Category Archives: Group Projects

The Boiling Point

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black lives matter

(Source: Morrison, Matthew. Pinterest. “Innocent People Killed by Police”.2020.)

The thing about the recent Black Lives Matter protests, is that this isn’t just about the recent death of George Floyd, or even just the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. This is bigger than that. World systems thinking prompts us to consider the pieces of the puzzle surrounding the murders of innocent black Americans. Black lives have been oppressed the entire duration of their time in this country, and were enslaved for most of the last three and a half centuries, and even now they are treated only a modicum better than they historically had been. The Black Lives Matter movement is about how historically banks wouldn’t lend to Blacks, and they couldn’t own homes in certain areas, and even now, a young Black boy walking home with Skittles is an offense punishable by death. THAT is why we rally, not because one more person died at the hands of police brutality in this country. Like systems theory, racism is not a collection of separate events, but rather a sum of its history.

Right now, at this point in history, we are at a potential boiling point, where we have the proper amount of anger and people with time on their hands to make this a pivotal point in our political state, and in history. People are home, due to the coronavirus pandemic, and on their phones all day, seeing the police take innocent Black lives, except this time, we have an evil president who citizens are already upset with for dropping the ball on the pandemic response team, and properly handling the coronavirus pandemic so that the lives lost to Coronavirus can also start declining. With the anger towards Trump, and the attention to what is happening in the nation, made easier by the technological age, we are uniting for a common cause, and are not backing down, even a week after George Floyd’s death. With all of this anger, at the exact time, and with the exact circumstances we had, we are also seeing separate movements coming out of this, with Pride month just around the corner, and other races uniting for the betterment of race relations in this country, we are seeing a world hurting and coming together, at a time where we’ve been so far apart for so long.

Sharing systems thinking in our ongoing advocacy

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As our world grieves in the aftermath of the horrific murder of George Floyd, I have become extremely grateful for the knowledge about systematic racism my education at UW has afforded me. My greatest takeaway from this class was learning to think systematically about the world food system, which allowed me to realize how everything from climate change to land grabs to severe income inequality in the food distribution chain levies a disproportionate impact on people of color in their struggle to access affordable and healthy food. Through course content such as Lester R. Brown’s “Full Planet Empty Plates” we have learned that there is an abundance of food in America, yet the reason so many of our citizens go hungry is because of a lack of income, and ultimately, a lack of privilege in our capitalist system leading to the harshest impacts of food insecurity to be felt by POC and BIPOC communities.

Systematic impact of the Pandemic on our food system.

                         

Examples of the disproportionate impact felt by communities of color.

 

Much of my undergraduate education has been focused on race relations in the America, and I was able to incorporate this knowledge into my group work with Our Climate this quarter. We were given the opportunity to meet with Representative Tina Orwall, who has been a champion for racial equity throughout her career. We were able to advocate for bold, equitable climate change policy with a focus on the disparate impact of climate change on poor people of color. Representative Orwall was extremely receptive to our goals and told us that we had taught her new things about racism in the ecological system. From this, I became cognizant of my power of advocacy and sharing information, as Representative Orwall was able to get us in contact with other relevant politicians and added that she would further research and incorporate our findings into her agenda. Now as we are in the midst of a widespread Black Lives Matter movement, I find myself again as an advocate, and I have similarly been able to share useful information about the systematic racism in the world food system as part of the widespread sharing of resources against racism we are seeing. Just as we have achieved recent policy changes by educating our fellow advocates and putting pressure on our politicians, we are slowly dismantling systematic racism, and I am confident that if we can keep pressure on, we can one day create a just and equitable ecological system for all.

Climate Change and Everything Else

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Throughout my experience participating in the Our Climate Action group, I have acquired new skills that enhanced my learning. My project members and I participated in multiple listening sessions run by other fellows from the Our Climate activists explaining the Evergreen New Deal:  a comprehensive climate change reform policy that will introduce greener solutions to current predicaments. All of this exposure to the bits and bolts of how our state and country runs in regards to introducing laws and regulations has added to my sense of citizenship and provided me with a clearer path to contribution. Before this experience, I felt like I was staring at the system from a distance, and it was too entangled in itself for me to get involved.

