Julieta Cardenas | Vox

Can we protect and profit from the oceans?

2024-05-09T11:55:37-04:00

The ocean is home to most animal life on Earth. It’s also vital to human survival, regulating the climate, capturing 90 percent of the heat caused by carbon emissions, and producing 50 percent of the Earth’s oxygen. But most of the ocean is poorly regulated, amounting to a free-for-all of resource extraction — from commercial fishing to drilling for oil — that severely damages the marine ecosystems we all depend on.

Now, world governments are inching closer to the most decisive step ever to safeguard the ocean’s future. The United Nations High Seas Treaty, which was drafted last March and will take effect once 60 countries ratify it, aims to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. It particularly focuses on the part of the ocean that is currently least protected, the high seas, which make up about two-thirds of the ocean and are defined as any area beyond 200 nautical miles off of a country’s coast.

The treaty intends to create “marine protected areas,” or MPAs, a legal designation that would regulate and limit the kinds of extractive activities that can happen within the high seas. Once ratified, participating governments would designate MPAs — ideally prioritizing protecting areas rich in biodiversity — and compliance would be monitored by a central body formed under the treaty.

Yet MPAs are also highly limited. Though they sound like a kind of Yellowstone in the sea, they can perhaps be better thought of as “protected in name only,” as Vox’s Benji Jones put it last year, because commercial fishing, oil drilling, and mining will still happen in these areas. Instead, MPA regulations hope to prevent the worst injustices against humans and animals, while the revenue generated from permitted activities — which could range from recreational diving and fisheries to mining and drilling — would then partially pay the management fees for these zones.

Another major goal of the UN High Seas Treaty is promoting the equitable sharing of ocean resources, such as new genetic discoveries that can help advance medicine, between high- and low-income countries. It also aims to create a more regulated ocean economy, with some nations able to pay off national debt if they agree to protect certain areas.

Some management is better than the usual way of doing business in the high seas — a lawless place where nations do not have jurisdiction, horrors like slavery on industrial fishing vessels are common, and ocean trawlers catch and often kill billions of pounds of bycatch (unintentionally captured creatures like dolphins, whales, and turtles) every year.

A deeper look, however, into the proposed management in Marine Protected Areas complicates its image as a conservation solution. The crux of it all is the trade-off between making a profit and fully protecting the ocean. We can’t have both.

There’s a lot of money to be made in exploiting the ocean in the short term. But thinking solely of short-term profit will cost us more down the line, even in purely economic terms. The ocean economy — encompassing industries like fishing, maritime shipping, and oil drilling — generates nearly $3 trillion of global GDP every year, and its worth is estimated at $24 trillion. Its stability depends on making conservation a priority now, rather than extracting more from the ocean than it can bear.

The High Seas Treaty’s 30 percent target for turning the ocean into protected areas is just a starting point if we want to conserve oceans and the future of life on Earth. But proposed regulation needs teeth. Figuring out what activities should and should not be allowed in MPAs is a broad and tough conversation about what we think the true value of the ocean is.

What is a marine protected area?

The concept of a marine protected area goes back centuries. “Taboo,” or tabu, as historically practiced in the Pacific Islands, has contemporary resonance as a conservation strategy. To this day, it keeps certain areas of the ocean off-limits to fishing.

MPAs, as we think of them today, have been in the global conversation since at least 1962, when the limits of the ocean ’s resources were discussed at the World Congress on National Parks, the international forum for creating protected natural areas. Then, at the UN’s 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, world leaders agreed on a target to turn 10 percent of the ocean into MPAs by 2020, but this goal was not met. Today, just 2.9 percent of the ocean is fully or highly protected from fishing impacts.

A shuffle of different targets and conversations then ensued, culminating in the 30 percent by 2030 goal set by the UN High Seas Treaty last year. Even that ambitious target represents the bare minimum needed to adequately protect the ocean, experts told me, and the agreement may take years to come into force. That’s time we do not have.

Jenna Sullivan-Stack et al | Frontiers in Marine Science" />

The size and scope of MPAs can vary widely: The largest is in the Ross Sea region near Antarctica, where 1.12 million square kilometers have been protected since 2016. The smallest MPA is Echo Bay Marine Provincial Park in Gilford Island, between Vancouver Island and British Columbia, which has just 1 acre of protection.

The UN High Seas treaty, for the first time, sets out a process for states to set up marine protected areas in the high seas, outside of any nation’s direct jurisdiction. In their proposals, states must show what area they intend to protect, the threats it faces, and plans for its management. In exchange, countries could create a range of economic benefits from the ocean, like debt restructuring (as was the case with the Seychelles), benefiting fisheries, and even selling blue carbon credits.

Beyond marine protected areas, the High Seas Treaty lays out a framework for the use of marine genetic resources and what fair and equitable sharing of the benefits from discovery would look like. Currently, developed nations are far outpacing developing nations in finding and commercializing marine genetic resources, such as the anti-cancer drug Halaven, which is derived from a Japanese sea sponge and has annual sales of $300 million.

There’s still a lively debate in ocean politics over whether an MPA should fully protect a region of the ocean, or whether it can also be used for commercial purposes like fishing, mining, and oil extraction. Critics of the MPA approach go so far as to call them “paper parks” (or parks in name only) because, as they exist now, they allow a number of exploitative activities within protected areas.

Groups like the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s premier conservation organization, have proposed supplementary guidelines for MPAs that would ban extractive activities, especially at industrial scales. The UN High Seas Treaty as it stands now does not limit what existing fisheries, cargo ships, and deep-sea mining organizations can do in open waters.

“We need to remove perverse incentives, and we need to rewire the world in a different way,” said Dan Laffoley, an ocean conservationist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The IUCN also advocates for an ecosystem-wide approach to conserving the ocean rather than single species protections, and for protecting species as they migrate across the ocean over time, rather than solely in one static location. Additionally, IUCN guidelines point to the fluctuating nature of the ocean and its inhabitants that travel across large distances; because of this, they suggest that there should be temporal protections in migratory paths and spawning locations.

The IUCN guidelines also call for greater protection of the entire water column, from the top to the bottom of the seafloor. The UN High Seas Treaty, on the other hand, would exempt deep-sea mining operators from submitting environmental impact assessments on their proposed activities on the ocean floor.

There’s something fishy about extracting buckets of money from the ocean in order to save it

Getting world leaders to agree to these terms is the challenge. Scientists and activists want full protection of the oceans now, while business interests argue that there’s too much money to be made by continuing extractive activities.

The challenge for ocean advocates is to create economic incentives for conservation that can outweigh the enormous incentive to continue to allow business-as-usual pollution and exploitation of marine ecosystems. “Giving a different value to nature is one of our biggest challenges,” said marine biologist and explorer Sylvia Earle in a panel at the UN World Oceans Day conference last June. “Our continued existence — that needs to be on the balance sheet.”

This conversation plugs into a long-running debate over whether economic incentives and market forces can promote effective stewardship of nature. The 1970s saw the emergence of the idea of “ecosystem services”: the benefits we get from functioning ecosystems. It started as a way for biologists to highlight the life support systems that keep the Earth habitable, but ecosystem services later started to be used by economists to create analyses of the monetary value of ecosystems.

While these monetary valuations could be used in conservation advocacy by translating the benefits of ecosystems into the dollars-and-cents language of policy, they’re inherently incomplete and reductive. Critics of putting a price on nature have argued that this approach would put financial incentives before sound ecological measures.

Environmental journalist George Monbiot has written that treating nature and its benefits as “ecosystem services” that can be paid for will make them seem fungible and make it easy for companies to destroy ecosystems by claiming they can build technological replacements that can do the same thing. And, by expressing the value of nature only in economic terms, the ecosystem services framework could consolidate decision-making power in the hands of those who have money. When it comes to conservation, practicality can be the cloak under which cynicism hides.

We’re still in the early stages of knowing whether financial approaches to conservation can align with the well-being of oceans. There are some promising case studies: Following the example set by the Seychelles, for example, could let countries restructure their debt into protection of the ocean by creating MPAs.

In 2015, the Seychelles sold $22 million of its debt to the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit, in exchange for protecting its oceans by creating 13 marine protected areas across 30 percent of its national waters. The country has banned or restricted fishing, development, and oil exploration in these zones — regulations that are enforced with steep penalties, including imprisonment.

The risks outweigh the rewards when the bait for conservation is money

The High Seas Treaty’s vision of conserving 30 percent of global oceans would allocate more protection for marine ecosystems than the world has ever seen, but it has to be approached thoughtfully, conservationists say. Tessa Hempson — chief scientist at Mission Blue, a global coalition founded by Earle to support a network of global MPAs — thought of the questions we should first be asking.

“Are we targeting the really essential areas that we need to be focusing on?” Hempson told Vox. “Do we know enough to make sure that we are targeting those areas correctly? And then also, you know, it’s all good and well having those areas demarcated on a map, but are they actually effectively conserved?”

