Author: Brighter Green

Truth Matters: The Animals and Biodiversity Reporting Fund

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In 2023, Brighter Green launched the Animals and Biodiversity Reporting Fund to educate and support journalists producing stories on the multiple negative consequences of large-scale animal agriculture, for publication in news outlets around the world in English and other languages. Our aim is to inform and shift public narratives and understanding as well as policy and practice. The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated a crucial need for stronger, savvier, and more nimble media and communications infrastructure to bring animal welfare, rights and justice perspectives to mainstream media (whether for-profit or non-), as well as policymakers, the private sector, and public deliberations in the U.S. and globally.

Despite the very likely spread of the pandemic in the wildlife trade and a market selling a variety of wild animal species, plus the huge zoonotic risks animal agriculture poses (see avian flu in the U.S. right now), we see many examples of “business as usual.” The raising and slaughtering of billions of land animals and trillions of fish for food is continuing and, in many parts of the world, only growing. New efforts at greenwashing are underway, such as meat-processing giants’ “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) plans that don’t include decreasing production, and the beef industry falsely claiming only small GHG reductions if the U.S. adopted a vegan diet.

Factory Farms in Yucatán, Mexico. Photo: Patricio Eleisegui.

This development is taking place as if solid documentation didn’t exist that animal agriculture is a key driver of some of the most urgent global and local challenges—biodiversity loss, deforestation, global heating, soil erosion, intensifying pressures on land, water, and wildlife, and marine pollution and species extinction. And workers experience high rates of injury in processing plants, severe health risks (COVID hit slaughterhouse workers disproportionately), and little autonomy. Communities located near factory farms or processing plants often experience a range of injustices: stench, flies, contamination of land and water. All of this can be intensified when heavy rainfall and flooding hits—more common with climate change.

At the same time, media outlets are more open to “animal issues” due to the work of scholars, advocates, organizations, and individuals over several decades. The mainstream media talks more often to advocates and scientific and academic experts about the well-being and rights of domesticated and wild animals than in the past and publishes more of this reporting, too. In addition, the “frame” of social, ecological, and climate justice provides a further opportunity both for more coverage and new voices, perspectives, and expertise to break through. A window is open, now, to promote “new stories” and deeper journalistic engagement in narratives that already have begun to capture the public imagination.

It’s in this context that Brighter Green has been providing support for journalists to report, write, and publish important new stories, along with short, professionally-produced, video documentaries. As with most of our work, our priority is on the Global South (or Global Majority) Recent examples include:

  • Exposing criminality and pollution caused by intensive chicken and pig farms in the Yucatán, Mexico (published in many Spanish-language media in Mexico and Argentina and in English in the Guardian). The story got strong readership with more than 100,000 readers soon after publication on the Guardian website, and the Guardian is open to partnering with us in the future (2024);
  • A two-part video and text exposé of gun-running, drug-smuggling, land-grabbing, and threats to Indigenous people associated with deforestation and beef production in the Colombian rainforest (2024);
  • A six-part text and video story about negative consequences for endangered species in the Brazilian Amazon due to animal agriculture, produced by Repórter Brasil (2024), whose coordinator, Marcel Gomes, was a winner of the prestigious 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize. He won for coordinating a complex, international campaign that linked beef from JBS to illegal deforestation in Brazil’s most threatened ecosystems that led to six major European supermarket chains halting indefinitely sales of JBS products. Brighter Green nominated him for the prize.
  • Independent journalist Sophie Kevany dove into new UN data on animal agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions that seemed to suggest emissions were lower than anticipated. Kevany reported on researchers’ concerns about the data and reinforced the realities of factory farming for a U.S. and global audience in Vox (2023). This article was cited widely by animal and environmental protection groups and included in several food and climate media compilations with large subscriber bases.
Indigenous protestors against factory farms in Yucatán, Mexico. Photo: Patricio Eleisegui.

Up next is another collaboration with Repórter Brasil and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on a compelling, under-reported issue at the intersection of global finance and local impacts of agribusiness (we can’t say more yet since the reporting is underway) and possible stories in Costa Rica and Colombia. We’re also developing a project to educate and engage U.S.-based journalists to improve public narratives around food, agriculture, and climate, including increased coverage of the topic, fighting industry misinformation, and elevating stories about biodiversity, farmed animal protection, and just transition. Please stay tuned for more on this.