One interactive portion of our activism involved spreading a survey to Washingtonians under the age of 30 focused on collecting opinions on what prominent complications must immediately be addressed in our direct environment here in the state. During role in lobbying to Tina Orwall, spreading the voices of concerned residents, I especially made an emphasis on how COVID-19 should not get in the way of climate change policy because the underprivileged community is affected negatively by both COVID and climate change, and these two issues interacting creates an even bigger obstacle.

Climate change is obviously a complicated interconnected system woven through everything from our bodies interaction to the weather, to how our climate changes drastically in the atmosphere. There’s an undeniable chain of consequences between our climate and food. For example, “As reserves are depleted, changes in production would have a bigger impact on the price of food….Scientists have warned hotter temperatures and more erratic rainfall could increase the frequency and intensity of droughts (Reuters).” Droughts will affect how much food is yielded and therefore affect how people will be able to sustain themselves globally. Learning about connections between climate change and the food system, as well as climate change and COVID-19, it was easy for me to realize that underprivileged communities are not only affected by certain disadvantages individually, but also how all those disadvantages come together and create increased adverse challenges. This is why climate change needs to be addressed among the other issues, taking out one factor of damage out at a time, we can salvage what, and who, we are hurting and destroying.

Please watch this short animation on how climate change interacts with the causes and consequences of other global dilemmas:

Political Lands and Foods; Indigenous Communities in Brazil as Land Defenders

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Bananas, sugar cane, palm oil, soy– theses are just some of the foods tied to the deracination of indigenous communities from their ancestral lands. Land rights for indigenous peoples in Latin America have always been contentious as territories have been appropriated for use of farming, natural resource and extractive industries, and other uses not originally intended by their original populations. While companies like the United Fruit Company quickly and other multinational agricultural companies took over in places like Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, agricultural development projects in Brazil’s Cerrado and Amazon ecoregions have quickly displaced indigenous populations in Brazil, leaving an estimated 13.8 percent of land as formally designated for these communities, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, and 31% as agricultural land (USAID).   

Image by the Rights and Resources Initiative: depicting the RRI’s Forest Tenure Database four land tenure categories. (click here to see enlarged image)

For me, this research makes clear the nexus between land rights and access for indigenous communities, and mismanaged foreign investment which has disrupted local livelihoods and economies. To think systemically about land rights is to understand the ways that vulnerable communities are negatively affected by land grabs (particularly by governments to address food insecurity), or indirectly through foreign direct investment (FDI). 

Land rights are directly tied to our course ideas of transparency, food justice, and sustainability. Through networks like the Rights and Resources Initiative, organizations, governments, and others are vying to increase transparency with access to land globally. Food justice is inherently tied to transparent access to land: when we don’t know where our food is coming from, it’s difficult to identify who’s rights are violated at different stages of cultivation, harvest, processing, and transportation of these foods. Many rights are violated in the simple acquisition of land before it is even developed for agriculture. 

In the case of Brazil, this rings true. Thirty-eight large companies now control much of Brazil’s agricultural land, including large companies like Cargill and Coamo, which have faced significant backlash for their deforestation practices which have primarily displaced indigenous people in the Center-West region. In March 2020, Indigenous leaders from the Yanomami tribe testified in front of the UN security council warning against the genocide of indigenous and uncontacted groups in the region.   

Yanomami indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa denounces deforestation and indigenous land invasion in Brazil, via Conectas Human Rights

Systems thinking connects this course to fundamental ideas of land and food justice. Unpacking what transparent and equitable food systems will look like in the future will require serious action to protect indigenous habitation of land in addressing egregious issues of climate change, food security, and sustainability within the food chain. 

 

Colonialism, The Environment, and The Global Search For Justice

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More than anything this quarter, I have learned that problems do not exist within a vacuum—that the greenhouse gas emissions from the dairy industry are symptomatic of the same system that has allowed for the rise in obesity in America. Additionally, issues surrounding the environment and climate change do not exist in a separate world from social issues, and are in fact magnified by racism, sexism, and classism. The systems thinking approach that was modeled to me has allowed me to gain a new perspective on my role in the world food system, but my role in the global social system as well.