It’s not the first time these tensions (and their corollary benefits and consequences) have been highlighted. The idea of a “blue economy” first emerged at a 2012 UN conference, aiming to bridge the gap between conservation and treating marine ecosystems as a fungible asset. At the time, Pacific Island nations saw how the ocean could be their gateway to be included in global “green” development by highlighting the importance of the ocean and coasts to their livelihoods, culture, and economy. The blue economy, in turn, would help bolster equitable sharing of benefits between developed and developing countries.

In the years that followed, the agenda of equity fell through the cracks. Framing of the blue economy turned to prioritizing growth and promoting “decoupling” — an idea that the economy can keep growing without consequences to the environment. Decoupling separates nature and economy in an intellectualized way in which the effects of capitalism and consumption can continue undeterred.

Though the concept of the blue economy began with intentions of global equity and fair distribution of benefits from the use of ocean resources, we’ve landed in a wayward place where endless growth models don’t truly respect the limits of nature. The ocean stands to be mined for all it is worth unless MPAs start to guarantee meaningful protection.

The high seas were long held as global commons; expressions like “plenty of fish in the sea” reflected the impression that the ocean held infinite resources for the taking. Now, it’s clearer than ever that this model won’t work anymore.

If overfishing continues, we can expect a global collapse of all species currently fished by 2050 — though the lead author of the study, Boris Worm, wrote in 2021 that putting forth ocean protections could give us reason for hope. In any case, the collapse of fish stocks will have ecosystem-wide consequences, like the mass extinction of large ocean creatures, sharks, whales, dolphins, sea lions, and seals.

Another major threat to the ocean looms on the horizon: mining. Deep-sea mining is not yet occurring on an industrial scale, but it’s a major issue of discussion in the marine space because of its implications for the global renewable energy transition. Firms are hoping to mine the ocean bed in search of polymetallic nodules containing cobalt and nickel for use in renewable car batteries. Last year, the International Seabed Authority, the body that regulates the ocean floor, postponed a decision on whether to start allowing mining, citing the need for more time to understand what science-backed guidelines should be in place before moving forward.

But many believe it’s only a matter of time before companies are granted licenses to begin mining the ocean floor — unleashing a drilling bonanza that could have consequences we don’t yet understand because the deep ocean has barely been explored.

Arguably, the only thing we should be extracting from the ocean is knowledge. Indeed, the knowledge we have of the ocean pales in comparison to the knowledge we have of outer space, with funding for space exploration exceeding that of ocean exploration more than 150-fold.

People have been debating for a long time whether greed will be the end of humanity, or whether financial incentives can be used to create protections. When it comes to the oceans, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

As Sylvia Earle said at the June UN conference, “The most important thing we take from the oceans is our existence. If you like to breathe, you’ll listen up.”

Scaling slaughter-free meat is hard. Here’s one way to make it easier.

2023-11-29T15:30:47-05:00

Chef Nate Park slices a piece of cultivated chicken made by the company Good Meat. In June 2023, the USDA authorized two California-based companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, to sell chicken grown from cells in a lab. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In a perfect world, no meal would come at the cost of the environment or the welfare of an animal. A juicy steak with freshly ground pepper and a pat of butter wouldn’t contribute to climate change. Nor would bacon fat’s sizzle mean that a pig had been slaughtered on a factory farm.

These are gastronomic dreams of astronomical proportions. The good news is that we’re inching closer and closer to achieving such goals through the development of cell-cultivated meat, or meat grown directly from animal cells in a lab. The United Nations sees cellular meat, alongside other shifts like plant-based diets, as a potential solution to problems like climate change and global nutrition.

Earlier this year, two companies received FDA and USDA approval to sell cell-cultivated chicken. And though the ethics of cellular meat — like curtailing slaughter and reducing carbon emissions — are far better than the violent, resource-intensive factory farms that make meat now, foodies everywhere hope it will also taste good. It does seem as though we’re getting there: Star chef José Andrés piloted lab-grown chicken skewers at one of his restaurants back in July, and my colleague Kenny Torrella said that the slaughter-free chicken tasted, yes, just like chicken.

Creating a technological (and delicious) wonder is one thing; scaling it to feed billions of people is another. Right now, governments globally have invested $1 billion into developing cellular and plant-based meats, according to the Good Food Institute. It’s a start, but it’s not enough. To get cellular agriculture over the finish line and onto people’s plates, governments and corporations need to innovate and approach cultivated meat as the essential technology it is, rather than just a new food trend. Cellular technology must be accelerated with the same urgency with which we treat renewable energy in order for it to scale and make a dent in carbon emissions.

To do that, collaboration will be key. Working together, stakeholders in the cell-cultivated meat space can make the best use of public funding for emerging technologies. Consortiums — collaborative associations of private companies, governments, and institutions like universities and NGOs — have previously helped lead scientific breakthroughs in things like lifesaving vaccines and space exploration. They’ve also played no small part in getting computers to where they are today. Many essential industries wouldn’t exist without publicly funded R&D that private companies aren’t well structured to support because of the risks associated with such large-scale investments.

It’s not unheard of to see this type of collaboration in the food world. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, which was established by President Barack Obama’s 2014 Agricultural Act, now runs 10 consortiums working on innovating everything from fertilizer to climate-resilient crops.

In the cell agriculture world, though, consortium-type groups are in their infancy, particularly in the US, which consumes huge amounts of meat. With more of these partnerships, researchers, companies, and consortium members could supercharge their progress by slashing redundancies, costs, and time spent. For example, horizontal collaboration — say, if every member of a consortium can use the same cow cell to make their respective beef products, be it steak or brisket — would mean more researchers could focus on innovation rather than recreating basic building blocks.

Consortiums could help push cell-cultivated meat technology forward to a point where transitioning away from factory farming becomes reality. You don’t need all that mess and horror to make abundant cheap meat — it’s just a matter of making slaughter-free options accessible to the public.

The hold-up in developing cellular agriculture

Scaling slaughter-free meat from a niche product to a grocery store staple is the only way it will become a legitimate solution for climate mitigation. To do that, it must reach price parity with factory-farmed meat.

Even so, the goal shouldn’t be a one-to-one replacement of factory-farmed meat with cultivated meat, for the simple reason that per capita meat consumption is already too high for optimal health in rich countries like the US. Cultivated meat will have to work in tandem with a shift to more plant-based foods, in the form of plant-based meats and just eating more straight-up veggies.

But not everyone is going to go for a bean burrito or a plant-based sausage. The reason may be as simple and undeniable as a craving, which, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t necessarily mean your body is deficient in any particular nutrient; it’s more likely to come from a mix of social, cultural, and psychological factors. For those who want to continue eating animal products, cellular agriculture offers a way to do so.

Cultural perceptions around “real” meat are likely to be a huge hurdle when it comes to the uptake of cell-cultivated meat. Yet even that’s jumping the gun in many ways. The first obstacles cellular agriculture must overcome are technological, political, and financial — all of which are intertwined.

Several technical aspects of making cultivated meat from animal cells are expensive to start and challenging to make cheaper. Bioreactors, the vats in which cells grow, are not dissimilar to the steel tanks you would see at a beer brewery. They must keep conditions optimal for cell growth, with the right temperature and the right oxygen levels. Growth media for cells, the nutrient slurry cells grow in, are still being perfected, ideally using ingredients that can already be found in food production. Private funding alone won’t beget the most efficient innovation process for these components.

Instead, public funding and regulatory approval are critical to supporting the development of the cellular agriculture field. Only two lab-grown meat startups have been approved to sell cultivated chicken in the US, and chicken is the only meat thus far approved by the FDA and USDA. To truly become a disrupting force in overall meat sales, cultivated meat will need a lot more public investment. President Joe Biden’s 2022 executive order on biotechnology and biomanufacturing, signaled to the cellular agriculture industry that there will be regulatory support for ag tech by boosting research and data sharing. But the US has so far dedicated much less funding to the cell agriculture field than some other affluent countries.

Government funding would enable collaboration between diverse stakeholders in the cell ag industry and limit the financial risk that individual companies would otherwise have to take on. As Alla Voldman, vice president of The Good Food Institute Israel, told me in an interview, “A platform that is funded by the government is probably the only way that one could put companies and industry partners and academic groups together to work on collaborative R&D budgets.”

How consortiums can pave the way

Consortiums could fuel particularly forward-thinking work in the cellular-agriculture landscape because they strategically pool resources and know-how to develop key portions of the production process. By allowing competitors to work together on essential components like cell lines and growth media, the hope is that everyone will get to the finish line faster and more affordably, and innovate new processes and products along the way.

Models for cultivated meat consortiums have already gotten off the ground in developed countries across the world. Israel’s Cultivated Meat Consortium is the largest such collaboration, with 14 members and $18 million in funding from the Israel Innovation Authority.

