Lessons Learned in 2020 and Going Forward in 2021 By Sharon L. Wallenberg, Founder Vegan International

The UN Climate Ambition Summit, (Dec. 12, 2020), the UN General Assembly 31^st Special Session – In Response To the Coronavirus Disease Covid-19 Pandemic (Dec. 4, 2020), and UN Summit on Biodiversity (Sept. 30, 2020), had one thing in common – THEY ALL MISSED THE POINT!

No one can argue with the ideas discussed in the Climate Ambition Summit, five years after the Paris Agreement.  Coal consumption needs to be cut, dependence on fossil fuel needs to end, solar, wind, and hydro energy need to be promoted.  BUT THE SINGLE GREATEST CONTRIBUTOR TO CLIMATE CHANGE, METHANE FROM ANIMALS RAISED TO BE EATEN BY HUMANS, WAS NOT EVEN MENTIONED.

The United Nations General Assembly 31^st Special Session – In Response to the Coronavirus Disease Covid-19 Pandemic discussed a plethora of ideas.  These included the disproportionate adverse effect on women and girls being victimized by violence from frustrated men.  There are currently 2.5 million more child marriages, and a high rate of death from childbirth in girls 15 to 19 years old.  Eleven million girls are at risk of not going back to school after the pandemic.  Violence against children 2 to 17 years old is up to one billion.  Hundreds of millions of children have been out of school.  Refugees, displaced persons, migrant workers, and the countries that host them, are particularly vulnerable.  The poorest countries are the most impacted. 

Worldwide there were eight million people in hunger increasing to135 million in the last four years.  This has now spiked to 270 million people starving during the Covid pandemic.  Efforts to provide clean water, nutrition and health care in developing nations have been seriously affected.  The pandemic has exacerbated efforts to combat other lethal diseases including malaria and measles.  The poorest countries are the most impacted.  The crisis is especially difficult in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) whose economies depend primarily on tourism.  235 million people may not survive 2021. 

Vaccines are currently available, but there is not enough money to purchase all the vaccines needed worldwide.  There are no vaccine distribution mechanisms in developing nations.  UNICEF, WHO, and GAVI will attempt to finance and distribute vaccines in remote areas.  The maxim: ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’, needs to be embraced.

Only once during the Special Session was the actual cause of the pandemic referred to: ‘Wet markets should be closed.’  Only one speaker, Pavan Sukhdev, from United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), referred to the inability to live in harmony with nature, and habitat destruction, in relation to pandemic disease.  Ten percent of the Earth’s forests have been lost, causing closer interaction between humans and other species.  Habitat destruction and species extinction makes transmission of disease more likely to happen.  High biodiversity reduces the risk of zoonotic disease by the ‘Dilution Effect’, protecting human health.  Mr. Sukhdev said further that chemical farming is destroying soil, and referred to natural farming (also known as Veganic Agriculture) which produces higher yields at lower costs, without risk of the disease producing contaminants Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and others from animal exploitation.  THE CURRENT GLOBAL HEALTH AND ECONOMIC CRISIS IS CAUSED BY THE EXPLOITATION OF VOICELESS, RIGHTLESS SPECIES BY THE HUMAN SPECIES.

The United Nations Summit on Biodiversity stressed urgent action on biodiversity for sustainable development.  The summit provided a “Voices For Nature” platform, and highlighted the goal of “Living in Harmony with Nature”.  Biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation are currently among the top threats facing humanity - jeopardizing food security, water supplies, weakening human ability to fight diseases, causing extreme weather events, and exacerbating geopolitical tensions and conflicts.  ACCORDING TO THE SUMMIT, THE EMERGENCE OF DEADLY ZOONOTIC DISEASES SUCH AS HIV/AIDS, EBOLA, AND COVID 19 ARE A CONSEQUENCE OF HUMAN IMBALANCE WITH NATURE.  SPECIFICALLY, THE EXPLOITAITON OF OTHER SPECIES BY HUMANS.  

The fundamental issue is very simple.  It is Speciesism – the exploitation by one species - humans, of all other species.  The results of speciesism are destroying the planet: climate change, pandemics, human mortality and morbidity, species extinction, loss of biodiversity, pollution of air, water, and land, and misuse of scarce resources, among others.  MOST IMPORTANTLY, THIS IS A JUSTICE ISSUE AND A LEGAL ISSUE: THE LACK OF RIGHTS OF EXPLOITED, VOICELESS INDIVIDUALS.

Currently there are enforceable non-human rights in the Constitution of Ecuador.  ‘Rights for Nature’ does not treat nature as property under the law, it acknowledges that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, and that people have the legal authority to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems.  This shining example needs to include all species, be accepted, and implemented everywhere.

In the words of Nobel Literature Prize Winner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, “How much longer, God, will you look on this inferno of yours and keep silent?  What need have you of this ocean of blood and flesh whose stench spreads across your universe?  Have you created this boundless slaughterhouse merely to show us your power and wisdom?”…“What do they know – all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world – about such as you?  They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation.  All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated.  …for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”

“THOU SHALT NOT KILL” APPLIES TO ALL OF GOD’S CREATION, NOT ONLY HUMANS.”