“Eating dogs is inappropriate, inhumane, and only heartless blood-suckers encourage it for their benefit,” said a man holding a picture of a cute dog in his hand in front of the Blue House Presidential Office in Seoul, South Korea. He also had several placards, one in his other hand, and others dispersed around him, hand-written almost the same message requesting the president to push a bill against the habit of consuming dog meat in South Korea.

He seemed left alone trying so hard on his own to make every passenger in the street to participate by starting a semi-debate conversation with them. I believe he wanted to encourage pedestrians to realize that their actions could make a difference if they joined with him in trying to make a change.

Eating Dog Meat Was Normal in South Korea Until Recently

Eating dog meat is an old habit in East Asian communities. It was just recently in the past several decades that cats and dogs became popular as pets partly due to individualism and Western cultural influences. We need to consider that habit of consuming dog meat in old south Korea was not meant or considered savagery, nor was immoral.

It was an available source of nutrients. For what it’s worth, there are all different tastes of food and ingredients all around the world. For example, Lechón (a Spanish word referring to a roasted baby piglet which was still fed by suckling its mother’s milk) and Khash (or kalle-pache, a dish of boiled cow or sheep parts, which might include the head, feet, and stomach) are two dishes that seem disgusting to many modern people but are famous in their regions.

We need to take historical and geographical circumstances into account to understand the eating of dog meat. The very same animal can be considered an ordinary animal, food, pet, friend, or even a deity due to these circumstances. Rabbit, in my case, being a dish had never been an option, and I always considered bunnies as the cutest animal pets; or as cows for Hindus, animals may not only be removed from some menus but also respected as in animism.

The Dog Meat Debate

The contradiction of treating this type of canine as a pet or as a dish became a hot topic among some Koreans only recently; and here I am, a West Asian in Korea, graduated in Cultural Studies and interested in cultural differences and, of course, in anyone who is protesting against the government. I was looking at the protesting man with interest in finding out what had made him so committed to his cause. I changed where I was going and walked over to him.

“I feel hugely responsible for eliminating this bad habit,” he said and explained that it was his routine to protest every weekend and sometimes stay overnight in his small tent. He is ashamed of dog meat still being consumed despite the dramatic modernization of the country.

“How come we could change so many things to be better, but still there are many people who eat dogs like barbarians? Why can’t we get modernized in this country?” he said.

It seemed like he has repeated the sentence a hundred times before, and he found himself confident with this statement.. However, probably unlike the common responses that he was expecting, I came up with a different one. I pointed to a fluffy dog with a red shirt that happened to pass by near us and told him:

“So is your request for the sake of modernization being fulfilled or for the sake of justice being pursued for dogs, these lovely animals?” He answered, “I want them to be treated fairly and with respect.”

“Why do you expect the president to bring up a law that guarantees fair treatment for dogs but not for other animals?” I asked. To his surprise, I added: “Isn’t it the time to stop excluding dogs from dozens of other animals who are suffering? Including those who are suffering from our imbalance privilege for dogs? I mean if we care about being fair, we may want to broaden our list. Shouldn’t we add all current edible farm animals to come in a presidential law bill? if we care about nature, we should ask for a bill that stops us from having pets at all because we are changing their lifestyle and also ruining nature’s life cycle by protecting from one species? and if we care about…”

Blah, blah, blah, I listed all perspectives I could find and didn’t find any logical one that justifies excluding dogs, and he said his reasons, again I told mine. It was a long talk that I wouldn’t have the length to list it all, but I’ll share some things that I saw from his perspective and some from mine.

Dogs as Pets in South Korea

Dogs are everywhere in South Korea. Several shops only provide services and items for pet dogs: dog clothes, different types of food and dog hotels, dog kindergarten, dog barbershop, dog photo shoots, dog swimming pools, and dog taxis are just a few businesses affiliated with dogs in this country.