Gaya Savyon, a PhD student at Tel Aviv University, told me that saw the potential of the consortium model in 2019, and took advantage of the Israel Innovation Authority’s magnet consortium program, designed to help academia collaborate with industry, to advance cellular agriculture. She pointed to the need for a strict intellectual property contract, as well as an approval process for using the “background IP” of different consortium members, as ways to mitigate concerns companies might have around ownership and royalties within such a partnership. Such clear boundaries provide members with the security that they will be credited and compensated for their individual contributions.

With climate change threatening to disrupt current food systems, more pockets of leadership are emerging in the cellular agriculture space around the world. Singapore, a city-state on an island has doubled down on producing its own food despite having next to no land for agriculture — and cultivated meat is part of its food security mission to produce 30 percent of its food domestically by 2030.

In 2020, Singapore’s Food Agency became the first in the world to approve cultivated meat for sale. The regulatory body is providing its expertise to others in the Asia Pacific region that want to achieve similar success, as well as advising the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization on cultivated meat safety. “Because it’s such a small country, by default to flourish, they depend on their international collaborations,” Mirte Gosker, managing director of Good Food Institute Asia Pacific, told me. “It’s a very small market, so in order to basically make anything really work, they need to export their products and knowledge.”

Singapore’s small size also enables close connections between industry and government, Gosker said, which means that novel food regulations can be developed nimbly. This closeness also comes from an awareness that Singapore is “a canary in the coal mine,” as Gosker put it: The country has limited resources and land to grow food, and cannot rely on imports, especially as climate change gets worse.

In some parts of the world, cellular agriculture tech is at the door; governments just need to let it in to allow rapid progress. The Japan Association for Cellular Agriculture (JACA), for example, began as a study group in 2019, housed in Tama University’s Center for Rule-making Strategies. Today, there are two Japanese cellular agriculture companies — which may sound too small to garner government interest, but there’s significant domestic and international interest in Japanese cultivated products, including from food and pharmaceutical company Meiji and tech giant Mitsubishi. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed his support in February for a government plan that includes cellular agriculture as part of expanding food tech in Japan.

JACA now has 55 members across corporate, legal, and academic organizations. The consortium also has several collaborative partnerships with other associations, including the Japan Bioindustry Association (JBA), with which JACA is working on policy recommendations to propose to the government.

Megumi Avigail Yoshitomi, JACA’s president, hopes that the large international support JACA has gained will help the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare dedicate more support toward safety regulation guidelines for cultivated products. “JACA is not trying to only focus on the domestic startups communication, but also focusing on how to open up the market opportunity for overseas companies as well,” said Megumi.

We need to bring this collaborative ethos to the US

The US is in the mix to develop better cellular agriculture technologies, and the recent success of startups like Upside Foods and Good Meat is a promising sign. Relative to the consortium-based efforts in other countries, though, the US is lagging.

Currently, there’s one major cell agriculture-focused consortium in the US: the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture, which groups academia, regulators, and industry. Tufts has a farm, a school of nutrition science and policy, and tissue and cell culture facilities. Industry partners include the food giant Cargill, as well as cultivated meat startups like Upside Foods. The consortium aims to develop new technologies like bioreactors, growth media, and cell lines, which can then be tested by industry partners. This process of research and development will make it easier to work with regulators on standards for safety and nutrition.

We need more industry, academic, and big government partners to build on this model. The future of meat is deeply polarizing in America, but if the US government could shift its support from livestock factory farms to making meat sustainable through cellular agriculture, that would be a radical departure from dead-end debates like whether plant-based burgers can be labeled “meat.” It could help us imagine a way forward beyond our divisive food politics.

Creating cultured meat at an affordable price is the primary goal of consortiums, but it’s not the only hurdle. For widespread consumer adoption, more will have to be done to translate the production process to the public and make cell-cultured meat familiar enough to eat. Transparency on how these products are made can help consumers understand that, in the end, they are just eating meat.

The best-case scenario is for successful consortiums in cellular agriculture to bring affordable and accessible cultivated products to consumers. If the price is right, then the ethical and sustainability benefits of cultivated meat should help consumers pick these products over slaughtered animals.

For food systems to remain resilient and sustainable in the face of climate change, efforts to advance food tech must be global. The fledgling cultivated meat sector is, hopefully, just the start.

From court to classroom, Jon Lovvorn is working to end factory farming

2023-11-29T06:27:03-05:00

There are a lot fewer cages in factory farms now than there were 10 years ago. Much of this change was spearheaded by Jon Lovvorn, chief counsel of animal protection law for the Humane Society of the United States.

Putting animals in tiny cages not only limits their movement and increases their suffering, but creates dirty conditions that make them even more susceptible to disease. California’s Proposition 12 prohibits the sale of eggs, veal, and pork raised this way — and as California imports most of its pork from other states, the law has had a major impact on the pork industry nationwide. The industry lobby challenged Prop 12 after it was passed by ballot measure in 2018, and the lawsuit was eventually appealed to the Supreme Court.

Lovvorn led HSUS’s legal defense of the law, and in May, his team’s effort paid off: The Court ruled 5-4 in favor of California. It’s a landmark decision; according to Lovvorn, “It’s the first time the Supreme Court has ever ruled in favor of animal welfare.” As Vox’s Kenny Torrella has reported, the decision means that once the law is fully implemented, 1 million pigs, 40 million hens, and tens of thousands of calves will be freed from cages each year.

Prop 12’s victory before the Supreme Court was undoubtedly a win for animal rights, but there’s still so much left to do. Industrialized, large-scale animal agriculture has wide-ranging consequences on biodiversity as a whole: it generates more than a third of the world’s methane emissions, pollutes water systems, and cuts down available habitat for wild animals.

In the face of climate change and a business-as-usual approach, 16 percent of total species, or 147 billion animals, could die over the next 20 years, according to Lovvorn — and that may still be a low estimate. Incremental temperature changes will destroy the ability of some animals, like arctic aquatic animals, to survive. Some animals will die in forest fires, and many will drown in floods. The plight of wild animals isn’t independent from those that are caged.

Our methodology

To select this year’s Future Perfect 50, our team went through a months-long process. Starting with last year’s list, we brainstormed, researched deeply, and connected with our audience and sources. We didn’t want to overrepresent in any one category, so we aimed for diversity in theories of change, academic specialities, age, geographic location, identity, and many other criteria.

To learn more about the FP50 methodology and criteria, go here.

To tackle the wicked, entangled problem of climate change and factory farming, Lovvorn works as a co-chair for the Climate, Animal, Food, and Environmental (CAFE) Law and Policy Lab at Yale Law School. There, he teaches classes on animal law and climate policy. The lab hopes to facilitate a new way of approaching law and policy that connects climate, food, animals, and environment as interrelated justice issues. Its mission is to create legal and policy strategies that can be adopted to make industrial food producers accountable for their negative effects, such as the welfare of the animals, pollution, and the effects on the environment. CAFE also makes its work open source, so that nonprofits, policymakers, and students can use these resources freely.

As an academic, Lovvorn has argued for reframing how we think about food. In an insightful 2018 paper, he points out the huge gap in how US law treats dirty, inefficient energy production compared to food production (which is, after all, a form of energy). His work is helping close that gap and align the law with the public interest.

Speaking on the catastrophic effects of climate change on animals, Lovvorn says, “the animals go first — they literally are the canaries in the coal mine.”

How Christopher “Soul” Eubanks fights for a better life — for animals and people of color alike

2023-11-29T06:21:56-05:00

For Christopher “Soul” Eubanks, veganism is more than simply avoiding animal products. It’s also an opportunity to resist the exploitation of all beings, from the billions of animals tightly packed onto factory farm floors to the communities of color who disproportionately live alongside these polluting facilities.

Eubanks, a social justice advocate and innovative moral thinker, founded APEX Advocacy in 2021 to help redress the injustices at the intersection of racism, classism, and the consequences of Big Meat — such as pollution and unfair treatment of factory farm workers.

The nonprofit, which is based in Georgia and runs online programs like its Global Majority Caucus, aims to provide professional and personal development for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) animal advocates as they fight for “collective liberation through animal rights.” APEX also offers Pre-Animal Activist Week, or PAAW, a boot camp for people who want to learn how to advocate for animals through a social justice lens.

APEX combats the gnarly way environmental racism embeds itself within the factory farm system, including the intentional placement of polluting facilities in underserved communities. One APEX project, “No Backyard Slaughter,” strives to move slaughterhouses out of residential neighborhoods. Eubanks helps connect those most impacted by the slaughterhouses with the tools of activism, including leafleting and attending local government meetings.

Our methodology

To learn more about the FP50 methodology and criteria, go here.

Living near a slaughterhouse or factory farm is associated with higher rates of arrests, lower real estate values, and environmental harms that come with intensive animal agriculture, like eutrophication — when manure runoff causes algal blooms in water sources, driving down oxygen levels and killing animals living in the water. The health consequences can be dire. People who live near pig farms in North Carolina — a state where the number of pigs rivals the number of people and factory farm runoff can contaminate drinking water — are more likely to experience breathing problems, heart conditions, and “blue baby” syndrome, where insufficient oxygen in babies’ blood can lead to death.

