Showing posts with label deforestation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deforestation. Show all posts

Sista Resister

  Sista Resister

Bios of 50 Radical Women of Color Activists Resisting Sexism, Colonialism & Racism  

by m seenarine

Xpyr Press 2023. 327 pages

This book presents 50 biographies of radical women of color activists from over 25 countries and terrorites. Available on Amazon

About

The book, Sista Resister: Bios of 50 Radical Women of Color Activists Resisting Sexism, Colonialism & Racism, introduce the biographies of women from over 25 countries and territories. This eclectic collection of biographies of female activists show that 'Third World' females are active on a wide range of issues, from women's and children's health, to housing and labor rights, the environment and climate change. The book is divided into two sections. Part I, on current sista resisters, chronicles the lives of 30 contemporary female activists, from Mexico to the Philippines. The 20 life stories in Part II, on foresisters of resistance, establish that women in the Global South were some of the earliest feminist thinkers and writers in the world. Each life story refutes the common misrepresentation of Indigenous, African, Asian, Latina, Muslim, Dalit and other females as docile creatures in need of Western rescue. 

Contrary to their depiction in mainstream media as passive and docile, women in the 'Third World' were some of the first women's rightist activists. For instance, Fang Weiyi (1585 to 1668) and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 to 1695) wrote about women's rights a century before Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 to 1797), whose essay, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792), is widely regarded as one of the first feminist text. And, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's (1880 to 1932) feminist science fiction novella, Sultana's Dream (1905), was written a decade before Charlotte Perkins Gilman's popular feminist utopian novel, Herland (1915). One of the main goals of this book is to amplify the voices of high-melanin female activists, and examples of their work are included in each portrait.

Table of Contents

Defining Terms and Intentions

ix

Glossary

x

Acknowledgments

xv

Preface

1

Introduction

9

 

 

PART I - CONTEMPORARY RESISTERS

 

 

 

1. Rebecca Lolosoli (Kenya)

47

2. Audra Simpson (Mohawk/Canada)

50

3. Marielle Franco (Rio, Brazil)

53

4. Sarah Deer (Muscogee/US)

58

5. Lydia Cacho (Mexico)

63

6. Yue Xin (Beijing, China)

68

7. Ece Temelkuran (Turkey)

72

8. Moya Bailey (Georgia, US)

77

9. Asmaa Mahfouz (Egypt)

81

10. Alma Caballero (Mexico)

86

11. Nadia Murad (Iraq)

89

12. Leymah Gbowee (Liberia)

93

13. Winona LaDuke (Ojibwe/US)

97

14. Malalai Joya (Afghanistan)

100

15. Risa Hontiveros (Philippines)

106

16. Wu Qing (Beijing, China)

109

17. Randa Jarrar (Chicago, US)

112

18. Tawakkol Karman (Yemen)

116

19. Norma Vázquez (Mexico)

120

20. LaDonna Brave Bull (Sioux/US)

124

21. Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala)

128

22. Haneen Zoabi (Nazareth, Israel)

132

23. Carmen Cruz (Puerto Rico)

136

24. Phoolan Devi (India)

140

25. Alice Walker (Georgia, US)

145

26. Wangari Maathai (Kenya)

151

27. Haunani-Kay Trask (Hawaiʻi/US)

155

28. Loujain AlHathloul (Saudia Arabia)

161

29. Berta Cáceres (Honduras)

165

30. Assata Shakur (US/Cuba)

169

 

 

PART II - FORESISTAS of RESISTANCE

 

 

 

31. Queen Nzinga (Angola)

178

32. Fang Weiyi (China)

182

33. Sor Juana (Mexico)

185

34. Queen Aliquippa (Seneca/US)

190

35. Sojourner Truth (NY, US)

194

36. Bamewawagezhikaquay (Ojibwe/US)

202

37. Savitribai Phule (South Asia)

207

38. Forten Women (PA, US)

212

39. Harriet Tubman (MD, US)

219

40. Dolores Jiménez (Mexico)

228

41. Rokeya Hossain (South Asia)

233

42. Raden Adjeng Kartini (Indonesia)

238

43. Ida Bell Wells (MS, US)

243

44. Bibi Khānom Astarābādi (Iran)

251

45. Hiratsuka Raichō (Japan)

255

46. Lucy Parsons (TX, US)

260

47. Mirair Ngirmang (Palau)

266

48. María Rivera (Peru)

270

49. Yuri Kochiyama (CA, US)

274

50. Lolita Lebrón (Puerto Rico)

281

 

