased frequency of drought and erratic weather. But agriculture isn't just affected by climate change. It's also a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. agricultural sector was responsible in 2011 for 7.2 percent of U.S. GHGs. This doesn't include emissions from indirect agricultural activities, like clearing grasslands or forests to create farmland, or the fossil fuels burned when transporting agricultural products.

As American high school seniors around the United States are currently deciding where they are going to college, the Kenyan East African Girls’ Leadership Initiative students have been finding out about their end of year examinations. All five Kenyan girls, Ann, Hellen, Joyce, Sabina, and Elizabeth, sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) national exam, required for admission into university. Two girls, Elizabeth and Hellen received scores that qualify them to start university in the summer. Joyce, Sabina, and Ann will attend a one-year bridging certificate course before entering university the following year. Three of the Tanzanian girls finished their end of year exams and have been promoted to form four, their final year of secondary education. One girl, Rehema, finished her final year of studies and is waiting to enroll in an intermediary college. 

Adopting a meat-free diet has positive implications on the environment. We’ve seen how the increased consumption of meat around the world increases greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and is a major factor in climate change. But is adopting a vegan, vegetarian, or “sometimes” vegetarian diet a consumer trend to just “be healthy”? And can this trend be a gateway for more sustainable food habits?

During an interview with Legal Weekly, Mr. Xu Zhijun, the initiator of the food waste campaign “Operation Empty Plate”, said he did not want the operation to become a movement. While the campaign received endorsement from Mr. Xi Jinping, the Communist Party’s new leader, and had been linked to Mr. Xi’s fight against corruption, the idea of a “social reform movement” (as embraced by the Global Times ) might have altered the original intention of the campaign in some ways.

Mr. Xi’s endorsement showed strong support and helped “Operation Empty Plate” achieve an unexpected influence. The food waste issue became part of people’s daily conversations, which is encouraging for every individual who cares about agricultural practices, natural resources, and climate change (Read also: Food Waste and Recycling in China: Too Easy, Too Hard ).

By 2050, global meat and dairy consumption are projected to double and quadruple, with most growth seen in the emerging markets of developing nations. This unprecedented rise in animal agriculture will also bring an unprecedented rise in the use of animal pharmaceuticals. Brighter Green recently reported on the dangers of antibiotic resistant bacteria resulting from agricultural practices. Yet, pharmaceutical industries are eagerly anticipating a spike of farmed animal antibiotics in the near future.

On March 15, 2011, World Consumer Rights Day, the clenbuterol pork scandal was exposed in China and shocked meat-lovers with this health-threatening “lean meat powder” used to make animals grow muscle rather than fat. But in addition to being directly consumed, chemical residues from the livestock industry can affect our health via more diverse and complicated pathways.

We know that frequent use of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections can lead to resistance, to such an extent that the drug is no longer effective. Recently, research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal revealed that, antibiotics and heavy metals fed to pigs have significantly raised the level of antibiotic resistant microbes in the animals’ manure, manure compost, and soil. Today, China is the largest producer and consumer of antibiotics, with major buyers from the livestock industry. In large- and middle-scale factory farms, antibiotics and metal feed additives are applied frequently and at high doses for growth promotion and disease control.

Animal farms of all sizes are beginning to use biogas technology to create a form of non-fossil fuel energy. The use is controversial at the size of large-scale factory farms, where opponents argue that the technology perpetuates the factory farming problem as biogas revenue could encourage industry growth and is simply a means of greenwashing an inherently polluting and inhumane industry.

For smaller scale farms-namely village farmers of developing nations- controversy, thus far, remains unspoken. For small-scale village farmers, a biogas plant seems to bring nothing but benefits. But as with any newly implemented technology-questions remain.

More than fifty percent of the world’s population currently lives in cities, and in the coming decades that percentage is projected to increase, particularly in Africa and Asia. Steward Pickett, a well renowned ecologist with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, is currently delivering a six part weekly lecture series at the Cooper Union on Cities in Crisis: Ecological Transformations.

The annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS), organized by The Energy and Resources Institute, provides an international platform for global leaders, Heads of States, policy makers, and academia to engage in dialogue on matters related to sustainable development and climate change.

Last week's 13th annual DSDS focused on the theme "The Global Challenge of Resource Efficient Growth and Development," and set forth a goal to advance the Rio+20 Conference resolutions outlined in "The Future We Want." Sub-themes included adapting to climate change impacts and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, with one official side event being "International Conference on Agriculture and Climate Change."

Climate Change and the Effect on the Maasai Community's Human Rights

Brighter Green's East African Girls' Leadership Initiative, provides nine Maasai girls from Kenya and Tanzania with leadership, rights training, and educational opportunities so they can attend college and become leaders of their community and spokeswomen for indigenous people. The Maasai community has historically been marginalized, and with the recent effects of climate change forcing the Maasai people, a mostly pastoral community, to move, they have encountered resistance, prejudice, and have been left with few options. They are being forced to move to different areas as a result of droughts and flooding and are concurrently being denied rights to live in these areas by the government. As a result, the communities are suffering, some are starving, and they do not have a sufficient voice to speak up for them in the government.

Kenyan and Tanzanian Girls' Progress

The end of 2012 marked huge accomplishments and milestones for the East African Girls' Leadership Initiative. All five Kenyan girls, Ann, Hellen, Joyce, Sabina, and Elizabeth, sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) national exam, required for admission into university. Three of the Tanzanian girls finished their end of year exams and have been promoted to form four, their final year of secondary education. One girl, Rehema, finished her final year of studies and is waiting to enroll in college.

India, now second in global seafood production, plans to double its marine exports within the next two years thanks to the introduction of an Aquaculture Quarantine Facility in the Northeastern city of Chennai. Aquaculture Quarantine Facility, AQF for short, is the marine farming industry's term for Shrimp Factory Farm.

A shrimp factory farm is the aquatic counterpart of the land factory farms we are all too familiar with. Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of these animals are confined to small enclosures, fed an unnatural diet laced with antibiotics, and produce exorbitant amounts of waste. Some marine life factory farms are built right into the ocean-providing a very convenient means of flushing the waste away into the sea. Chennai's Aquatic Quarantine Facility, however, as the name implies, is made up of isolated tanks that can house more than 2 million shrimp per year; in fact, it's stated to be the only one of its kind in the world.

India: a vegetarian's mecca. This seems to be the stereotypical image envisioned when thinking of this culturally Hindu society. But are globalization, a growing middle class, and the urge to emulate western ways eroding this traditionally ethical lifestyle?

As people of developing nations ascend the socioeconomic ladder, the tendency is to want what the western world has- name brand clothes, fast food restaurants, big box shopping malls, and meat at every meal.

India's non-veg population is growing rapidly with meat consumption more than doubling over the last decade This trend is namely seen among the urban youth, who regularly frequent one of the many American fast-food chains across India, and who feel eating meat is a modern, contemporary activity. One journalist has even gone as far as describing traditional vegetarians as India's new social "pariah."

But is there more than meets the eye?