APEX is the culmination of years’ worth of learning and activism for Eubanks. He says he first became vegetarian after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X when he was 13 — Malcolm X was mainly vegetarian. Eubanks went vegan more recently, at the age of 35, after watching the documentary Cowspiracy, which explains the environmental impact of factory farming. Soon after, Eubanks began volunteering with animal rights groups including the Humane League, Anonymous for the Voiceless, PETA, the Animal Save Movement, Mercy for Animals, and more, and noticed a lack of diversity in the movement. Black Americans are more likely to be vegan than the overall population, but this is not reflected in the mainstream animal rights space. Eubanks founded APEX with the express goal of inclusion.

The animal rights movement has long been criticized for being predominantly white; APEX works to create more BIPOC leaders in the space. Eubanks felt that in order to be morally consistent with all the social justice movements he already cared about — to consider humans’ responsibility to all sentient beings — he would have to oppose the injustices suffered by Black and brown people at the hands of animal agriculture, as well as the injustices faced by animals.

For Eubanks, these struggles are inextricable from one another. “As long as we are continuing to contribute to the normalization of exploiting others” by consuming animal products, he said in a Facebook video, “it’s always going to have an impact on our overall society.”

Maisa Rojas is putting political power behind climate science

2023-11-29T06:23:56-05:00

As a climate scientist and professor of geophysics at the Universidad de Chile, Maisa Rojas was unhappy with political inaction around climate change — so she decided to step up to the plate, join Chile’s government, and try to enact legislation that follows the science.

Prior to becoming the minister for the environment under progressive president Gabriel Boric last year, Rojas spent the past 15 years teaching at the University of Chile. She also co-authored chapters for two multi-year assessment reports by the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As a scientist, Rojas focused on the fields of paleoclimate — in her case, studying the evolution of the climate system in the Southern Hemisphere over the past 25,000 years — and regional climate modeling, looking at the effects of climate change on agriculture and water resources in the Southern hemisphere.

But now Rojas is in the unique position of having gone from technical adviser on laws to implementing them. She is behind Chile’s legal commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, in large part by creating and enforcing regulations on Chile’s mining industry. Rojas hopes to ensure Chile’s water resources are equitably shared as the country faces a 13-year drought.

Rojas also wants to prioritize how social inequalities — such as gender — interact with environmental quality. “If our world did not have these social inequalities,” Rojas told the Guardian in 2023, “I am sure we would not have the same level of environmental degradation because no one who has access to education, to money, to power would accept to live in an area that was so degraded.” (As such, 14 of Boric’s 24 Cabinet appointments are now held by women in Chile.)

Most developing countries prioritize development before going green, but Rojas believes that a green transition must be what leads Chile forward — after all, she argues, the consequences of climate change mean that long-term development won’t truly be possible without a sustainable approach. As part of a global effort to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, Chile hopes to phase out coal power by 2030. Last year, Chile also ratified the Escazú treaty — a regional agreement that protects the environment and gives the public more power in environmental decision-making — as part of its effort to meet IPCC recommendations.

Our methodology

To learn more about the FP50 methodology and criteria, go here.

Rojas’s transition from scientist to government official has also given her an evidence-based approach to decision-making. She’s studied the long-term effects of the climate system, knowledge that she can now use to shape public action. About 80 percent of Chile’s emissions come from the energy sector, and greening the sector is Rojas’s main mission for achieving climate neutrality. As an exporter of minerals for batteries and the world’s top copper producer, Chile must confront the impacts of mining, like creating water scarcity. Rojas is steadfast in regulating the industry by setting emissions limits enabled by a 2022 climate neutrality law.

Rojas’s clear-eyed vision for the future of Chile’s environment and its people has the potential to make transformational change. It’ll take time to see which of her initiatives are implemented — and how well they do. “In politics, you don’t only take decisions based on evidence and science,” Rojas told the Guardian earlier this year. “You have to figure out a much more complex ecosystem. I am still figuring it out.”

Zahra Biabani wants Gen Z to feel hopeful about the future

2023-11-29T06:09:28-05:00

Zahra Biabani, a Gen Z activist and author of Climate Optimism, believes that change is worth pursuing, no matter how bleak things may at times look. Her book, she says, is not for politicians who continue to operate with a business-as-usual mindset or straight-up deny climate change is happening. It’s for everyone else — fellow Zoomers, conscious consumers, activists who don’t want to burn out — to realize that “hope is a self-fulfilling phenomenon.”

Her opening chapter explores the psychological biases that keep us from taking the steps to make the world better. If you think pessimistically about the future, the book argues, you may be inclined to focus your efforts on saving yourself before others, or just become mired in inaction. The same can happen if you are so optimistic that you don’t think the status quo needs to change. But a bit of criticism and anger can be a motivator for action, as a 2021 study from the Journal of Climate Change and Health shows.

In her book, Biabani describes climate optimism as a “framework based on the idea that we can restore the earth back to health, and in doing so protect the people that inhabit this planet.” In a 2022 TED talk, she mentions that more than 56 percent of Gen Z think the climate crisis means we are doomed. This “doomerism” has real consequences, from anxiety attacks to deciding not to have children for fear of the suffering they will inherit from an unstable climate and economy.

That said, Biabani suggests looking at the long-term historical record, which shows that progress does happen; such is the case for the ozone layer, which has recovered since the ’80s, when bans on ozone-destroying chemicals were enacted.

Biabani’s framework for optimism relies on balanced reporting of climate solutions as well as coverage of climate disasters. Doing so is important because, as Biabani points out in her book, humans are hardwired to be more attentive to negative news. Showing people solutions they can get involved in, by highlighting positive news sources or encouraging trends over time, paints a more holistic picture of society’s achievements.

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To learn more about the FP50 methodology and criteria, go here.

A wider perspective also means looking for news from around the world, and specifically from the areas and people most impacted by climate change globally.

Biabani argues that we need to overcome our inherent negativity bias by focusing on the wins instead, such as the Environmental Protection Agency allocating $50 million to help tribal projects restore critical fish habitats. Progress doesn’t only have to be top-down. It can be grassroots, too, like the land back movement, in which land is restored to the Indigenous peoples who have historically taken care of it. Rights of nature laws — giving rivers and forests legal rights, like those of people and corporations — have gained traction within dozens of communities globally and have promise as a conservation tool.

Biabani’s TikTok videos highlight climate wins and strategies for supporting more environmentally just decisions. She was one of the first creators of color on TikTok to dedicate themselves to accessible, optimistic climate justice content. Her “Weekly Earth Wins” series pairs good-news stories with dance and was her first foray into the idea of climate optimism, which then led to her book. But social media, to her, is just the beginning.

“It’s not just about creating content,” Biabani told Atmos magazine in 2021, when her TikTok account began taking off. “It’s also thinking of new ways to break into spaces that traditionally people like me haven’t been involved in, or just creating these spaces that are more inclusive.”

Governments have put $1 billion toward making better meat alternatives. A lot more is needed.

2023-08-28T16:52:07-04:00

A piece of Good Meat’s cultivated chicken is lifted off a plate at the Eat Just office on July 27, 2023, in Alameda, California. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

From “no-kill” chicken grown in bioreactors to juicy plant-based burgers, alternative protein options are cropping up (in extremely limited quantities) in the grocery aisle, at restaurants, and on your plate. The big question of the last few months, however, is whether alternative proteins could realistically scale to challenge conventional meat protein dominance.

During the pandemic, alternative proteins saw a rise in consumer spending as people became more conscious of their health and the environmental impacts of traditional meat, and as meat shortages affected households. This year, though, sales dropped, and skepticism of alternative meat’s staying power grew.

However, according to a recent report by the Good Food Institute, governments around the world are investing in public partnerships to the tune of $1 billion globally, indicating that alternative proteins could be an important component of national approaches to food security.

The upshot: Governments around the world are more ready to fund alternative proteins in the wake of unstable food prices in 2022, a year that shed light on the effect of geopolitical tensions on food security. By developing an alternative protein sector, countries such as Singapore and Israel aim to be more self-sufficient while transforming their agriculture sector to be resistant in the face of wars, climate change, and export bans.

Not only could investing more in alternative meats buoy countries’ food sovereignty aspirations, it could help their economies. If governments continue to invest in cellular agriculture — the process behind no-kill, lab-grown meat, different from plant-based meat substitutes like Beyond or Impossible meat — then the report estimates that there could be $1.1 trillion in global economic activity by 2050 and 9.8 million jobs in the sector. For reference, the meat industry value globally was $897.5 billion in 2021.

Though the $1 billion benchmark bodes well for the staying power of alternative protein, and it’s certainly enough to get some projects off the ground, the GFI report estimates that much more will be needed to truly scale alternative proteins — about $10.1 billion total.