 

ADDENDUM

 

Abolition & Women's Rights (US)

289

Endnotes

297

 

 


Animal Agribusiness Disorder

Meat Society: Number 8 in a series exploring issues related to curbing demand for animal products, an important climate change solution for individuals and nations alike, especially in Western states where meat and diary consumption dwarfs other regions.

Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157 http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC

In addition to greenhouse gases (GHGs), there are dozens of grave concerns regarding livestock production. These concerns, listed below, are consequential and must be addressed. On top of that, they potently relate to climate warming since they often generate GHG pollution. For instance, rural displacement may stimulate increase of carbon footprints through migration to urban areas and adoption of animal-based diets.

Food animal production negatively impacts the following 19 areas: (1) the loss of forest and earth's sequestration capacity. This acerbates (2) resource scarcity, and (3) soil loss which is critical to food security. (4) The animal industry's water-use threatens food supply, security and human welfare. Factory farms are the number one consumer of water in drought-stricken California, for example.

(5) There is the moral issue of wasting calories. With a billion and upwards malnourished people, the production of animal protein is far less efficient than producing equivalent amounts of plant protein. (6) Particularly troubling is the trend toward greater intensification and industrial production methods without regard to animal welfare. Animal factory farming is a new phenomenon that has established itself as the predominant mode of food animal production.

(7) Another worry is the consolidation of ownership and the enormous power wielded by multinational trading companies over local and national governments. This unequal power impacts negatively on democracy, local control, accountability and oversight, sustainability disclosure, corporate governance, and policy changes.

(8) There are massive and widespread problems with land rights, rural unemployment, displacement, violence, inequality, poor working conditions, and other forms of exploitation related to the sector. (9) Another major concern is that vast numbers of livestock and feed crops are often located in remote areas with severe effects on the environment, such as deforestation and land degradation, that is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity.

(10) Food animal production is often located close to cities or ports, where insufficient land is available for processing the waste. This leads to soil, air and water pollution, which cause humans and animals to become prone to ill-health and disease. (11) Factory farming is the number one user of antibiotics in the US, up to 80 percent. This is causing bacterial resistance which defeats the use of these lifesaving drugs.

(12) Another anxiety is that factory farms are inevitably breeding dangerous new strains of bacteria. Factory farming is the number one reason for the rapid spread of bird flu (H5N2) and swine flu (H1N1). (13) A further concern relates to health effects of genetically modified crops, and residues from herbicides, like glyphosate.

(14) Stagnating crop yields is an immense worry. (15) So too are the effects of climate change, such as heat stress and disease, on the production and efficiency of food animals. And, (16) livestock over-consumption, and the effects of an animal-based diet on human health, are immense causes for concern as well.

(17) Nutrient flows in the earth system are instrumental to food security and short-term GHG discharges. Some scenarios project that by 2050 global crops will expand by 82 percent, and livestock production will soar upwards 115 percent from 2000 levels. This massive addition in nutrient pollution, land and water requirements will lead to intensifying global hunger, resource conflicts, and refugee crises.

In addition, (18) there is a multiplicity of concerns regarding dependency, distribution and corruption in the food supply. And, (19) a trend towards eating processed, animal-based foods produced in a different country multiplies GHG emissions per gram, and makes monitoring countries’ individual GHG pollution far trickier. These concerns, as well as others, present troubling perplexities for creating a just and sustainable food production system.


From Chapter 11: WHAT CRISIS? page 112



Meat Society

Meat Society is a series exploring issues related to curbing demand for animal products, an important climate change solution for individuals and nations alike, especially in Western states where meat and diary consumption dwarfs other regions.

The articles are excerpts from  Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157 http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC

See also Pandemics Ahead, a series of articles from Meat Climate Change, that looks at the link between animal protein and global health disasters. See also our COVID-19 Meat Pandemic Bibliography with a categorized listing of Online News and Reports (March to June, 2020).

