Rio 2016: Fighting Deforestation while Selling Burgers

The 2016 Olympics kicked off in Rio, Brazil with the opening ceremony on August 5th. During the event there was acknowledgement of climate change with images that illustrated rising temperatures, melting polar ice caps, and rising sea levels. Following these images there… Read More

The Assertive Vegetarian

This blog entry was originally written by What’s For Dinner? director Jian Yi on a train ride to Beijing on World Vegetarian Day (October 1) 2014. What’s For Dinner? and Vegucated have had six successful screenings in Guangzhou…. Read More

Crossing the Equator: What’s For Christmas Dinner?

No matter where we are, there is one thing in common for the end of year holidays, whether you’re celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or another festival: food. Special dishes. Holiday meals. Gathering around a table. It’s… Read More

The Hummingbird and the Climate Summit

This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post on September 23, 2014. Co-authored by Wanjira Mathai, director of the wPOWER Project at the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace & Environmental Studies at the University of Nairobi and Chair,… Read More

China Elaborates Law to Enhance Food Safety

On May 2nd, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) of China issued Interpretations on food safety criminal cases. The next day, a spokesman of the SPC further elaborated on the Interpretations during a… Read More

Remembering Wangari Maathai: Colleague, Friend, and Inspiration

Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do. Brighter Green is deeply saddened… Read More

Elephants Can Remember

Bad news for elephants from Africa: illegal killing is up and the ivory trade is increasingly being run by well-organized gangs. Seizures of illegal ivory doubled between 2008 and 2009. Key areas of elephant poaching are in west… Read More

Secretary Clinton’s Summer Reading

As I read about U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s multi-country trip through Africa this month, I couldn’t help but wonder how the diligent Clinton would prepare. Would she (or her aides), for example, read Nobel peace laureate… Read More

Skillful Means: The Report on China and Meat-Eating: 2008

New York-based policy action tank Brighter Green’s new report, Skillful Means: The Challenges of China’s Encounter with Factory Farming (PDF) explores the emerging superpower’s “livestock revolution,” which is having serious impacts on public health, food security, and equity… Read More

Animals and War

Animals and war may sound like a strange pairing: while we know from Jane Goodall’s research that chimpanzee groups do in fact go to “war” with each other, armed conflict is a distinctly human activity. Yet given our… Read More