That’s because, while veggie burgers have been around for a long time, making plant-based meat that is as affordable and tasty as conventional meat is still in the early stages — which means it’s expensive. That’s even more the case for cellular agriculture, which needs a whole set of infrastructure to produce real meat at scale. Both plant-based and cultured meat need government funding to get from lab to table in meaningful quantities.

In the case of cellular agriculture, success depends most on advancements in the research and development phase, where technical hurdles, such as how to build sufficiently large bioreactor facilities, remain. Success will also depend on the commercialization phase, where regulators approve the sale of these new food products and production scales up to make cultivated meat affordable, but there are already positive signs in that direction: Regulators in the US have cleared two companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, to sell cultivated chicken in restaurants.

Ultimately, though, in order to make cellular agriculture widely available, more than regulatory approval is needed. Governments must boldly provide funding to universities and public-private initiatives, through grants and investment. We know what global instability can do to a nation’s food security. It’s time to get a headstart on creating lower-emissions alternative proteins.

The technological and supply hurdles

Unlike other alternative protein options, such as the soy protein often used in vegan nuggets, creating cell-cultivated meat is a lot more involved.

The cellular agriculture process starts with the extraction of cells from a live animal, from a needle biopsy. Those animal cells are placed in a growth medium, which feeds the cells nutrients so that they grow and proliferate. After that, the cells are placed in a bioreactor, where they have a clean environment in which to replicate. Finally, the cells are placed onto a scaffolding, which can be made of synthetic collagen and gelatin or plant-based proteins, that helps the cells mimic the texture of a cut of meat.

The final product of the cellular-agriculture process tastes like meat because it is meat — just without the animal slaughter, horrible work conditions for humans, and environmental consequences, like producing 15 to 19 percent of global greenhouse emissions. As Vox’s Kenny Torrella has reported, cellular agriculture could also “create an escape hatch from the meat paradox, allowing consumers to enjoy food they seemingly can’t get enough of, without the ethical and environmental side effects.”

But getting cell agriculture to take off is often talked about as a “moonshot.” It will be tough to make the production process efficient and affordable enough to meet consumer demand for meat, and then there’s the hurdle of people accepting it as their go-to protein. It’ll require funding and collaboration across industrial, academic, and government stakeholders.

A large-scale production facility could cost $60 million, according to a cost analysis published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Research late last year. The largest contributors to cost are the growth medium, bioreactors, and labor. Good Meat’s Singapore production facility — which has the largest bioreactor in the cultivated meat space — was supported by a $100 million investment. With 156 cultivated meat companies as of 2022 around the world, building a cellular agriculture industry will require resources and money — they’ll all need pricey bioreactors, growth medium, cells, and scaffolding.

There are steps stakeholders could take to accelerate progress in the field, however. Compatibility across different parts of the supply chain can be made more efficient by making crucial information, such as cell lines, widely available. Collaboration could make it easier for university labs and startups developing cells to know if their cells are compatible with an animal-free growth medium, for example. Such open innovation has a track record of success; it’s previously been used to develop software, crop genetics, and in the energy sector.

The good news is that we’ve funded open innovation before to ensure success in fields where advancement is otherwise difficult. In 2012, the Obama administration launched Manufacturing USA, a program with 16 institutes that use open innovation to advance everything from biomanufacturing to electronics. With the government absorbing some of the risk of investing in new, ambitious technologies, the component institutes worked to revitalize industry. The institutes have done everything from making extreme weather textiles to reducing the cost of gene therapy to developing a chip that can detect viruses including coronavirus. Public funding can jumpstart the kind of infrastructure needed for different stakeholders, from academic labs to startups, to feel more comfortable about collaborating, creating jobs, and advancing technology.

Why countries are investing heavily in cellular agriculture

As the Good Food Institute report explains, several governments have begun to fund cellular agriculture in creative ways, ranging from grants to universities to using national investment funds to support initiatives.

One motivating factor for some countries is to decrease their dependence on imports for livestock and boost food security. For instance, Singapore imports about 90 percent of its food. That degree of reliance on external sources means that any disruption can lead to high prices and food insecurity, as seen last year when neighboring Malaysia stopped exporting live chickens to Singapore. Currently, Singapore has an ambitious target of producing 30 percent of its food domestically by 2030. The country’s small size — an island nation, it has little room for livestock — will make that a difficult goal to achieve, but cell agriculture could help facilitate it.

To reach that target, Temasek, Singapore’s state-owned innovation investment fund, became one of the top global investors in alternative proteins. Singapore has also partnered with universities in other countries, such as the University of Bath in the UK (which has a cellular agriculture research hub). Additionally, Singapore is ahead of the pack when it comes to regulation. Their equivalent of the FDA, the Singapore Food Agency, was the first in the world to approve the sale of Good Meat’s cultivated chicken in 2020.

Singapore isn’t the only small nation with food security concerns; Israel is also trying to develop a robust alternative proteins sector, including via cell agriculture. In 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first head of state to try cultivated meat when he tasted Aleph Farms cultivated steak, and the country is also responsible for 24 percent of global investment in alternative proteins (about $637 million). Israel’s Cultivated Meat Consortium is the largest government-backed consortium to date and was funded by $18 million from the Israel Innovation Authority in 2022.

Israel’s consortium is made up of 10 academic labs and 14 companies, including the largest food manufacturer in Israel, TNUVA. Israel has supported open-access facilities domestically as well as internationally, even adding alternative protein development to their diplomatic toolkit.

In Europe, the Netherlands, too, faced anxieties around food security, spanning back to a deadly famine during World War II. After more than 20,000 Dutch died, the government heavily invested in agriculture through subsidies, infrastructure investment in rural areas, and industrialization. The scar of starvation also motivated the country two decades ago to pledge to grow twice as much food, with half as many resources. Now, it produces 6 percent of Europe’s food, with only 1 percent of the continent’s farmland, reported Vox’s Kenny Torrella.

That drive for efficiency also spurred technological development in meat alternatives. In 2013, Dutch pharmacologist Mark Post in 2013 invented the first cell-cultivated burger. Post engineered tissue for medical uses and saw the potential benefits the technology could have when applied to food production. Cell-cultivated meats, as well as plant-based alternatives, could help the small country to meet its wider goals — and would later make it a leader in the food tech space.

A decade and $66.2 million later, the Dutch funded a cellular agriculture ecosystem with Cellulaire Agricultuur Nederland, which not only supports crucial research, development, and commercialization efforts but also funds workforce transition programs by expanding educational routes to prepare students to work in cellular agriculture.

Developments in the Netherlands and elsewhere are meaningful, but for alternative proteins to have a significant positive global impact, China and the US — the world’s largest economies by an order of magnitude — both need to put more into developing the sector. China’s funding for alternative proteins is largely undisclosed, but President Xi Jinping mentioned it as a priority in 2022, in a speech to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. “It is necessary to expand from traditional crops and livestock and poultry resources to more abundant biological resources, develop biotechnology and bio-industry, and seek energy and protein from plants, animals, and micro-organisms,” Xi said.

Cultivated meat is included in China’s agricultural five-year plan, as well as in the National Development and Reform Commission’s five-year plan. China has since held events like the China Cellular Agriculture Forum and a panel on cellular agriculture at the China International Food Safety and Quality Conference hosted by the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA).

Notably, the US has been outpaced when it comes to cultivated meat development, though Biden has expressed public support for it in an executive order. Congress, however, has only provided $6 million to the USDA’s Agricultural Resource Service, which is tasked with conducting research on alternative proteins. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has thus far provided the most public money to a cellular agriculture project in the US, giving $10 million in 2021 to Tufts University’s Center for Cellular Agriculture, which is the first US lab to focus on cellular agriculture. By comparison, Israel gave $18 million for a cultivated meat consortium in 2022 and its GDP is ranked 34th in the world whereas the US is ranked first.

Relative to the size of the US food industry, however, that’s not all that much money. By comparison, small countries are punching above their weight when it comes to public funding for cell agriculture — and for the $10.1 billion estimate in the GFI report to be in reach, the US will have to step up.

How the radical history of plant-based eating illuminates our future

2023-08-16T17:52:08-04:00

A customer pays after buying fruits and vegetables at a street market in High Wycombe, in the United Kingdom. | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

There has never been a better time to ditch meat. Climate change, health, and animal cruelty are among the many reasons why some leave animals (partially or entirely) off their plates.

Luckily, folks seem to be catching on. Vegetable-forward dishes are taking over food magazines, TikTok, and the restaurant scene. Along with some greater cultural acceptance of plant-based diets, there has been a growing recognition that animal-free cuisine can taste great; it doesn’t have to mean compromising on flavor.

“There is so much possibility of just feeding people a good dish,” food writer Alicia Kennedy told me in a recent conversation. “That can be an overlooked strategy of changing people’s minds. A lot of people never even notice if something is vegan or vegetarian until you tell them it is. They never even think about the fact that there’s no meat in it. They just ate it and it was good.”

