COP 15

Brighter Green’s Executive Director Mia MacDonald was in Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference held December 7-18, 2009.

Brighter Green held a side event on December 11th alongside Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement:

LIVELIHOODS, FORESTS, LIVESTOCK AND CLIMATE CHANGE:GREEN BELT MOVEMENT & BRIGHTER GREEN SIDE EVENT UNFCCC COP 15
Friday, December 11, 11:00am
Victor Borge Room, Bella Center, Copenhagen

Deforestation and forest degradation are among the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions (approximately 20%). At the same time, forests are vital to the global ecosystem as well as crucial for human well-being. How can the global community act now to preserve these vital lungs of the world ? Panelists will spotlight forest projects for mitigation and adaptation using rights-based approaches.

The livestock sector is another key contributor to global warming which at local levels causes drought, desertification and warmer temperatures. Panelists will explore how the livestock sector can adjust, and what role it can play in successful mitigation and adaptation efforts, including for forest protection and reafforestation?

Brighter Green will also be participating in the cultural program of the KlimaForum09, the global civil society counterpart to the UN summit:

“MEAT WORLD: CHINA” SCREENING AT THE KLIMAFORUM09 IN COPENHAGEN
Wednesday, December 16, 9:00pm
Yellow Room – Klimaforum09 Onkel Dannys Plads 1 Forsamlingshuset 1711 Copenhagen

Brighter Green’s short documentary, “Meat World: China,” (running time: 26 minutes) was screened at the Copenhagen Klimaforum, the “people’s climate summit,” with a panel discussion to follow. Directed by award-winning Chinese independent filmmaker Jian Yi, working with an all-Chinese crew, Meat World: China chronicles China’s widespread embrace of industrial livestock keeping, and looks at the environmental, health and animal welfare consequences of these actions.

Available at Copenhagen
As part of Brighter Green’s initiative on the Globalization of Industrial Animal Agriculture, Mia MacDonald will be bringing to Copenhagen draft summaries of case studies that document the spread of factory farming in India, Brazil and Ethiopia. Skillful Means, the Challenges of China’s Encounter with Factory Farming, out in 2008, and the basis for Meat World: China, was the first in this series.

In the Media
Air America’s Richard Greene interviewed Mia MacDonald at the KlimaForum, to discuss Brighter Green’s documentary Meat World: China, and the globalization of industrial animal agriculture.

The COP 15 Post, a subsidiary of the Copenhagen Post, has published an article on Wangari Maathai at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. The article also cites Samuel Naikada of the Dupoto Forest and Wildlife Association, speaking at the side event sponsored by the Green Belt Movement and Brighter Green.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Reporting Services has published an article on selected side events at the Copenhagen Conference. Brighter Green’s and the Green Belt Movement’s panel on Livelihoods, Forests, Livestock and Climate Change, was among the events covered.

Blogging from Copenhagen
Five Minutes for the Climate. December 21, 2009
Did Smoke Get in Their Eyes? December 19, 2009
Small Farmers…and Farm Futures. December 18, 2009
Waiting – and Sneezing – in Copenhagen. December 18, 2009
Copenhagen Screening: SRO. December 18, 2009
Climate Corrections. December 17, 2009
Contested. December 17, 2009
In Copenhagen, Delete Meat? December 16, 2009
The Power of One. December 16, 2009
Copenhagen: Gray and Green. December 15, 2009
In Copenhagen with a Waiting World. December 15, 2009
Copenhagen Calculations, Not C02. December 13, 2009
Brighter Green and the Greenbelt Movement, in Copenhagen. December 11, 2009