Educating Girls to Be Climate Leaders

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The same year Brighter Green first attended a UN climate change summit (COP15) in Copenhagen in 2009, we began what would become a 15-year pilot program that provided funds for ten girls from the Maasai community (five in Kenya, and five in Tanzania) to attend school, with the goal of encouraging a new generation of young women’s leadership on environmental issues, especially climate resilience. Our partners were the Simba Maasai Outreach Organization (Kenya), the Indigenous Information Network (Kenya), and Tribal Link (U.S.).

The partners recognized that marginalized pastoral communities such as the Maasai in East Africa were already experiencing the effects of climate change (such as droughts, floods, and dislocation) that interrupted the education of young people—particularly of girls, who were often the first to be pulled from school when funds ran short or families were forced to move. Young women also lacked role models; only a tiny proportion of girls were educated beyond the primary level and only a handful had completed university.

The program sought to take the young women, then teenagers, through secondary (or high) school, and on to a university degree or a professional diploma, while receiving training courses in Indigenous rights, environmental issues, gender, and climate change, along with ongoing mentoring. Although the odds were stacked against these young women succeeding due to poverty, gender bias, health issues, and family challenges (which proved insuperable barriers to the five girls in Tanzania), in Kenya, the girls achieved what we’d hoped. Elizabeth Kirouna, the final young woman in the Kenya program, and now a mother of three, graduated from Kenyatta University in July 2024. She received a degree in environmental studies.

You can see her in the photo above, with (from left): Sabina Siankoi, Ann Nailantei, Elizabeth, Joyce Kakenya Barta, and Hellen Naipanoi Kipaili. The other young women are working, or have worked, on water and health projects with municipalities, for environmental and climate non-governmental organizations, in environmental communications, and as a ranger for Kenya Wildlife Services. Each has continued to be a role model for their communities, leading grassroots tree-planting, food security, and environmental education projects, while also mentoring young girls and boys.

The presiding spirit and inspiration for this partnership—as with so much at Brighter Green—was Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate. When she was born in a rural village in British-ruled Kenya in 1940, the prospects of her being educated were remote. Yet with support from her older brother and mother, she attended primary and secondary school. She excelled as a student, studying in the U.S. and Germany, and receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi. She became, first, a professor of veterinary anatomy and then the founder of the groundbreaking environmental organization, the Green Belt Movement. She led opposition to corruption and one-party rule in Kenya, and was jailed, beaten, and publicly humiliated for her activism. Eventually, she became a Member of Parliament, a cabinet minister, and then a global figure of conscience on the environment, the climate crisis, and, yes, women’s leadership—where she offered an example of what a girl from a rural background could achieve with hard work, drive, support, and mentoring.

Brighter Green was extremely fortunate to have a long, fruitful association with Wangari and the Green Belt Movement. Her unwavering commitment to environmental protection and restoration, climate justice, grassroots leadership, women’s empowerment, democratic governance, human rights, and a global ethic of care for creation, remains the lodestar for our work. It is also resonant of that ongoing commitment that Brighter Green now provides editorial services to the Managing Director of Africa and Partnerships for the World Resources Institute, Wanjira Mathai, Wangari’s daughter, and has partnered with Vanessa Nakate, a young Ugandan climate activist who was also inspired by Wangari Maathai to raise her voice on behalf of the millions of men, women, boys, and girls whose lives are being affected by the climate crisis.

Justice at the Intersections

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The following essay is an outline of a paper on animal rights, Nature’s rights, and the law, presented by Mia MacDonald and Martin Rowe at the More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) conference in March 2025. MOTH is an interdisciplinary initiative advancing rights and well-being for humans, nonhumans, and the web of life that sustains us all. The paper was written by Mia MacDonald, Martin Rowe, and Judy Nahum, Brighter Green.

For two centuries, campaigners and communities have undertaken organized efforts to improve the welfare of animals, preserve wilderness, clean up or prevent pollution, bring about ecosystem restoration, and halt species’ exploitation and extinction through laws, policies, and societal practices. They have met with mixed success. In recent decades, some animal advocates and environmental theorists and activists have adopted a new, radical approach to addressing multiplying challenges by using the language and legal status of rights to secure new protections for the nonhuman world.

Brighter Green’s project, Justice at the Intersections explores how the theories of animal rights and rights of Nature and MOTH (more than human) rights complement as well as diverge from one another. Through case studies from a variety of nations and jurisdictions, our research paper examines how rights for Nature and/or nonhuman animals have been advanced (and not) by court rulings, constitutions, legislation, and tribal and municipal governance.

The paper also describes how the philosophies underpinning animal rights and rights of Nature are reflected in, or remain distinct from, Indigenous cosmologies, and other legal and social approaches that guide human obligations toward, and ties within, the other-than-human world.