That said, there’s still a lot of progress left to be made. The share of Americans who call themselves vegetarian or vegan is still very small. And US meat consumption has only increased over the last few decades. How we think about and make progress, of course, is still richly debated among different groups, from vegans to conscientious omnivores, with distinct perspectives on how to build the future of food.

Kennedy’s new book — No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating — gives a historical overview of the diverse movements that have decided to leave meat off the plate, and critiques our industrialized food system.

From the counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s and seminal books like Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, to the ecofeminists who recognized the connections between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals, to the ’90s zine-toting punks who became influential vegan chefs, Kennedy weaves a fascinating look into how the meat-free movement’s history informs its future.

She also argues that the present-day plant-based movement has become all too sanitized of these stories in favor of an industrialized approach to plant-based meats that can reach a lot of people — but at the risk of reproducing the same mistakes as Big Meat, such as consolidating power and complicating preexisting social justice labor issues.

“There had been so many people approaching a plant-based diet from the perspective of challenging norms and oppressive systems,” Kennedy said. “Now it’s like, ‘Oh, we can just kind of keep all the same stuff. We’ll just make it plant-based.’ It’s interesting to watch the same problems in a different font, so to speak.”

According to Kennedy, a just food system would make local food abundant and accessible. For a future of meatless eating to get there will take work, collaboration, and transparency. But hopefully, Kennedy says, it’s a future that will make food taste better — and in easy reach — for more people.

I spoke with Kennedy about how the “meatless plurality” can come together, and the importance of knowing the radical histories of plant-forward eating. A lightly edited transcript follows.

Why has it been so hard to make a dent in US meat consumption, despite plant-based diets’ presence here?

There’s been this terrible reputation that vegans and vegetarians only care about ethics and don’t care about food. And when we’re talking about something that we relate to chiefly regarding diet, food takes up a central part. You have to make appealing food to make people find the whole idea of giving up meat appealing.

So historically, yes, there has been a focus on blander foods; food in general in the US has gotten a bit better and more nuanced. We realized there are lots of techniques that people have used for meat that we can apply to vegetables to get better flavor from them.

Most people are less attached to eating meat all the time than we might think they are. They want to eat good food that’s plant-based. They want to know how to cook plant-based food in a way that is as satisfying as eating meat.

Also, we’ve done a bit of a disservice to the narrative around plant-based food by focusing so much on alternative meats. Getting away from the false notion that plant-based is a category of product versus plant-based as an approach to every type of food that exists. It is a huge part of making people cut back on meat in a way that’s so necessary.

In your book, you talk about the plurality of motivations for being vegetarian or vegan, from the spiritual to political. That there’s everything from Indigenous, anticapitalist veganism to a consumerist and normative plant-based approach that, although it leaves meat off the table, doesn’t change our reliance on mass production and capitalism. Can you explain why the distinction is important?

It’s really important to think of how much these other folks were really focused on changing society and really changing people’s attachments to various systems and structures. With Frances Moore Lappé, it was, “Let’s eat differently and stop world hunger.” With the eco-feminists, it was, “Let’s stop having this patriarchal relationship to animals and the land.” With the punk anarchists’ perspective, it was, “Let’s reject corporate food culture and build something new.”

When we’re talking about this newer moment — where it’s this plant-based food product with a capitalist growth model — we’re mapping the same [unjust] structures onto a plant-based approach. We’re not going to see people question why we’ve let factory farming happen for so long. It’s not going to lead to questions of scale of consumption of one type of food being problematic. It’s not going to lead to questions about what is the best way to build and strengthen regional food systems within the United States. It’s just going to lead to this kind of one-for-one replacement.

You’re critical of agricultural intensification in the book, writing that “the idea of the ‘plant-based diet’ — whether vegan, vegetarian, or flexible — needs to be reinvigorated and understood as a political stance that rejects efficient but profit-driven industrialized agriculture as much as it abhors the slaughter of confined animals.” This is a pretty significant division among people who work on the future of food.

Could you explain what’s meant by the concept of industrialized agriculture and what it would mean to reject it? Is there a way to incorporate different types of solutions to the many different problems in the global food system, like world hunger, carbon emissions, and land use?

I’m talking about corporate agribusiness that has this stranglehold on the food and the land. In the US, we are very supermarket-minded. When we think about food, there’s been a very strong and pervasive desire to keep the origins of food and the people who have a role in that opaque — whether we’re talking about the absent referent of the animal being slaughtered or we’re talking about farmworkers dying of heat exhaustion in the fields. When I am talking about rejecting industrialized agriculture, I mean rejecting that opacity and that distance — the idea that our food comes from nowhere, and no one has been harmed in that.

A massive part of the American food project is to keep people from believing that they should know where their food comes from, or that if you care where your food comes from, that’s kind of an elite affectation. If we’re talking about someone like Alice Waters, their approach to food is seen as elitist because it’s very focused on farm-to-table and seasonality.

But when we’re talking about strengthening regional food systems away from overly efficiency-driven, scale-driven, growth-driven profit motives, then we’re talking about: What is the best thing for this ecosystem? How do we protect the workers’ rights who are part of this system? How do we make locally grown seasonal food both abundant and accessible to folks? Part of a plant-based ethos is to get away from the corporate control and lack of transparency when it comes to the food system.

You argue it is not enough to just leave meat off the plate, but that ingredients should support local food systems. Can you go into why this is an important element of food justice?

I live in Puerto Rico, so I have a different perspective on what it means to support local [food systems] and why that’s a significant thing to do. It’s really easy when you’re in bigger cities to detach what that means from what that looks like. At this point, so many folks are experiencing the effects of climate change in terms of disaster. Here, it’s so important to support the local economy because 85 percent of food in the supermarkets is imported. If we don’t support local farmers, especially those practicing agroecology — which is much more resilient to disaster, storms, and heat — we would starve if a disaster strikes.

We’re paying an exorbitant amount for food here because the US dictates that all food is imported on US-owned and -staffed ships that have to make stops in the States before they come here.

For me, this experience is inextricable from my belief that making local and regional food systems more robust means that those spaces have more in place to withstand disaster when it comes. It’s difficult to relate the significance of the local food economy to folks who take it for granted across a lot of the US. It’s understood as this nice, frivolous thing to go to the farmers market with your tote bag. But for me, it’s very much about whether the farm is small and is using only a few industrial inputs.

If we’re reliant on centralized production of any one thing, then we’re susceptible to that thing either being taken out by disease or being taken out by political or economic circumstance. And that leaves us very vulnerable as citizens.

Here at Future Perfect, we’ve written a lot about possible solutions like cell-cultivated meat. In your book, you’re open about your skepticism around such technological initiatives. What are some of the biggest drawbacks for you? What are some of the avenues of improvement?

I am skeptical because of the ownership of the technology and the opacity of it. If these companies who produce these products are going to be transparent, I would be a lot more comfortable. I would also be more comfortable if these things were only talked about as a piece of a vision. It mimics a narrative around meat where it’s, “We eat too much meat, so let’s just switch it out and eat too much lab meat.” I don’t like the narrative around it, especially in mainstream food media that’s not digging deep into these ideas. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re gonna be fine in the future. Don’t worry about it. Because you’re gonna swap out your steak for a lab steak.”

We are talking about this like it’s the one thing that’s going to solve the problem. We can use this as one tool in a toolbox and focus on other things, like strengthening the regional food systems or focusing on agroecology. I think we have to focus on strengthening so much else before we focus on pouring resources into developing or scaling up things we don’t know as much about. We don’t know people’s potential reactions to them — whether palate-wise or nutritionally — and we don’t know about energy usage and efficiency.

The notion that it is such a grand solution, the only solution, is really troubling. If it’s just part of an approach, that’s a perfectly fine way of looking at it.

How can we encourage more collaboration and good-faith discussion among the many, many plant-based groups?

Yeah, that’s a tough one. It’s so important for me to talk to other folks even when I don’t agree with their approach. I do find that there is a lot of anger and resentment, and factionalism that really does a disservice to moving the conversation forward. I should be in conversation with the animal rights-motivated ethical vegan, even if we’re going to be at each other’s throats. It doesn’t do a service to the perception of the whole plant-based sphere; it’s really important that we get to a place where we can say, “These are our terms. These are things that we really want, and we can really go for them.” And obviously the end of industrial animal agriculture is the one thing we can all agree on.

You can pick up No Meat Required in bookstores, libraries, and online booksellers.

What is ecotourism? A guide on how to travel sustainably.

2023-07-26T10:02:56-04:00

If you love nature, you may have tried to plan a vacation where you get to be immersed in it. Maybe you’ve explored a coral reef or visited an elephant sanctuary, or you dream of doing so one day. These activities can fall under the umbrella of ecotourism — a kind of nature-based travel that aims to protect and empower the environment, animals, and local communities — when planning vacations.

Tourism is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, accounting for 22 million new jobs last year, with a large part of that growth stemming from a post-lockdown itch for travel. As people return to packing as much stuff as humanly possible into a carry-on, ecotourism, too, will likely skyrocket to a market value of $299 billion by 2026. In the last 10 years, travelers have become more environmentally conscious and socially responsible, looking for travel experiences that reflect their morals.