 

My work with Landesa this quarter has emphasized the relationship between the environment and social systems, especially how that relationship can be manipulated to bring about better living conditions to tackle poverty on a global scale. Much of their work involves securing land rights for farmers so that they are able to exercise more agency over how their land is used. Owning land is essential to the maintenance and development of wealth, because property rights “mold the distribution of income, wealth and political influence”, as scholar Gary D. Libecap writes for the Hoover Institute. By increasing the access to land rights, Landesa aims to counteract the widespread poverty in developing countries around the world.

From ThisIsAfrica.me. The Legacy of the Berlin Conference. By Socrates Mbamalu.

However, in looking at the work that Landesa is doing, it struck me that the racial problems that are disrupting the U.S. today are outcomes of the same historical system that created the massive wealth disparity between developed countries and developing countries. The intersection of white supremacist and capitalist ideologies encouraged imperialist nations to take Africans as slaves and use their labor to build their empires, wiping out indigenous populations as they did so. The same ideologies encouraged the Scramble for Africa, where the largest European players divided up spheres of influence in Africa based on available resources to exploit. Thus, the legacy that slavery has left on the United States is linked to the legacy that imperialism has left on many African nations. The struggle for racial justice, then, must continue on a global scale. 

Enacting change on a global scale is virtually impossible for the individual. One of the most important things I’ve learned in this class, though, is that I have power as an individual and a citizen to fight for the better world I want to see. 

Closing The Gap Between Consumers and Their Food Source

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Taking on the action project has been one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had this quarter. Before starting the project, I had already envisioned some of the work we may be assigned to do with the Salish Center. However, about a week in I came to realize that the nonprofit was not as far along in their journey as I had previously assumed they were. This gave our group the unique opportunity to work with our NGO to build a solid base for the organization. At first this task seemed quite daunting and I wasn’t sure if I had the proper skill set to help my team and the NGO accomplish such a large task. Nonetheless, as the weeks led on our group worked hard to set goals and achieve them. It started with us doing some research and coming to the consensus that it would be in the organizations best interest to establish a PDO (protected designation of origin) rather than an AOC (Appellation d’Origine Protegee). From there, we brainstormed and came up with a number of ways we could achieve this goal for the organization. Then, we split up the tasks and each of us put our efforts towards getting our individual responsibilities completed. My role in the group was to email other NGOs in Washington, to notify them of the Salish Centers mission and to also ask for their support in our endeavors.

Salish Center Medallion (another goal was to place this medallion on all sea-food caught from Salish Sea)

Unfortunately, I had not received as many replies as I was expecting, but I suspect it may be due to the current pandemic. The lack of responses to all our emails did pose as a massive obstacle, and at times made me question if we were going to make a tangible impact in our community. Towards the end of the quarter, I realized that even if I was not able to make as large a contribution as I was hoping to, I can still utilize the knowledge, communication and tech skills I gained through this experience and apply it to any opportunity I am presented with in the future. Initially, when reflecting on the connections that existed between the work we’ve done with the Salish Center and the topics we’ve discussed in class, it was difficult for me to make any clear connections. This was until professor Litfin mentioned how beneficial it can be for local businesses and consumers to be aware of where their food comes from. In a society where we often can barely pronounce the ingredients in our food, it is clear that there has been a massive strain put on the relationship between consumers and the food that fuels them. The Salish Center is one the many organizations that are actively working to narrow the gap that exists between consumers and their food source. The Salish Centers strategy for tackling this issue is to educate the public about sustainable fishing practices, and the health of the Salish Sea, while simultaneously show-casing the quality of the seafood that hails from the Salish Sea. Ultimately, they are working to rekindle the

This map is a great visual depiction of the “12 centers of diversity” (aka the regions, or hotspots, that harbor a disproportionately high percentage of all plant, livestock, and cultural diversity.)

connection between consumers and their food source by first strengthening the relationship that consumers have with the environment that harbors the food source. Thus, further incentivizing individuals to protect and cherish the habitats that shelter the very wildlife that fuels their bodies.  

 

Link to Salish Center Website: https://salishcenter.org/#chefs

 

Link to SeedMap: http://seedmap.org/where-does-our-food-come-from/   The site provides information on how virtually all of the foods we eat today– our major crops and most livestock species – have their origins in the tropics and subtropics of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. The way to safeguard our food supply is by protecting these centres of diversity, as well as using and continuing to adapt the plant and genetic diversity carefully bred and nurtured by farmers.