We propose four concrete issues where the rights of Nature and rights of animals clearly intersect and where the movements and advocates for each could—and should—collaborate to expand rights and secure significant protections. These are:

  • industrial animal agriculture;
  • industrial fishing and aquaculture;
  • preventing pandemics and zoonoses, and stopping the trade in wildlife (illegal and legal); and
  • ending captivity for keystone species.

The analysis and future directions we’re exploring are presented in the contexts of the accelerating climate and biodiversity crises, ongoing and new violations of the rights of human communities, lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, and scientific and ethical research that demonstrates the essential entanglement of humans with the nonhuman world.

In March 2025, Brighter Green presented a shorter version of the paper at an academic conference convened by the interdisciplinary MOTH project, which is part of New York University Law School’s TERRA (The Earth Rights Research and Action) Clinic. The full paper (about 40,000 words), will be published later in 2025. Mia MacDonald will also participate in the MOTH project’s annual global course at NYU London in July 2025. 

Brighter Green is also working to include rights of animals in ongoing legal cases, scholarship, and advocacy. We’re bringing to the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature’s tribunal process is the myriad consequences of investigative reporting Brighter Green supported into the rapid expansion of mega-farms producing pigs and chickens in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by independent journalist Patricio Eleisegui.

These include deforestation, land seizures, pollution of cenotes (the only source of water for the Peninsula’s people and wildlife), militarized crackdowns on Indigenous Mayan community protests, and confinement of hundreds of thousands of pigs and chickens animals in factory farms. A large majority of the mega-farms operate without the environmental permits Mexico’s federal government requires. In our view, the situation violates rights of nature, rights of animals (wild and domesticated), and human rights. Remedies must be taken to end agribusinesses’ current practices and its apparent impunity.

As part of our research, we have interviewed scholars and activists in numerous countries who are using theories of rights of natures and rights of animals to push the boundaries of legal protections for the non-human world in courts, municipalities, global institutions, and “soft law.” We wanted to know how they saw the intersections among rights of nature and rights of animals, and where collaboration could take place.

Pablo Solón, a judge for the global Rights of Nature tribunal and executive director of the Fundacion Solón in La Paz, said this (in part): “In the case of my country [Bolivia], [the two movements] are very much linked. There is a lot of collaboration, because everyone realizes you can’t defend animals if you can’t defend the environment. Their environment is Nature, forest, water. It’s clean air. So therefore, to only focus on animals without looking at the entire scope of Nature is almost not rational.”

Joyce Tischler, professor of practice, Lewis & Clark Law School, spoke of how the movements can support each other to advance the rights of the non-human world. “When we in the animal rights movement see rivers and mountains and streams and forests given that status of legal beings, of legal persons, the Nonhuman Rights Project puts those kinds of things into its briefs. It [becomes] part of the litigation,” she said. “We [the two movements] walk down this road together. We may not be able to go the full distance of that road, but let’s go as far as we can.”

Reflecting on the Nobel Twenty Years On

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Mia MacDonald is a past president of the Green Belt Movement International-U.S. board. She worked with Wangari Maathai for a decade on varied projects, including four books.

When Wangari Maathai (left in 2004) stood in Oslo’s City Hall on a cold, bright afternoon in December 2004 to receive the Nobel peace prize medal, she was making history as the first African woman and first environmentalist to be so honored. Yet, we know that for years before that she had been shaping history. Now, two decades on, her life and work remain essential reference points for creating a sustainable, sane, and just future for all Earth’s inhabitants.

Prof, as she was widely known due to her years as a popular and well-respected professor at the University of Nairobi, loved this quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “My life is my message.” She believed it for herself, and she was proof of it. Her life embodied purpose, tenacity, and remarkable fearlessness. Prof always looked for answers to problems and challenged herself and those around her, including at the Green Belt Movement, to avoid complacency of any kind. She never cared about accumulating money, property, fame, or popularity, or, for that matter, awards.

In fact, right after she received the news that she’d been named the peace laureate for 2004, she turned to me and, with light tears rolling down her cheeks, said, “I didn’t know anyone was listening.” But they—and we—were. I was with her that morning as she traveled from Nairobi to Nyeri, to what was then her parliamentary constituency, close to where she’d grown up. We were working on the manuscript for what became her autobiography, Unbowed, published in 2006. (Not surprisingly, the announcement paused any more work on the book that day.)