Still, the question for many well-meaning tourists remains: Is ethical ecotourism even possible?

There are a few things that complicate ecotourism’s narrative, like the carbon emissions produced by flights, or the challenges of ensuring that a significant degree of profits actually do go to local communities, protecting wildlife, and cultural heritage. Nature-based travel, too, can risk losing the plot, from sanctuaries that operate like petting zoos to the development of tropical coasts into even the most nature-forward resorts.

“It really boils down to an attitude, and an ethic about how we approach the natural world,” says David Fennell, a geography and tourism studies professor at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ecotourism. “Just by virtue of going to a national park doesn’t mean you’re an ecotourist, you have to have that attitude. And you have to tap into that ethic about what is important [to] not just yourself as a tourist, but about conservation and animal welfare.”

As a tourist, choosing where to go is an important decision, one that can help or hurt the environment and communities where you are visiting. There are some situations that are too good to be truly as effective as they claim, and accreditations, though helpful, may not tell the whole story. Understandably, trying to figure out what’s best for the environment, for communities, and for yourself can be overwhelming. It may be that ecotourism is a state of mind rather than a destination. Here are some ways to think about your next adventure to ensure your ethics align.

What actually is ecotourism?

An alternative to mass tourism — or when thousands of people visit a destination day in and day out (think the resort-ification of Ibiza, in which people partied so hard that legislation was passed in 2022 to change the destination’s wasteful image) — ecotourism is meant to get you off the beaten trail and into a mindset of reciprocity with the site you are visiting.

As with many sustainability-oriented services, ecotourism got its start in the ’70s. It officially became a dictionary entry in 1982, where it is defined as supporting conservation efforts, especially in often threatened natural environments. Since then though, the definition and intent have evolved to include bolstering local communities.

In the literature on ecotourism, travel can be distinguished into “hard paths” and “soft paths,” based on how many aspects of your trip follow the ethical north star of ecotourism and how demanding the trip will be of you. For example, if your trip features a strong environmental commitment and will be physically active, you’re likely on the hard path of ecotourism. If your trip is aimed at physical comfort with only a moderate nod to environmental commitment, you may be on a soft path. But taking it as an ethos means you can be an ecotourist anywhere, especially locally.

You might be wondering if a hike on a busy trail or swimming with manatees is ecotourism. Although both of those examples are nature-based tourism as they interface with the natural world, they’re not necessarily ecotourism, since both of these activities can put these destinations at risk if done in excess. Hiking a spot to death or droves of tourists putting Florida’s manatees at risk put pressure on the ecology of those places. In the 1980s, mass tourism began to wreck some of the world’s most sensitive ecosystems, such as the Riviera Maya in Mexico, where near-constant development has led to local forests being cleared.

Wildlife tourism runs the gamut from cruel breeding and hunting of lions to we-really-shouldn’t-have-cetaceans-in-captivity dolphin shows to cool, ethical birdwatching. Ecotourism including wildlife can be ethical as long as the animals you are engaging with are not manipulated or not free to disengage in interaction with tourists. “Anytime you have an animal that’s held in a captive environment, that you’re manipulating, the animal is not free to disengage that interaction, based on its own will,” says Fennell.

If you’re interested in going on adventures that are a little more sport-oriented, such as kayaking or diving, then this might be also considered nature-based tourism, since activities like climbing, sailing, camping, and snorkeling are less directly connected to ecological benefits. An example of nature tourism would be surfing lessons off Australia’s Coffs coast: You’re in nature having fun, but vibes are about all you’re contributing to the scene.

Ecotourism also has an educational component: You’re meant to learn about nature, culture, and threats to the area you’re in. Paul Rosolie — founder and Wildlife Director of Junglekeepers, a program that uses donations and tourist money to buy tracts of the Amazon along the Las Piedras River, in the Madre de Dios region of Peru — highlighted how ecotourism has brought people to the front lines of conservation.

“This is the edge of human presence on this planet,” Rosolie said via voice memo deep in the Amazon. “The battle is playing out between the progress of roads and development and the last places where there are untouched ecosystems, Indigenous communities, communities of species yet to be discovered. You get to see incredibly pristine, pure wilderness where a few people have managed to make a living.”

Ecotourism should encourage ethical considerations, like respect for the environment and host communities. For example, ecotourism aims to be biocentric, meaning that the interest of the living beings you are hoping to protect is prioritized over your own drive for pleasure. There is also the risk of too much tourism causing gentrification and raising prices for locals — see what’s currently happening in Mexico City, or consider the (fictional, but still germane) plot of HBO’s The White Lotus. Ecotourism aims to reverse the exploitative relationships between tourists and locals.

Lastly, ecotourism should strive for sustainability. In the case of Junglekeepers, which offers base station visits and ranger-accompanied hikes to tourists, this means extending employment to former loggers in their ranger program. The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, where there are six ecolodges for tourists to book, has anti-poaching teams who work with the Kenya Wildlife Service to stop illegal poaching for ivory, bushmeat, and logging.

The tricky questions around ecotourism

Just because ecotourism might have a broader application these days, it doesn’t necessarily mean all travel qualifies, especially since there are slews of companies and organizations attempting to make a quick buck off a catchy buzzword. Unfortunately, it’s hard to sift the wheat from the chaff. As ecotourism as a concept grows more and more popular, some experiences and excursions may not necessarily meet the intentions lined up above.

Tourism can be rife with greenwashing: vague and unsupported claims, and exaggerations about how much good a given entity is doing, like hotels highlighting their donations to ecological causes, but underpaying their staff. Some excursions put Indigenous peoples in precarious situations, and some force animals to perform or be ridden or petted in a forced and unnatural manner.

Milo Putnam — founder of Laro Ethical Wildlife Travels, a service that helps people plan eco-travel — warns, “Don’t be tricked by misused greenwashing buzzwords like ‘rescue,’ ‘sanctuary,’ or ‘eco-park.’ Companies know that tourists like these terms, which to these companies can mean more profits, even if it isn’t true. These terms are meaningless if not backed by actual ethical practices. Instead, look further to see if they are certified or accredited by a trusted organization.” (More on this below.)

Additionally, Fennell believes the most ethical ecotourists — the traveler and any organizations involved — should keep animals off the menu. Ecotourism’s biocentric approach should lead us to widen our moral consideration of animals and to care not only for charismatic megafauna like lions and elephants, but also for all creatures that make ecosystems function. “The global food system — mainly animal agriculture — is the primary driver of biodiversity loss,” Putnam added. “Choosing a more plant-based diet has a positive impact on wildlife around the world.”

How to choose where to go

Certifications may give a clue to how well a given destination is achieving ecotourism goals, but they may not always exist.

Putnam has compiled a tip list for planning animal-based adventures and points to the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries as a resource. The federation checks in to ensure that no captive breeding is taking place, that tourists do not have direct contact with wildlife, and that animals have appropriate housing and veterinary care.

There is no universal ecotourism certification, but the Global Sustainable Tourism Council has compiled a list of certifications around the world that emphasize the four “C’s”: conservation, community, culture, and commerce. These certifications are a good place to start and they cover Asia, Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Australia.

The land down under is at the top when it comes to vetting their tourism options. Australia’s ecotourism industry has some of the most sophisticated certifications including nature tourism, ecotourism, and advanced ecotourism. In this certification system, outback safari glamping in Karijini National Park counts as ecotourism, because it supports Indigenous peoples as it is owned and operated by the Gumala Aboriginal Corporation, which represents the interests of the Banjima, Yinhawangka, and Nyiyaparli peoples in Western Australia.

Everyone I spoke to underscored the importance of selecting an ethical destination for travel because the money you spend as a tourist can have a positive impact rather than an ambiguous impact or even detrimental effect on the places you’re visiting. As Rosolie puts it, “Finding the right place to go as a traveler is a very powerful decision to people who are devoting their whole lives to protecting a place.”

Eat more beans. Please.

2023-05-17T15:01:53-04:00

What kind of protein we eat has huge implications for our health — and well beyond.

Besides the health, ethical, or religious reasons why people choose to stop eating meat, the way animals are raised to be food has enormous impacts on land use, deforestation, and carbon emissions. And as the global population continues to grow, per-capita meat production to meet that demand is growing even faster.

In the last decade, alternative meat options, like Impossible and Beyond, rose as a potential solution, a product that can substitute for animal meat without the ethical and planetary penalties. But plant-based proteins have been hitting a wall: inflation, politicization of food, and supply-chain hurdles punctured the hype — at least for now.

However, there’s a simple way to provide plenty of protein that doesn’t require animals or plant-based startups: beans. Beans are high in protein, efficient to grow, and can even improve soil health. They cost less than conventional or new plant-based meats, and they’re increasingly getting attention among foodies.

As one global campaign to double bean consumption by 2028 frames it, the answer to the question of how we can get inexpensive protein without sacrificing animals or the planet is simple: “Beans is how.”

