Our current crisis of sustainability asks us to transform humanity from Earth’s incessant tyrant into a respectful contributor. Veganism is a unifying principle that enables us to consider all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals in a radical and yet practical way. To my mind, no blueprint for sustaining our fragile biosphere could have greater impact.
Image Source: www.sdgs.un.org – Fair Use
For-profit companies and charities alike are jumping onto the United
Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (#SDGs). We all want to
self-identify as sustainable people. But most want to hang onto that
good-ole biblical prerogative: human dominion.
As long as we cling to our conceited attitudes about the living world, I’d
posit, the SDGs will be a farrago of platitudes, not true human progress.
Let me offer 17 reasons why.
On Sustainable Development Goal 1: No Poverty.
The UN calls out Covid as the latest global poverty driver. What lies at the
roots of pandemics?
Whether Covid started with a lab leak or a wet market, it began with
zooanthroponotic transmission. Humanity’s encroachments into nature and our
tendency to confine animals aren’t good for us. Disrespect for other animals
undermines both conservation and public health.
And if we want to talk about sustainably addressing poverty, we must get to
the point and really start talking about animal-free agriculture.
On Goal 2: Zero Hunger.
An acre of land growing plants as food can produce more protein, by orders
of magnitude, than grazing plots can.
Bonus: Growing crops for direct food, not feed, is a matter of food
sovereignty. Today, financially stressed regions devote vast resources to
grow feed crops for wealthier buyers.
U.S. dietary geopolitics have an especially alarming track record. For
example, as geographer Natalie Koch observes:
“…American farmers helped kick-start the Saudi dairy industry. In the 1940s
the U.S. State Department sent Arizona farmers to Saudi Arabia and
coordinated two Saudi royal visits to Arizona to tout the state’s
spectacular desert agriculture. The unsustainable alfalfa and dairy
enterprise that Saudi Arabia set up in the wake of these visits drained the
kingdom’s groundwater, sowing the seeds for Saudi companies to look to
Arizona for cheap water.”
Meanwhile, individuals are encouraged to “help” hungry people through
send-a-cow charities like Heifer International. It’s a recipe for
dependence.
Pulses fix their own nitrogen in the ground, thereby helping their growers
avoid dependency on commercial chemicals. Small farmers, even in
drought-prone areas, can grow pulses. Animal-free agriculture is people’s
agriculture.
On Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being.
For a multitude of reasons, growing food crops directly beats feeding crops
to animals and then eating the animals. For our health, and the Earth’s.
And then there’s mental health. Does beating animals into submission so we
can chew them up do anything for human peace of mind?
Animal processing workers are additional victims of the violent enterprise.
In general, these workers are socially vulnerable and underserved in
healthcare, including psychological care.
Animal agribusiness wrecks natural lands and waters, and the indigenous life
that depends on them. It imposes selectively bred animals on the landscape.
It immiserates its farm-bred beings, taking their young and their lives.
Like war, this customary torment sends out ripples of harm, and distorts our
sense of our place in the world.
On Goal 4: Quality Education.
History is taught in the dominator’s language. This has marginalized racial
justice teachings. It has perpetuated domination dynamics and violence
rather than healthy communities. It has sidelined serious environmental work
as well. In their attitudes about the liberation of nature, schools have
always fought wokeness. Even in environmental courses, animal liberation
principles are shunned. They’re regarded as unwelcome challenges to
mainstream agribusiness and administrative “stewardship” of (dominance over)
land, water, air, and life.
No doubt: Quality education connects people with opportunities. If this is
to relate to a sustainable human culture, though, the syllabus must include
habitat studies and materials that question human supremacy as well as
racial and gender-based hierarchies.
On Goal 5: Gender Equality.
Should any hierarchy go unexamined? Why should anyone be forced into a group
to serve someone higher up on the socially constructed ladder?
Through the course of domestication, a slow form of selective breeding, we
chronically usurp autonomy from other animals. This makes it possible to
bring them into human society, and to relegate them to the ladder’s lowest
rung.
Respect for the autonomy of all living, aware beings is, I suspect, a
prerequisite to “gender equality.” But is it equality, or is it
self-determination, that matters? We all want to live on our terms — not the
terms constructed for social control.
On Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation.
Water shortages and pollution alike are lessened where we eat non-animal
foods. Raising farm animals takes a lot of water. So does sanitation to
manage food-borne pathogens related to commercial animals.
Contaminants from animal agribusiness can seep into groundwater, impacting
drinking water systems. And as global warming drives flooding hazards,
exposure to contaminated floodwaters increases. Imagine how much simpler
sanitation would be without the heaps of manure and toxic sludge we add to
our surroundings because we rear animals for no good reason.
There are plenty of alternatives. Let’s start with lentils, “the protein
equivalent of meat.” Anyone familiar with an Ethiopian vegetable platter, or
even a lentil soup, knows what culinary champions these little legumes are.
On Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy.
Energy should meet our needs affordably. It should make people and
communities stronger. And it should go easy on the Earth and habitats.
Producing sustainable energy is a major challenge, with global impact, says
the UN. Yes, and one major reason is humanity’s high-carbon food system. We
use vast amounts of energy to produce, process, transport, and preserve
animal flesh, eggs, and dairy products — and to provide the feed.
“Most governments shy away from providing clear recommendations” on
divesting our diets from animal products, says food-systems researcher Marco
Springmann — despite these products’ “exceptionally high emissions and
resource use.”
We must insist on dietary advice aligned with energy and climate facts.
On Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth.
Economic growth at the expense of decency is treacherous. And is any task
more indecent than animal breeding and animal killing?
Economic growth at the expense of the Earth’s habitat and resources is both
arrogant and misguided. We’d do well to value frugal, efficient use of
resources and grow food, not feed. It’s hardly possible to keep increasing
the footprint of grazing, aquaculture, and feed crops worldwide and be
serious about sustainability. This, the UN has known for years.
Humanity loses nothing of real value by shifting away from breeding,
feeding, and killing animals. And there’s potential for a fairer kind of
affluence through direct, crop-based food systems. For sustainable and
decent agriculture, let’s leave other living, feeling beings free of it.
On Goal 9: Infrastructure, Innovation & Industrialization.
Ah, innovation! Jackfruit BBQ ribs and cultured cashew cheese jump to mind.
Or maybe even vertical, organic, hydroponic farming. But the UN is thinking
mainly about getting everyone computers and bank accounts, and stimulating
tech solutions for the very problems that were caused by…industry.
The UN says:
“In developing countries, barely 30% of agricultural production undergoes
industrial processing. In high-income countries, 98% is processed. This
suggests that there are great opportunities for developing countries in
agribusiness.”
Wait. Great opportunities in over-processing foods, just like high-income
countries do? That’s how the UN looks at sustainable development? No
surprise, then, that UN. org has managed to lament a pandemic-related
decline in air travel.
Where’s the blueprint for adopting a less-processed, more community-based
future? Where’s the wisdom to learn from the traditional arts of crop
growing?
On Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities.
Animal agribusiness hooks whole nations on feed, fertilizers, and veterinary
pharmaceuticals from mega-corporations. If we’d value what we could all
grow, people would achieve greater independence, and maybe something
approaching equality.
Some people will need to move to find a decent quality of life and
sustenance that others take for granted. So it’s good to see support for
policies that “facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration
and mobility of people” among Goal 10’s sub-targets.
Yes, let’s make migration simpler and fairer for all of us. And let’s
remember that border walls and barbed wires deprive us all — human, wolf,
bat or antelope — of our natural ability to move across the surface of the
planet on which we were born. Shouldn’t we all have this basic animal right?
On Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.
According to the UN, 70% of us will live in cities by 2050. And we’ll all
need access to nutritious food.
Better access would involve support for farm stands and farmers’ markets.
And the best access would mean gardens in or near every community space —
every restaurant, every place of worship, and every school.
Small businesses, community-based organizations, chefs, health providers and
health-food shops can all offer fertile ground for cultivating sustainable
cities. Food systems starting from community gardens are compact,
energy-efficient, clean, and conducive to local self-sufficiency.
On Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.