1. Dietary Transformation

2. Trends in Animal Production

3. Global Carnism

4. US Animal Production

5. Food's Footprint

6. Food Animals' GHGs 

7. Addressing Livestock GHGs

8. Animal Agribusiness Disorder

9. Factory Farming is Not a Solution

10. Structural Demand for Animal Flesh

11. Mitigating Demand for Animal Protein

12. GHGs: A Tale of Two Sources

13. Livestock's Emissions Denial?

14. Sounding the Alarm on Carnism

15. Urbanization and Carnism

16. Over-Consumption and GHGs

17. Global Substitution Diets

18. Class and Global Diet

19. Over-Consumption Curse

20. Diet or Over Population?

21. Hungry Masses

22. Hidden Population: Obesity

23. Livestock Triangle

24. Livestock Equals Food Insecurity

25. Meat and Colonialism

26. Climate Justice

27. Racism and Food Deserts

28. Meat the Patriarchy

29. Greenwashing Cruelty: Humane Meat

30. Diet and Social Justice

For more information, see MeatClimateChange.org

Dietary Transformation

Meat Society: Number 1 in a series exploring issues related to curbing demand for animal products, an important climate change solution for individuals and nations alike, especially in Western states where meat and diary consumption dwarfs other regions.

Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157 http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC

It took 50,000 years to reach a population of one billion in 1830. But by 2000, the world's population was six billion, and it passed seven billion in 2012. The extraordinary multiplication of humans has been accompanied by a similar addition in the population of domesticated food animals. With the projected increase in both groups, over the next 50 years, Earth will need to produce as much food to feed humans as it took to feed the species for the last 10,000 years. 

Animal science often categorize nonhuman animals as wildlife, domestic food animals, zoo animals, and pet animals. The food animal sector has experienced phenomenal development in the last decade, fueled mainly by the global expansion of carnism, population increase, urbanization and income growth often referred to as the 'livestock revolution.'(39)

In 1995, for the first time, the volume of animal carcass produced in developing countries exceeded that of developed countries, and since then the gap in cow's milk output between the two has been narrowing.(40) The livestock revolution has negative implications for global health, livelihoods and environment. Traditional diets are being replaced by diets higher in refined sugars, refined fats, oils and animal products. This conversion escalates the flow of nutrients into the environment, which is linked to global warming and the loss of biodiversity. 

These three human-induced shifts have led to overstepping the ‘planetary boundaries’(41) or ‘the upper tolerable limits’ of the regulatory capacity of the earth system.(42) The planetary boundaries represent critical thresholds for shifts in the major earth system processes beyond which non-linear, abrupt environmental modifications may occur on a continental or planetary scale. The Western animal-based diet is a major contributor due to its effects on planetary heating, biodiversity loss, water and land degradation.

Owing to the extraordinary shifts in consumption habits, livestock production is in direct competition with humans for scarce land, water, and other natural resources. Astonishingly, despite its wide-ranging social and environmental impacts, the livestock sector is not a major force in the global economy, generating under 1.5% of total GDP.

Much of the grain grown in developed nations goes to feed not human beings, but domesticated animals. Livestock requires a lot of grain and the grain is used very inefficiently. By way of illustration, one filet mignon requires 32 lbs. of corn and the animal converts that grain into calories at just 3% efficiency.(43)

Livestock production takes up an enormous size of land: 6.2 million sq. mi (16 million sq. km) are currently used to grow crops — an amount of land about equal to the size of South America — while 11.6 million sq. mi (30 million sq. km) has been set aside for pastureland, an area equal to the entire African continent. Altogether that is greater than 40% of the dry land on the planet. While 56 million acres of US land are producing hay for livestock, only 4 million acres are producing vegetables for human consumption.(44) Humans use 60 times the size of land to grow and raise food than is used to live on. 

Farming takes half the world's available freshwater, much of which is used for irrigation. Farm animals consume one-third of global cereal production, 90% of soy meal and 30% of the fish caught. Upwards of half the world's crops are used to feed animals. In the US, over 33% of the fossil fuels produced are used to raise animals for food.(45) Grain used to feed animals could feed an extra 1.3 billion people. Animal-based diets for the middle class means hunger for the poor. On top of this, the manure from factory farms pollute rivers and the sea, creating dead zones sometimes hundreds of miles wide.

