Category: Animals, Climate, and Biodiversity

The Sprawling Reach of Megafarms in the Yucatán

Published on | Updated on by Mia MacDonald

Defenders of the Yucatán is the title of a new online photo exhibition by reporter Patricio Eleisegui and filmmaker Maricarmen Sordo documenting the impacts of industrial animal mega-farms on three Mayan communities in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The exhibition follows their short film on the subject, Slaughter-land, which won first place in the 2025 Yale University Environment 360 film contest. This project emerged from investigative journalism by Eleisegui, supported by Brighter Green’s Animals and Biodiversity Reporting Fund. 

The exhibition was first presented in person in Portuguese and English during the People’s Tribunal against Ecogenocide held during the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil in November 2025. Following the COP30 conference, Project Assistant Isabel Keener and Associate Isis Alvarez developed a digital version of the photo exhibition to make it widely accessible. The online exhibition—with text in English, Spanish, and Portuguese—features images and contextual materials documenting environmental defenders from the communities of Sitilpech, Kinchil, and Santa María Chí, who face severe threats to their wellbeing, ecosystems, and livelihoods linked to large-scale animal production. 

Some of the photographs of Kinchil feature an expansive, multi-colored mural created in protest against the mega-farms. The composition portrays the “before,” “during,” and hopeful “after” of the introduction of the farms. Alongside such intimate glimpses of the affected communities are photographs that chart the sheer magnitude of the megafarms via aerial perspectives. In Sitilpech, this includes black oceans of pig waste that capture the reality of a farm that holds 48,000 pigs at one time, while the local population is less than 2,000 people (images below).

Of the approximately 800 megafarms in the Yucatán, about 70 percent are located within the protected Ring of Cenotes, a Ramsar wetlands convention site in the northwest of the peninsula. Given the threats posed by mega-farms to the Ring of Cenotes, a local NGO, Guardians of the Cenotes (or Kana’an Ts’onot), has initiated a legal case seeking personhood and attendant rights for the Ring. 

During COP30, Brighter Green also participated in the UN climate change summit (COP30), the People’s Climate Summit, and a series of gatherings organized by the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN). Brighter Green recently became a GARN member in a joint effort to end the expansion of the mega-farms in the Yucatán, stop the cruel exploitation of farmed animals, and advance nature’s and human rights. While in Belém, Associate Isis Alvarez participated in strategy sessions marking the alliance’s 15th anniversary and an assessment of progress, setbacks, and lessons learned in advancing the Rights of Nature framework. Brighter Green submitted the case of industrial animal mega-farms in the Yucatán to GARN’s Rights of Nature Tribunal. 

GARN was engaged in a tribunal process examining the consequences of the recently-completed Maya Train (Tren Maya), a $30 billion looping through 34 stations around the Yucatán peninsula. Designed to facilitate tourism, the train’s construction has caused widespread deforestation and bisected wildlife habitats. During a site visit, GARN’s delegation had also gathered information on the megafarms and agreed to partner with Brighter Green to include the megafarms in their tribunal ruling. Drawing on evidence documented by investigative journalists, scientists, and affected communities, the Tribunal’s ruling, addressed to the government of Mexico, detailed violations of the rights of water, forests, wildlife, and Indigenous peoples, as well as the systemic cruelty inflicted on pigs raised in these facilities.

The Tribunal’s deliberations at COP30 contributed to a “New Pledge for Mother Nature,” calling for protections for environmental defenders and a moratorium on fossil fuel extraction, while reinforcing the need to confront industrial animal agriculture as a major driver of ecological harm and rights violations.

Defenders of the Yucatán offers a visual entry point into the lived experiences behind the reporting and research. The photo exhibition reinforces Brighter Green’s commitment to pairing rigorous investigative reporting with engaging narrative structures and community-centered storytelling. Please click here to view the exhibition, and feel free to share with colleagues and stakeholders. 

Patricio Eleisegui is an independent journalist, writer, and photographer known for his in-depth investigations of the agro-industry and its social and environmental consequences. He has authored influential works such as Envenenados and Fruto de la Desgracia, which expose the human toll of pesticide-intensive agriculture and labor abuses. 

Maricarmen Sordo is a cinematographer based in Mexico. She directed Una laguna negra (2021) and was the director of photography for the documentary ¿Qué les pasó a las abejas? (2018). She is currently working on two documentaries focused on socio-environmental issues and is involved in pre-production and scriptwriting for a feature film.

Educating Girls to Be Climate Leaders

Published on | Updated on by Brighter Green

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.

The Just Food Transition Roadmap

Published on | Updated on by Brighter Green

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.

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