Authentic sustainability is about more than us. It respects the natural
world, of which we are simply a part. The assumption that other beings are
put on this planet as our resources ought to be obsolete; and in the vegan
ethic, it already is. Veganism, by definition, would reintegrate other
animals “within the balance and sanity of nature.” Animal husbandry — “whose
effect upon the course of evolution must have been stupendous” — would
become “almost unthinkable.”
What a refreshing change that would be. Animal ag is based on complex,
highly profit-focused international feed markets. It’s tied to deforestation
for feed crops and for grazing. In contrast, a vegan commitment values
everyone’s basic right to sustenance, and to a respectful relationship with
Earth’s biological communities. This is responsible consumption and
production.
On Goal 13: Climate Action.
Cattle farming emits about 10 times more greenhouse gases per piece of
animal flesh than farming pigs and chickens. Pig or chicken farming, in
turn, emits about 10 times more than growing lentils, peas, or beans.
Meanwhile, our animal-breeding habit is a key driver of extinctions.
In an obscene feedback loop, climate crisis is making remaining habitats
inhospitable for free-living animals. Consider the migratory shorebirds who,
on account of an earlier spring season in their northern breeding grounds,
miss the peak availability of insects and other food for their young.
Increased heat along migration routes and resultant storms can delay
migrations and kill migrating birds in flight. Meanwhile, our ever-expanding
fish farming enterprises in coastal waters threaten the birds’ southern
habitats.
On Goal 14: Life Below Water.
Goal 14 aims to “conserve and sustainably use” the waters but we really need
to stop touting so-called sustainable seafood and halt the looting and
pillaging of the rivers, lakes, and seas.
Where do we start on the global scale? End subsidies. Trawling, with its
massive greenhouse gas emissions, is heavily subsidized. Spanish fleets in
the Atlantic, Japanese firms in the tropics, trawlers from China, Taiwan,
Korea — all subsidized.
Where do we start on a personal scale? If we have the privilege of choice,
the best we can do is to shift to an all-plant diet. Which, as it happens,
reduces the pollution of the waters. Animal farm runoff (chemicals and farm
animal waste) contribute to massive dead zones that kill legions of marine
beings.
From sea turtles to penguins, non-target animals, too, would be spared if
humans would stop thinking of aquatic animals as food.
On Goal 15: Life on Land.
The sheer weight of animal husbandry on the land is mind-numbing to contemplate. Our purpose-bred land mammals outweigh naturally evolving mammals many times over. And of the biomass of all the world’s birds, 71% are the property of poultry farms.
Stop breeding cows and other animals, and we could stop pushing the
free-living communities out of their own habitats. And we could end the
grotesque wars on wolves and other predators, and the worldwide ruin of
prairies and forests for grazing and feed crops.
The human quest to dominate the planet and its conscious beings caused our
sustainability crisis. If we really want to address the crisis,
animal-liberation thinking must inform our discussions of life on Earth.
On Goal 16: Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions.
With Goal 16, the UN endorses representative decision-making and reprehends
“threats of international homicide, violence against children, human
trafficking and sexual violence.” Right on.
Can we also draw attention to the trafficking of, and violence against,
nonhuman beings? Can we articulate a need for habitat-conscious
institutions?
Of course, when people have recourse to peace and justice ourselves, we are
freer to accept non-exploitive relationships with biological communities.
But we’ll need institutions and community role models to call on humanity to
stop antagonizing other living beings.
On Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals.
Creating partnerships for the Goals means bringing governments, businesses,
NGOs, teachers, students, and others together in collaborative work. The
piece you are reading now is one starting point for communicating vegan
values to those partners.
Our current crisis of sustainability asks us to transform humanity from Earth’s incessant tyrant into a respectful contributor. Veganism is a unifying principle that enables us to consider all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals in a radical and yet practical way. To my mind, no blueprint for sustaining our fragile biosphere could have greater impact.
Lee Hall holds an LL.M. in environmental law with a focus on climate change, and has taught law as an adjunct at Rutgers–Newark and at Widener–Delaware Law. Lee is an author, public speaker, and creator of the Studio for the Art of Animal Liberation on Patreon.