 

 

2020: Here’s To Resistance and Not Going Back to Normal

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So far, 2020 has afforded society and chance to toss worn bandages from its wounds and address the source of injury. For our class, it’s been an especially important time to examine the socioecological systems in which our food system is embedded. The coronavirus pandemic is revealing weaknesses from distribution bottlenecks to unjust working conditions. It’s also reminding us that intense animal agriculture such as CAFOs are breeding grounds for future pandemics. The recent murder of George Floyd has set yet another alarm demanding a reckoning with, and dismantling of, institutions built upon a legacy of racism and inequality – our food system not being exempt from these ills. Being a class discussing food using a systems-thinking approach, these breakdowns across Earth and social realms unfolding at warp speed can be understood as the result of generations of exploitation. The universe is begging us to examine our relationship with our food and with each other.

Grappling with these system imbalances, I recall our discussion of Gaia theory, which sees Earth as a self-regulating macro-organism, it’s biotic and abiotic elements functioning and evolving together. Wondering how to feed ourselves on a finite planet, Gaia theory offers solutions in the way of thinking cyclically. As industrial agriculture requires increasing inputs to compensate for soil degradation and other externalities, we can learn from nature’s non-linear models, where output becomes input. Waste from one = food for another.

This “thinking in circles” held presence as our action group partnered with the Center for Food Safety, a non-profit organization resisting the factory farm model by advocating for organic, sustainable, and restorative agriculture. Our goal was to research and develop criteria for a sustainable shellfish scorecard, which will inform consumers about pesticide use and tending/harvest methods. Washington state is the leading national producer of farmed oysters, clams, and mussels, generating around $270 million annually. Bivalves filter phytoplankton, clearing water for photosynthesis, essential for eelgrass, which provides nutrients and predation refuge for fish and crustaceans. When done responsibly, shellfish farming can compliment an ecosystem. Done irresponsibly, it can throw an ecosystem out of balance.

Is this balance? Geoduck farm in Puget Sound. Photo: Sean McDonald, University of Washington

This work gave an up-close look at the potential within our food system for restoring some balance. I gained appreciation for the work CFS does to positively impact human and environmental health by standing up to powerful corporate and government interests, like speaking up for unprotected meatpacking workers, taking on the EPA and Dow Chemical, and helping shut down CAFOs.

It’s all connected. ~Image Source

Food is embodied energy, solar power transformed into calories nourishing bodies, minds, souls. It is deeply personal and political. Food is power. As we call ourselves out on unjust systems of power and call for reform, let us include those systems which feed us and our Earth as one. To heal our wounds will require not more sutures but a bloodletting. We cannot and do not wish to go back to “normal.”

Fixing the Climate is NOT a One Person Job

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For a lot of my life, I thought the idea of voting with your dollars was brilliant, especially when it came to the climate. Whether it was buying organic every now and then or carpooling, I lived by that idea as much as I could. Over time, I learned this method is not the best at fixing the climate, but how effective it could be was something I still wondered.

After reading Michael Maniates’ piece on individualization, I was primed to understand that working alone at the individual level is futile against the power of private corporations. These companies work under the radar and through the consumer subconscious to gain profit under the guise of going green. In doing this, they seek to pin the blame and responsibility of climate change on the people who have the least power to create lasting change (Maniates 43).

Targeting transportation and electricity were of the biggest parts of Our Climate’s Evergreen New Deal. Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-state-carbon-emissions-spiked-6-percent-in-most-recent-tally/

And when I worked with Our Climate for this course’s action project, I gained crucial, direct knowledge on the capability and power of collective action while going directly to policy. On one hand, you have corporations selling you easy activism and pocketing the same money they would have made before green movements. On the other, you have NGOs pushing for policy to the people who the most power. The former has never permeated culture to the point where it makes large or lasting change, but looking at what Our Climate has done in just the last legislative session by updating old carbon laws, impacts will affect this and future generations. Furthermore, we could use votes on previous climate policies to garner even more support for future policies like the Evergreen New Deal.