When a tree is cut down, it releases carbon into the atmosphere. But when it is allowed to grow it continues to absorb carbon. The more trees humans cut down, the greater we compound the carbon problem. Conversely, the more acres of forests humans regrow, the stronger the potential for climate recovery. Humans inherited a planet with 6 billion hectares (23m sq mi) of forest and about 4 billion (15m sq mi) remains. At the current rate of forest loss, 19 million hectares (73k sq mi), the size of Washington state, will be destroyed each year. Over half of Earth’s forests will be wiped out within a century. Of the world's 1.5 billion acres (2.3m sq mi) of remaining rainforest, only 500 million acres (781k sq mi) are protected.(46)

Every year, between 10 and 15% of the carbon released into the atmosphere, or 5 billion tons of CO2, comes from deforestation. This is about the same volume of carbon pollution produced by automobiles, trains, ships, and airplanes combined. Fortunately, the cost of rainforest conservation is economical. For as little as the price of a cup of coffee a day, individuals can help to save an acre of rainforest through various land trusts and NGOs. And each acre of rainforest safely stores about 200 tons of CO2, which is in excess of the avoided CO2 from buying an electric car, or installing home solar panels.

Besides the environmental damage, Western mainstream animal consumption is a factor in spiraling human ill-health, diabetes, cancers, non-communicable and chronic diseases, malnourishment, and obesity. And, it is causing antibiotic resistance bacteria, the spread of infectious diseases, hunger and global epidemics.

Rather than curtailing this dietary catastrophe, vested interests continue to promote animal carcass, chicken eggs, and cow's milk consumption, and block all efforts at reform. If people are deliberately misinformed or have no access to reliable information, what chance do they have to make the right food choices?

While elevated atmospheric CO2 can act as a fertilizer to enhance plant growth, and water use efficiency, in a wide range of crop species, these positive effects may not compensate for losses associated with heat stress, lessen water availability, weather extremes, accrued tropospheric ozone, and transformations in weed, insect, and disease dynamics.(47) Extreme temperatures and rising ozone can cause severe losses in a range of staple crops, like wheat, maize, soybean, rice, and fruit.(48) Variations in the yield of these major crops have extraordinary implications for food pricing and availability for families across the world, in developed and developing nations.(49)

Chapter 2: MEAT THE FUTURE page 15

For more information, see MeatClimateChange.org

Farmed Fish

Pandemics Ahead: Number 21 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.

Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157) http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC

Industrial fish-farms are booming. In 2012, the production of farmed fish surpassed that of cows. The world produced 63 million tons of cow carcass and 66 million tons of farmed fish. And, consumption of farmed fish may soon pass consumption of wild-caught fish. (977)

About 600 aquatic species are raised in captivity in 190 countries, including hatcheries that produce fish for stocking to the wild, particularly in inland waters. While aquaculture currently accounts for a smaller part of the livestock industry than land animals, it is the fastest growing sector.

From 32.4 million tonnes (71.4 billion pounds) in 2000, global production of farmed fish soared to 59.9 million tonnes (132 billion pounds) in 2010, which was up 7.5% from 2009 already. Like concentrated animal feed operations (CAFOs), farmed fish are crammed together in cages, often swimming around in their own wastes.

Eighty-six percent of US seafood is imported, and about half of those imports are raised on factory farms, called aquaculture. Asia is the number one producer of these aquaculture products, dominating 89% of the industry.(978) 

Fragile ecosystems like mangroves are being replaced by fish farms, which are projected to provide most of the fish consumed within 20 years. Farming can occur in coastal areas, such as with oyster farms, and inland, in lakes, ponds, tanks and other enclosures. Similar to livestock's impact on forests, large-scale fish farming is leading to the pollution and destruction of wetlands, estuaries and mangroves, and displacement and impoverishment of hundreds local communities across the world.

Many of the top animal genetics firms have begun research and development in aquaculture. They work with only a handful of species, primarily Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, tropical shrimp and tilapia. Many popular seafood species, like salmon, are carnivorous. So, when they are farmed, they eat up to five pounds of small fish to produce just one pound of flesh - a net loss of protein. 