There’s just one problem: Beans and legumes suffer from a public relations problem in the US, where the average person eats only around 7.5 pounds of beans per year, compared to 12 pounds in the UK and as much as 130 pounds in countries like Rwanda and Burundi. Beans can make you gassy, there’s a cooking learning curve, and a socioeconomic stigma around them still lingers.

But if we’re serious about changing how we think about our agricultural resources, beans can be a champion for delicious, sustainable, and affordable protein.

“There’s a big move now to find replacements for protein in alternative meats, in lab-grown meat, and these companies are all thinking, ‘No one is ever going to give up their hamburger or their chicken nugget,’ and I think it’s a profound mistake,” says Ken Albala, author of Beans: A History. “It makes more sense to turn to beans as a protein alternative for a million reasons.”

The bountiful benefits of beans

The good thing about beans is that they’re a food that already exists with a long cultural history. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel to get them in grocery stores or on restaurant menus. But the food system as it is now disproportionately favors the meat industry, which is difficult to regulate.

Raising cattle, pigs, and chickens uses 77 percent of the world’s agricultural land, while only providing 37 percent of the global protein supply, according to Our World in Data. For beans, the ratio is almost the inverse: Just 23 percent of land is used to grow plants for human consumption, from which the world gets 63 percent of its protein. The difference in efficiency is clear: Plants and in particular pulses (the dry seed of a legume), like beans and lentils, give you more protein while using less land.

Beans can help us make the most of our resources, says Paul Newnham, executive director of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 Advocacy Hub on ending world hunger. “It’s getting that understanding that yes, they are more affordable, but they’re also more valuable,” he added.

Efficiency is just one way beans edge out animals. Legumes — which include beans, peas, and lentils — also happen to have sustainability perks. Because bean plants can add nitrogen back into soil, they can help improve soil health, and this nitrogen acts like a natural fertilizer. When beans are grown in rotation with other crops such as wheat, or brassicas like cabbage or kale, they make such an impact on soil health that this can increase yields over time, Margie Lund, a vegetable specialist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension, told me.

The USDA’s crop production report notes that even though the area in the US planted with beans shrank by 10 percent from 2021 to 2022, yield increased by 23 percent, showing their productivity. With farmers getting more food with less land, beans can effectively be grown to feed people, with benefits to other crops too.

“Rotating your crops in general helps with disease management and fertility management,” said Lund.

Another plus to this pulse: A handful of beans packs a protein punch. If you eat a cup of beans, that averages at around 15 grams of protein, or 30 percent of the recommended daily amount. Soybeans are at the top of the protein leaderboard for legumes, getting you to 63 percent of your daily value of protein (31.3 grams) if you eat a cup.

Soy vey! The cows are eating all the edamame

Producers have been growing soy in great quantities in the US since the 1960s. However, according to Our World in Data, three-quarters of soy globally is fed to livestock animals, with only 7 percent of soy going directly to human consumption in the form of tofu, edamame, and as a filler ingredient in processed foods. (All this said, soybeans are legumes, but they are not pulses like beans, lentils, and peas because soybeans are oilseeds and have a much higher fat content.)

That most of our soy is fed to animals instead of humans creates “opportunity food loss,” which means if you give a cow some soybeans most of the protein, up to 96 percent, is lost before it gets to people’s forks. The cow metabolizes, ahem, poops out most of the protein. Thought of in terms of land use, for the amount of land used to get four grams of beef protein, you could get 100 grams of plant protein instead.

On a global scale, that’s a lot of land and protein we are losing from not just eating plants from the get-go. And as the world’s population is set to increase, it seems pretty unwise to be so wasteful, or to further drive a wedge in who has access to food security.

What’s holding back beans?

Beans have historically fed communities across the world and remain popular staples in many cuisines today, but they have to overcome a bit of a PR problem. People may not know how to cook dried beans, and they might feel that reaching for canned beans is a culinary no-go, the last resort in a pantry. But beans are ready for their glow up and to take center stage as the hero of a dish — as history has shown they can.

Beans have been staple crops around the world. Fava beans are native to the old world and were cultivated widely. In Egypt, slow-cooked fava beans on bread compose the national dish of ful medames, a recipe so ancient it is recorded in hieroglyphs, writes Albala in Beans: a History. On the other hand, phaseolus beans like black, pinto, navy, cranberry, and the Great Northern are native to the Americas, where they make up one-third of the Indigenous “Three Sisters” dynamic of corn, beans, squash — or “milpa” in Latin America. Eaten together, they form a complete nutritional package of complex carbohydrates, protein, and vitamins. Grown together, the corn stalks give the beans something to climb on, the beans provide nitrogen to the soil, and the squash provides cover.

Within the US, beans are eaten in a myriad of ways reflecting culture, history, and preference. Sandra Gutierrez, author of Beans and Field Peas, says, “there are thousands of beans that got lost through the shifting of cultures, but also through the agricultural control of companies that were not necessarily interested in the maintenance and in salvaging heirloom beans, but were actually just interested in making money with the beans that produce the most.”

Yield versus variety is a common trade-off in crop growing. Not only that, Gutierrez adds, “I feel that ownership of seeds — the idea that a company can come and all of a sudden own a seed and decide who can grow it and who can’t grow it — is insulting, and historically it is exploitative.”

Up until the 1980s, most seeds were in the public domain, but changes in intellectual property law made it easier for large companies like Monsanto, Bayer, Corteva, DuPont, and Syngenta to develop and patent new seeds. The consequences of seed ownership are significant: it can cost twice as much to buy these seeds, and companies can sue farmers if they grow proprietary crops (even if it’s accidental through pollination). Farmers interested in developing their own seeds have begun to create open source seed programs to collect varieties that are free of the limits of intellectual property.

Soybeans are subsidized commodity crops, meaning the government gives direct payments, crop insurance, and disaster assistance to farmers growing soy. The US Farm Bill aims for crop subsidies to create a more resilient food system by supporting farmers in buying equipment, seeds, and fertilizer.

But in a 2022 analysis on the effects of subsidies on vegetable eating, the Washington Post’s Tamar Haspel notes that farm subsidies will do little to affect consumer habits. She instead suggests that consumer-side subsidies to programs like SNAP will have the most effect on people eating more vegetables, including beans. However, this brings us back to the crux of it: for beans to be the future of protein, they need to be for everyone across social classes and cultures.

Beans have long been charged with a stigma around their association with poverty and struggle, as a pantry item that people rush to buy to get through hard times. Sales of Goya beans shot up 400 percent during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Here in the US, I think first of all, the economy is going to force people to eat more beans as meat becomes more expensive as inflation continues to climb,” Gutierrez said.

The price you pay for beans greatly depends on how high-end you want to be. A 16-ounce bag of dried black beans from Goya comes to $2.29 on FreshDirect, whereas heirloom varieties like the sold-out “San Franciscano bean” are $7.25 a pound on the Rancho Gordo website. “They just happen to both be beans, but for completely different audiences. It would be very interesting if they merged, if you could sell a really cheap, dry bean that was good and easy,” Albala said.

Once people can be encouraged to buy beans, the next step is teaching them how to cook them. Beans can come across as intimidating, with home chefs unsure if they should soak their dry beans or not. Gutierrez insists that soaking beans is unnecessary and that an instant pot or pressure cooker is a good option for reducing the amount of time it takes to cook dried beans. On the other hand, it doesn’t get much more convenient than canned beans.

There is a lot of untapped potential in the canned bean, argues Albala, recalling a conversation with Bush’s Baked Beans, which has a few offerings with flavors like “Southwest Zest,” and “Chili Magic,” bringing to mind barbecues, and the original “Baked Beans,” and “Grillin’ Beans,” doused in sugary sauces. “I was like, why don’t you try a different species of bean? Do an Indian dal, do a Swedish brown bean, do an African bean?”

Taking the initiative to boost beans’ public image, the global campaign “Beans is How” is aiming to double bean consumption by 2028 to help achieve food security while advancing sustainable agriculture. Paul Newnham, who also works with the campaign, describes his vision for the next 10 years as “a world where everyone’s getting beans two or three times a day that are appropriate to their part of the world, and that’s having a major impact on the quality of the soil and the environment that we grow food in, and also our own health and diet.”

Other bean fans include the United Nations Food and Agriculture Office, which declared February 10 World Pulses Day, and the “Bean Deal,” a group in the Netherlands which aims to create plant protein self-sufficiency by highlighting the agricultural value of nitrogen-fixing legumes.

As for the matter of flatulence, that will go away the more beans you eat.

Correction, May 15, 1:30 pm ET: This story has been changed to reflect the correct name of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 Advocacy Hub.

Correction, May 17, 1:15 pm ET: This story has been changed to say that beans are not a title 1 commodity crop (soybeans and lentils and peas are) and therefore not subsidized, but like most other vegetables and crops, dry beans receive yield protection under the crop insurance program.