In the course of her life, Prof dealt with setbacks, skepticism, loss, and even violence (in words and acts) from vengeful authorities. But she wasn’t derailed. “Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times,” she wrote. “But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.”

The journey to the Nobel was a testament to her foresight, and her legacy to this day is a reflection of her wisdom and clarity of purpose. Prof was a storyteller and a moralist. She alchemized science, spirituality, and a deep belief in humanity into compelling explanatory narratives that demanded action. She sought to close the chasm between what is and what should be, and agitated for others, particularly those with power, to do the same.

All of this is why, two decades after the Nobel, Prof remains a beacon to young campaigners for climate justice and youth movements demanding democratic governance, civil and human rights, and an end to impunity. This is true in Kenya, across Africa, and, indeed, around the world. One of the young climate justice activists who embodies Prof’s moral vision and work ethic is Vanessa Nakate of Uganda (seen above, left, with me in Glasgow, 2021). Vanessa has become a leader in the global climate movement, stepping into her power despite, by her own assessment, being shy and something of a loner.

During the early stages of pandemic lockdowns, I began working with Vanessa on a book—a memoir, a call to action—that was published just before the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland: A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis. In the book, she acknowledged Wangari’s inspiration as a role model. It was in Glasgow that I got to meet Vanessa for the first time and to share with her the global edition of TIME magazine that featured her on its cover (it was the first time she’d seen a hard copy). Vanessa is now studying for a master’s degree at Oxford University.

Twenty years ago, the dangers of climate change were present, but they were not at the center of global concerns as they still are now, despite some governments’ backsliding. Acknowledging that the struggle to control resources was at the root of armed conflict and war was a truth Prof practiced and preached.

She advocated for the protection and restoration of forests, understanding the lives they support, the ecosystem services they provide, the carbon dioxide they captured, and planting trees, literally billions of them, none of which were international priorities.

Her legacy is manifest through the work of the GBM and her advocacy for greater democratic space, along with her ability to make the crucial linkages between human rights, environmental protection, poverty, equality, and equity. Today, the policy makers are making these same connections, in an expanding body of governmental policies on climate change, biodiversity, gender, public participation, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding.

In a time when cynicism, autocracy, oligarchy, inequalities in wealth and power, persistent poverty and marginalization, rampant consumerism, state-sponsored cruelty, and the realities of climate breakdown loom large, it can be easy to become discouraged, furious, or shut down.

“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground,” Prof said in her Nobel lecture. “A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”  As we celebrate Prof’s “Nobel+20” (October 2024-October 2025)  I believe she would tell us, remember, it’s still that time, and, popular opinion notwithstanding, to act accordingly.

As she wrote at the end of Unbowed: “Those of us who witness the degraded state of the environment and the suffering that comes with it cannot afford to be complacent. We continue to be restless. If we really carry the burden, we are driven to action. We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!”

The Just Food Transition Roadmap

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Despite mounting evidence of its disastrous impacts, industrial animal production continues to expand, driving deforestation, habitat destruction, and pollution. This rampant growth poses a grave threat to our planet’s climate, with global food system emissions alone endangering the 1.5°C climate target, even if we phase out fossil fuels immediately. This alarming situation demands urgent action for a “just transition” towards an equitable, humane, and sustainable food system.

Reducing the size of the industrial animal agriculture, fishing, and aquaculture sectors, together with a shift towards diets within planetary and social boundaries and agroecology, must become a central climate mitigation strategy.

To make more concrete what this “just transition” would look like, and which policy actions are needed most urgently to bring it about, Brighter Green joined World Animal Protection, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Aquatic Life Institute, and Global Forest Coalition to create the Just Food Transition white paper and Roadmap, in late 2024.

This paper, which is available in several languages as an executive summary and a full white paper, unites civil society organizations around the world dedicated to a common vision of food system transformation from farm to fork that protects and empowers smallholders, pastoralists, peasants, fisherfolk, farm and food chain workers, women, Indigenous, youth, people of color, and other marginalized communities and makes a livable future on our planet possible.

To be true to the principle of just transition (which requires a fair and equitable process), the white paper text is the result of extensive consultation among frontline communities and impacted groups with over 120 individuals representing 72 organizations, from youth, women, farmer, and worker constituencies across 35 countries. Their feedback and voices are reflected in the final paper. (The first of these consultations was held at the UN climate summit, COP28, in December 2023. See photo above.)