Incredibly, many aquaculture companies in China, Thailand, Vietnam, and other Asian countries feed fish with untreated feces from pigs, chickens, geese and other animals as the primary nutrition. The manure contaminates the ponds with microbes like salmonella and makes fish further susceptible to diseases.(979)

Consequently, farmed fish are given immense quantities of antibiotics to avoid disease, many of which are banned for use in the US. To boot, baby fish are fed testosterone and other growth hormones. Aquaculture may cause harm to the environment directly through (i) the release of organic effluents, and (ii) disease treatment chemicals. They may cause harm indirectly through (iii) their dependence on industrial fisheries to supply feed of smaller fish, and (iv) by acting as a source of diseases or genetic contamination for 'wild' species.

Farmed fish have been shown to have high levels of bacteria, PCBs and insecticides. Around 25% of the food-borne illness outbreaks caused by imported food from 2005 to 2010 in the US involved seafood, more than any other food commodity.(980) Health researchers estimate that the inflammatory potential of consuming tilapia is far greater than that of cow or pig carcass.(981) Farmed salmon may have at least 10 times the sum of cancer-causing pollutants compared to the 'wild' variety, and dioxin levels are 11 times higher. On top of this, farm-bred fish have lower levels of healthy nutrients.(982) Shrimp is the dirtiest of all seafood.

Farmed fish are fed fish-meal, which means that fish low on the food chain are caught, worsening the marine outcome of bycatch. The impact on the menhaden, a type of small fish caught to be fed to farmed fish, is devastating, as this critical little fish is facing severe threats.(983)

Across Latin America and Asia, pollution from aquaculture is leading to dead lakes and extinct species. On top of that, aquaculture production is vulnerable to adverse impacts of disease and environmental conditions, and massive die-offs are a common occurrence in the industry. Disease outbreaks in recent years have affected farmed Atlantic salmon in Chile, oysters in Europe, and marine shrimp farmed in several countries in Asia, South America and Africa. These incidents have resulted in partial or sometimes total loss of production.

In 2010, aquaculture in China suffered production losses of 1.7 million tonnes (3.7 billion pounds) caused by natural disasters, diseases and pollution. Disease outbreaks virtually wiped out marine shrimp farming production in Mozambique in 2011.(984) In 2014 alone, there was (i) a massive die-off of fish in 44 fish farms due to Vibrio bacteria along the coast of Singapore; (ii) over 365,000 salmon were killed due to an outbreak of infectious salmon anaemia virus in Norway, and (iii) Furunculosis bacteria led to the cull of 90,000 trout in New Jersey. In Pennsylvania, (iii) around 52,000 young trout died in a hatchery; and (iv) about 280,000 salmon were killed by a 'rare algae bloom' in Vancouver, Canada.(985)

In 2016, the alarms went off again in the salmon industry in Chile, one of the largest producers of this fish in the world. A massive algae bloom killed 23 million salmon, a loss of up to 20% of the country's annual production, or around 100,000 tonnes, valued at $800 million.(986) Earlier in Chile, an outbreak of ISA, a fin-fish disease caused by a virus, cost the fish farm industry $2 billion in damages in 2007.

Chile's loss is equal to the value of Canada's entire farmed salmon industry, valued at $813 million in 2013. The problem has been made worse by nitrate-rich runoff from livestock from nearby land around the salmon farms, which are typically offshore or in estuaries.

Moreover, farmed fish are becoming inundated with human pollution. For example, young salmon in the north Pacific tested positive for more than 80 different drugs, including cocaine, antidepressants such as Cipro, Paxil, Valium and Zoloft, and dozens of other medications like Flonase, Aleve, Tylenol, Tagamet, OxyContin, and Darvon.(987)

Young salmon were likewise contaminated with nicotine, caffeine, fungicides, antiseptics, anticoagulants, and chemicals from personal care products. The tissues of migratory chinook salmon and local staghorn sculpin also contained these compounds – even in the fish found in estuaries far from sewage treatment plants where the water was previously considered "pristine."

Chapter 26: MISSING FISH, pages 252-3.     Previous  |  Home  Next

For more information, see MeatClimateChange.org

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