When we lobbied to Representative Tina Orwall as the final task for Our Climate, I saw how receptive she was to new ideas and policies like the Evergreen New Deal, and it emboldened me. Other fellows told us their experiences were lukewarm. Their representatives were not very approachable and rejected the climate policies. While Representative Orwall wanted to know more about the Evergreen New Deal, beyond that it was broadly for transportation and to hold corporate polluters accountable, she was very interested in learning more when the policy was more solidified, and even connected us to more people who would also want to hear what we had to say. Coming from that, I felt like coming together was more powerful than fractured efforts that end up making the same big corporations richer, confirming what Maniates taught me.

Works Cited

Maniates, Michael F. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics, vol. 1, no. 3, Aug. 2001, pp. 31–52.

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For my group project, I worked with the Salish Center for Sustainable Seafood, a NGO committed to educating the public about reef netting and other sustainable fishing methods in order to preserve the Salish Sea. Our work was particularly focused on helping the Salish Center establish a PDO (protected designation of origin) for all seafood caught in the Salish Sea. The intention behind a PDO is the center’s belief that seafood from the Salish Sea is special and better than seafood harvested elsewhere. They also hope that PDO will increase consumer knowledge and interest in the Salish Sea and encourage engagement and a desire to protect it. 

On one hand, a PDO would be great in helping people purchase locally sourced seafood and understand the origins of their food. This is the kind of action that is encouraged in readings like The Pleasure of Eating and the lecture Localism. However, you also have to wonder, would a PDO really accomplish much in encouraging sustainable fishing methods and preserving the Salish Sea? The fact is – 70% of seafood is eaten in restaurants. The average American likely does not regularly prepare seafood or can’t afford to eat it on a regular basis. Seafood is a luxury item, and locally sourced, sustainably caught seafood is even more expensive. While a PDO would help restaurants source locally caught seafood, that’s a pretty niche audience and honestly doesn’t seem like it would help broadly increase consumer knowledge about the Salish Sea. While consumer knowledge can encourage activism, I also wonder if this depends too much on the individualist consumer habits and lures people into complacency. Consumers may feel like they are doing enough by buying local seafood, but will that make them interested in protecting the Salish Sea and promoting sustainable fishing methods? 

Map of the Salish Sea

The United States has a lot more legally enforced sustainable fishing practices than other countries, but the PDO would not require that the seafood harvested in the Salish Sea be caught sustainably or at least to the levels of sustainability that the Salish Center advocates for. With this in mind, you have to wonder what exactly a PDO would accomplish and if there would be a more effective way to protect the Salish Sea. Other NGOs are also working towards similar goals and it would be nice to see more collaboration between them in the future, especially in establishing a PDO or encouraging sustainable fishing methods:  a notable one in the Puget Sound area is Long Live the Kings, an organization that works to support sustainable fishing practices and restore the wild salmon populations.

Applying course lessons and action project results to the real world

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For my action project, my group developed a set of news media and social media content to engage the public with the issues of dairy CAFOs in Washington. This included Facebook and Twitter posts, which had info graphics and in the future will have political tool kits for citizens to contact their representatives and the WA Department of Ecology during the legislative session, and letters to the editor which were sent to multiple local newspapers.

Figure 1: Example post from my action projects Facebook page
In this class we have discussed the impacts of COVID on the world food system. These impacts have largely been to processing and distribution. Our project was also impacted by COVID because we had less of an opportunity to spread our message. Our social media posts did not do as well as we had hoped because there is currently a lack of interest for this kind of content currently given both world an domestic events. This is not something that only we faced. During the pandemic, I have noticed that most environmental groups have shifted their focus from traditional targets to focus on causes related to the pandemic and more recently racial justice.

Figure 2: This image, posted on Greenpeace USA’s Facebook page, is an example of the shift in focus from environmental groups
This is a unique issue that ties into the other impacts of COVID on the world food system which we discussed in class. The difference is that the impact of decreased pressure from advocacy largely affects production, and not as much processing or distribution. Production has been negatively impacted by the disruptions to processing and distribution however, unlike processing and distribution where COVID has pretty much only been a detractor, the production portion of the world food system has been avle to operate unchecked.

Figure 3: The recent increase in the rate of deforestation of the Amazon is an example of the impacts on the food system as a result of a distracted world. Source: NBC news
While advocacy from environmental groups may not play into the typical model for a world food system, a basic understanding of systems thinking, the discussions we have had in class, and my experience with my action project have allowed me to better understand the connections in our food web I didn’t know existed.