The industry is also expanding with thousands of dog products like smart pet trackers or nonalcoholic pet beers. This industry focuses on its product as a cute, intelligent, and kind animals (which they indeed are) that we need to “take care of” or as a widespread motto in South Korea puts it: “have them as a family member.” Billions of dollars are funneled into this idea. The South Korean pet industry was worth $864.9 million USD in 2018 and around seventy percent of it was for dogs.

‘Your Dog Deserves to Live Like a Human’

“Your dog deserves to live like a human.”

It was written in a dog accessory shop in Seoul. We already know what that lifestyle looks like as humans speedily use up the world’s resources. As the pet industry statistics show us, this industry, like every other business, is based on consumption (the more we use, the more they produce), though responsible for a significant portion of South Korea’s unsustainable way of life. Dog owners spend around $100 USD per month on their pets in this country.

The pet population in Korea has been steadily increasing over the last decade. The country’s aging, the increased single-member households, and rising incomes have helped support this trend. As just for the pet food market, it was worth more than $870 million in 2019.

Increasing Opposition to Dog Meat

However, unlike the pet industry, dog meat is moving in the other direction. Western media and animal activists have written many articles on it. “Hell for dogs” and “Barbaric” are just some of the words they have used to introduce the issue. Their miserable way of breeding and the cruel and uncivilized practice of eating a smart and cute animal are some of the reasons mentioned by the media against dog meat. But not only are these approaches very selective and even specie-favoritism in an animal context, but it’s also not even scientific and reasonable.

Dog farms are more or less the same type of miserable as other farms for around 9 billion chickens, 33 million cows, and 113 million pigs raised and slaughtered brutally every year — small cages, dirty and smelly atmosphere with lifespan suffering through the same painful process. However, one critical fact is usually not considered: the amount of dog meat has declined from one million dogs to 20,000 per year in South Korea. It consists of less than 8% of consumed meat worldwide, while other meat consumption had increased, as FAO reported: “Pork is the most widely-eaten meat in the world accounting for over 36% of the world meat intake. It is followed by poultry and beef with about 35% and 22%, respectively.”

Other Animals are Also Cute

Being cute is also not exclusive for dogs as rabbits, lambs, and chickens are extremely cute in my opinion. Dogs are usually smart, but so are pigs. You probably need to read about the research on pigs that confirmed they are wise enough to play a video game! Pigs are also super social and can learn very fast. For the last argument on barbaric habit, I suggest to stop seeing the world from Europe and remind how millions of Hindus would feel about others who are eating cow’s meat.

The consuming way of life advertised by media uses natural resources for dogs and burns forests to raise cows. Instead of pointing at the significant issues, eating dogs has become the focus of “animal activists” and ignorant celebrities that want to push themselves as authorities on the subject. Dog meat is one of the most comfortable and accessible options for them, as it is exotic, and there is a vast hatred against this declining business around the world, including in South Korea. Simultaneously, the meat and pet industry is rising as it has never been recorded in history, which indirectly resulted in severe damage to other animals.

Ecological and Wildlife Devastation

Earth has lost half of its wildlife in around the past 40 years, mostly because of our way of life. We need 1.5 planet Earths to sustain the current consumption rate. Instead of a widespread action to save animals worldwide, we have limited ourselves to a few overpopulated and well-loved domesticated animals like dogs. Just last year, near 800,000 new pet dogs were registered in South Korea.

Thanks to thousands of shallow but accessible reports and quotes about dogs, the bigger picture usually misses the point. It’s perfectly common for an “animal lover” to bring a pet dog home and make it consume human products and call it “protecting animals.”

The UK has one of the worst reputations to its overusing the world’s resources, and it’s been calculated that we would need 2,5 Earths to match UK consumption levels extrapolated into the future. However, a British Instagram star can come to Korea and “rescue” a dog from a cage and fly it back to the UK. Then he can post pictures of dogs playing on the grass, and he obviously feels cool to rescue an animal that was supposed to be a meal for an allegedly cruel people. After taking all the pictures he enjoys a bacon sandwich at the same time.