The paper, which reflects many of Brighter Green’s policy priorities, establishes a global framework to guide the development of local roadmaps tailored to regional contexts, cultural sensitivities, and community-based solutions. The future we advocate for is a phaseout of industrial animal agriculture, fishing, and aquaculture through a just transition to a climate-resilient, locally and democratically governed food system that mitigates greenhouse gas emissions, promotes biodiversity, protects animal welfare, empowers workers, and advances food sovereignty that fulfills food security.

To bring about this transition, the paper proposes three key “levers of change.” These are, to:

  • Strengthen food system governance: We must challenge the dominance of the food system by multinational corporations and put policies in place to foster transparency and hold them accountable for their social and environmental impacts. At the same time, we should support environmentally and socially responsible companies and protect and elevate traditional and local food systems.
  • Promote agroecological practices: A just transition necessitates the embracing of agroecology to promote human rights, environmental protection and animal welfare, and to ensure food sovereignty meets food security needs while providing dignified and sustainable livelihoods.
  • Shift towards diets within planetary and social boundaries: Countries with high per capita consumption of animal-based products must transition to plant-rich diets with reduced meat and dairy to stay within planetary and social boundaries. This shift will benefit public health and free up land and resources to support diversified agroecological production systems.

The roadmap includes more than a hundred specific policy recommendations that will vary in priority, relevance, and applicability, depending on local and regional contexts: including current legislation, cultural sensitivities, community-based solutions, levels of consumption and production of animal-sourced foods, and how entrenched industrial animal agriculture is in the region.

The paper and roadmap have been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Thai, and is in the process of being localized to regional contexts in Togo, Kenya, Nigeria, and the U.S., with localization in Asia and two Latin American countries forthcoming.

The project partners are continuing to socialize the white paper across the food systems and climate movement and getting more endorsements, and more localizations at national levels are to come. Groups are already using the paper in national advocacy and UNFCCC (UN climate change convention) policy and advocacy spaces. We plan to continue building out resources, including evidence through research and case studies demonstrating the viability of equitable, humane, and sustainable food systems to feed the world, and providing support for people localizing and utilizing the paper.

And we’re planning for the road to the 2025 UN climate summit to be held in Belem, Brazil (COP30), where we plan to bring together many of the people at local and national levels around the world who have been leading on this project in a unified call for the phase out of industrial animal agriculture. The urgency of this just transition cannot be overstated. The consequences of inaction are dire, from irreversible biodiversity loss and climate catastrophe to human rights abuses, public health crises, and widespread animal suffering.

Brighter Green and the Goldman Environmental Prize

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Since 2020, Brighter Green has been a nominator for the Goldman Environmental Prize, which, as its website notes, “honors ordinary people who take extraordinary actions to protect our planet.” The prize, which was founded in 1989 by Richard and Rhonda Goldman, highlights grassroots activism and inspiring fearless leadership against polluters, extractive industries, and those who fund them. Each year, the prize is awarded to individuals in six geographical regions: Africa, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and islands and island nations. Previous winners include the late Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel peace prize winner. A friend to, guiding for, and hero of Brighter Green, Wangari was awarded the prize in 1991.

Since it became a partner for the prize, Brighter Green has been privileged to nominate activists from all over the world, including five finalists and two winners (so far): Sharon Lavigne (who won in the North America category in 2021) and Marcel Gomes (who won in the South America category in 2024).

In its citation, the Goldman Foundation said the following about Marcel (shown left):

Marcel Gomes coordinated a complex, international campaign that directly linked beef from JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, to illegal deforestation in Brazil’s most threatened ecosystems. Armed with detailed evidence from his breakthrough investigative report, Marcel and Repórter Brasil worked with partners to pressure global retailers to stop selling the illegally sourced meat, leading six major European supermarket chains in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom to indefinitely halt the sale of JBS products in December 2021.

Marcel and Repórter Brasil have continued to work with Brighter Green. Through our Animals and Biodiversity Reporting Fund, Marcel and his team have documented in a series of articles and a short film the devastating impact of agribusiness on wildlife in Brazil.

In its citation, the Goldman Foundation said the following about Sharon (shown left):

In September 2019, Sharon Lavigne, a special education teacher turned environmental justice advocate, successfully stopped the construction of a US$1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Lavigne mobilized grassroots opposition to the project, educated community members, and organized peaceful protests to defend her predominantly African American community. The plant would have generated one million pounds of liquid hazardous waste annually, in a region already contending with known carcinogens and toxic air pollution.

We are grateful to the extraordinary people we’ve nominated for the prize for their pathbreaking work on food and agriculture, forests, protecting wildlife, climate and environmental justice. We also appreciate the colleagues who’ve recommended potential nominees to us.

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