American skier Gus Kenworthy is one example who could get thousands of Instagram likes by merely “flying” a dog from a cage in Korea to his yard in the USA and take a shortcut to getting tons of likes online. The pictures of the dog, buying him a “dog cake” for a birthday gift, added to his continually posting photos of his consuming lifestyle in a country that is the second globally in overusing world resources.

‘A Cultured Country Does Not Allow its People to Eat Dogs’

“Cows are grown to be eaten; dogs are not.” This non-scientific and sentimental words came from a French actress Brigitte Bardot who, thanks to her movies, gets attention to her terms about animals. “I accept that many people eat beef, but a cultured country does not allow its people to eat dogs.” She concluded. France is number 19 in the mentioned list of world over-consumption, and according to UC Davis university: “livestock are responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gases.”

I personally have never eaten dog meat, and I try to avoid other kinds of meat in general. But as someone who thinks a lot about the environment, I don’t understand why dogs should have so much privilege above other animals. I also don’t get why “activists” feed this bias if not because of their ignorance of the bigger picture they play in it.

Back to the Debate

“We should start from somewhere. We should stop producing red meat in general, but we can start from dogs as there is more public agreement on it,” the man wanted to conclude, unable to convince me with his previous reasons.

“But why should we start from a business that is already declining while the bigger issue that’s spreading is left more or less in silence?” I asked.

“Anyway, people are different. We don’t all have to think the same,” he answered.

He didn’t want to hear more of me. He slowly raised a cute picture of the dog and tried to change the mood with his fake smile. Did I make him consider the issue from a new angle? I’m not sure.

How many other dogs did I see on my way back home? How many of their owners call themselves animal activists or animal lovers? And how many of these animal activists or animal lovers think about the 41,415 species that are currently in danger of extinction?

Edited by Alireza Soltani Koupaei

L'articolo After All, It’s Just a Slice of Meat – This One From a Dog! proviene da InsideOver.

Active forest fires in Central Africa are greater than the Amazon fires, and have a potential to be more dangerous, Greenpeace has warned.

Termed “the fire continent” by NASA, Africa is home to at least 70% of fires burning worldwide, during the global fire season between June and September.

The fires, which spread from Angola to Gabon, are close to the Congo Basin, the second-largest tropical rainforest in the globe, which spans the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Cameroon and the Central Africa Republic. Like the Amazon, the Congo Basin absorbs a large percent of the earth’s carbon dioxide, and is responsible for abating the negative effects of climate change.

The Global Forest Watch shows massive fires currently burning in Central and Southern African nations. Fires in both continents are as a result of “slash and burn” farming where land is cleared using fire. The farming method requires natural vegetation to be cut down and burned to clear the land for cultivation. Rainforest Saver describes it as a form of “shifting agriculture” that rapidly leads to poverty, infertile lands, climate change and the destruction of the rainforest, including wildlife. Once farming strips the soil of its nutrients, rendering it infertile, farmers move to a new land area and repeat the process.

The worst of Africa’s fires is contained in Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar and South Africa. Although fires in Central Africa have not spread to the Congo Basin forest area, fires in South America have spread to the Amazon rainforest, prompting problems for the people and the biodiverse wildlife for whom this is home.

Slash and burn techniques have been criticised by experts. Many, including World Agroforestry and Rainforest Saver, have published environmental alternatives to slash and burn. “The richness of the rainforest is in the trees”, Rainforest Saver has argued. However, with the Amazon rainforest burning, the earth is losing a big part of its richness, including its biodiversity. Despite African forest fires being substantially higher in number, the global focus on the Amazon rainforest stems from a concern that the fires there have not been controlled, unlike African fires.

Working on Fire, under South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs, writes that: “Fires are, and always have been, a part of the South African landscape. They occur as a natural phenomenon in grasslands, woodlands, fynbos, and sometimes in indigenous forests.

“About 70% of the ecosystems covering South Africa are fire-adapted. They need to burn to maintain their ecological integrity. But because of human activity, there is a need to manage fire in a manner that is appropriate for the land-use and land-type while maintaining natural processes and patterns as far as possible.”

Despite similarities in agricultural techniques, fire management in both regions is the difference between safe and unsafe forest fires.

“There are fire management questions in these (African) ecosystems, but fire is part of their ecology,” Sally Archibald, a professor at the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, at The University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, said.

“In South America, the equivalent non-forest woodlands have been largely converted to soybean agriculture already, but in Africa they are largely untransformed.

“The main message is: yes we have a lot of fire, but it’s not bad and can be very good for the ecology. We don’t know how many deforestation fires we have but the best evidence is that our forests are not decreasing, they are in fact increasing.”

While the slash and burn farming practice was sustainable in the past, rising population makes it impossible to abandon burnt land for two decades while it replenishes its nutrients. Other problems associated with rising population, such as rising temperatures, decreased rain from climate change and industrialised practices create the perfect circumstances for slash and burn fires to burn out of control.

Experts, consequently, are now focused on the Amazon’s forest fires, over Africa’s fires. “The question now is to what extent we can compare,” opined Philippe Verbelen, a Greenpeace forest campaigner.

Last month, French president, Emmanuel Macron, voiced concern that the Central African forest fires were not receiving as much media attention as the Amazon forest fires. In the same month, the G7 nations pledged $20 million to the Amazon fires, sending fire-fighting aircraft and firefighter volunteers.

Bolivian authorities have warned that fires in the Chiquitania forest area have left more than a quarter of the country under “extreme risk from the forest fires”. The fires have also destroyed parts of the Amazon and Bolivia’s Pantanal region which borders Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, who previously rejected international help, has last week, accepted foreign aid efforts.

“Any cooperation is welcome, whether it comes from international organisations, celebrities or from the presidents who offered to help,” he said. He also recently cancel his re-election campaign to join the firefighting efforts.

Data from Brazil’s Space Research Centre (INPE) proves there has been an 83% increase in forest fires in the Amazon since records began in 2013. “The number of forest fires is higher in the Amazon regions most affected by deforestation practices, as fires are one of the main tools used for deforestation, including by farmers,” Greenpeace said.

“Forest fires and climate change operate in a vicious cycle: as the number of fires increase, so do greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the planet’s overall temperature and the occurrence of extreme weather events, such as major droughts,” the NGO continued.

Morales criminalised the slash and burn farming practice last month, despite his very government permitting it in the first place to create revenue from expanding agro-business in Bolivia.

“This month’s devastating fires are the all-too-predictable consequence of the Morales government’s decree authorising new land claims on cleared land”, said Carwil Bjork-James, an anthropology professor at Vanderbilt University.

The Pan-Amazon indigenous organisation COICA has accused Morales and Brazilian president, Jair Bolsorano, of “gutting every environmental and social strategy” designed to protect the Amazon, for the benefit of huge capitalistic profit.

In response to the President Macron’s concerns, President Bolsorano accused the French president of treating the Amazon region “as if it were a colony”.

“We cannot accept that a president, Macron, unleashes unreasonable and gratuitous attacks on the Amazon, nor that he disguises his intentions behind the idea of a G-7 ‘alliance’ to ‘save’ the Amazon, as if we were a colony or a no-man’s-land,” Bolsonaro tweeted.

Western arguments against South America’s governmental policies in the Amazon has led to criticisms of ‘environmental colonialism‘. South American governments are sceptical about environmental aid and advice from Western governments, because of the West’s unethical history with environmentalism.

By prioritising financial gain over global environmental concerns, the United States and Western Europe saw great economic successes in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Under European colonisation, for example, 21.7% of Africa’s tropical rainforest was deforested. Today, US President Trump continues to deny climate change as a real problem, attempting to repeal 84 climate change regulations that stem the profits of ultra-wealthy American businesspersons.

The Amazon forest fires reveal a great global power shift, with the fate of the planet resting on the survival of a continent that the West has historically plundered and destroyed for its benefit. How South America responds to the protection of the Amazon in the future will be a great determining factor in whether we can survive, and even reverse climate change.

L'articolo Forest Fires, Climate Change and Deforestation in South America and Africa proviene da InsideOver.

The UN predicts that global food security is currently in jeopardy, because of a high rise in global temperatures caused by climate change.

Two million people

Last year, more than 7,200 Central Americans from Honduras, Guatemala and El Savador began migrating, in (people) caravans, towards the US border. 62% of these 7,200 joined the caravans in search for work, with many also emigrating to escape food and nutrition scarcity caused by crop losses.

The link between job loss, job uncertainty and climate change is generally understood as an environmental and political crisis. The United Nations has repeatedly warned that “world food security” is increasingly at risk due to “unprecedented” climate change impact.

In South and Central America, a region that “harbours unique ecosystems and the highest biodiversity in the planet”, the impact of climate change is at a particularly high risk. Many countries in both regions face “severe challenges in coping with climate-related disasters”.

Food Insecurity

The UN reports that: “the combination of moderate and severe levels of food insecurity [irregular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food] brings the estimated total [of people with food insecurity] to 26.4 percent of the world population, amounting to about two billion people.”

Of these 2 billion, 820 million people globally face food scarcity, and are undernourished, according to the UN.

Scientists at the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change,Agriculture and Food Security asserted that: “flash floods and landslides due to intense rainfall have affected the entire region, and have been costly both in terms of money and human life.”

The Politics of Climate Change

Climate change politics is an issue of money, class and power, including citizenship rights and nation-state governance.

Scientists argue that people with money and access to transport will have more agency to move away from disaster areas caused by climate change. People without the assets to move may end up in “hazard prone areas where they are more vulnerable and exposed to climate extremes”.

According to researchers at The University of Copenhagen: “heat waves and intense rainfall can have very different impacts on different population groups depending on their vulnerability and exposure, as well as their income and education levels.

“This can result in settlements in hazard prone areas, the creation of unsafe dwellings, slums and scattered districts, poverty, and lack of awareness of risks.

“They will also have to deal with the impacts of disaster on the ground, including no water, food, sanitation or shelter.”

Surviving Climate Change

Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires in the US are preparing for an apocalyptic global environmental crisis, by building and buying doomsday bunkers in New Zealand. As climate change continues to damage our environment, the focus is on surviving the coming “global catastrophe”.

22 people died when a gunman opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso Texas on August 3rd 2019.

In his manifesto, the gunman outlined his environmental and political justifications for carrying out the mass shooting.

Our “lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources,” he wrote.

Citing ecofascist ideals, the gunman blamed immigrants as the cause of the “massive burden” on the environment. In his manifesto titled, “The Inconvenient Truth” he wrote: “if we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable.”

The gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019, was a self-identified ecofascist. In his manifesto, he demanded: ethnic autonomy for all peoples with a focus on preservation of nature and the natural order.”

The super-wealthy elite will avoid the climate conflict brought about by global environmental degradation. Alternatively, working-class and middle-class white gunmen believe that population control – through racial genocide – is the answer to climate change. For them, global resource protection should only be offered to those with the greatest socio-economic and political power.

In South and Central America, many believe that emigration to nations with the greatest socio-economic and political power will protect them from food scarcity and economic insecurity, caused by climate change.

Solving Climate Change

17.2 million people left their home last year, because of climate change induced disasters, such as ocean acidification, desertification and coastal erosion.

The UN believes that climate-related global migration patterns will continue to accelerate as a result of “adverse climate impacts”.

For the UN, climate change is a complex problem with many viable solutions, such as international environmentalism, humanitarianism and climate policy.

L'articolo Climate Change in Central America is a Sign of Problems to Come proviene da InsideOver.