How human rights and plant-based diets align
Today marks World Human Rights Day, a day observed annually to celebrate equality as a basic principle of human rights around the world. ProJustice is one of the core principles of ProVeg and reflects our belief that a plant-based diet helps to reduce inequality. As the world’s population continues to grow, ensuring fairer and more sustainable food distribution will increasingly become a challenge. A shift towards plant-based diets will help to create a more equitable world and a more sustainable food system – for everyone.
Read on below to find out how plant-based initiatives around the world are helping to address inequality and create a fairer food system.
Africa: food security and local innovation
Plant-based initiatives are critical to the mitigation of food insecurity, especially in drought-prone areas and regions that are particularly susceptible to the impact of climate change. In sub-Saharan Africa, several projects are developing drought-resistant crops in order to strengthen local food systems. Increasing the resilience of traditional crops such as cassava and legumes, which are already adapted to local conditions, is just one of the ways in which food security can be improved in the face of a changing climate.
Encouraging the uptake of plant-based food is another effective approach. ProVeg Nigeria takes plant-based food directly to communities by making samples available in markets, schools, hospitals, and public spaces in Nigeria. The ProVeg Veggie Challenge app also makes it easy for smartphone users to navigate plant-based options, helping people change to healthier and more sustainable ways of eating. All of these approaches help to enhance food security through plant-based production and consumption.
Latin America: indigenous food systems
In Latin America, traditional plant-based diets are helping to preserve cultural identity and independence from imports. Local and regional farming cultures are still relatively dominant in much of the region, with many people still growing their own food, including maize, beans, and quinoa. These small-scale crops provide vital nutrition while maintaining the transmission of specific cultural practices from one generation to the next. Traditional farming methods include agroforestry, crop rotation, and polyculture, which are environmentally sustainable and promote soil health, biodiversity, and decrease the use of chemical fertilisers. Interestingly, many of these kinds of traditional practices are starting to return to Western farming models as the need for more sustainable and environmentally sensitive farming becomes ever more urgent.
Focusing on existing agri(cultural) practices helps to promote food sovereignty and resilience, with indigenous communities leading the way in terms of sustainable land use and eco-friendly practices. By focusing on traditional plant-based solutions, these communities are also helping to fight climate change and ensure a more sustainable future for the planet and all who live on it.
Asia: Affordable nutrition and sustainability
In Asia, traditional plant-based staples such as tofu, lentils, and rice are inexpensive and full of vital nutrients. These foods are key to battling hunger, particularly in places where resources are more limited. Plant-based diets provide a sustainable and inexpensive way to meet nutritional requirements, without straining the local ecosystem. By encouraging plant-based eating, communities can decrease their reliance on expensive animal products that are generally more resource-intensive. Such an approach makes healthy, affordable, and environmentally friendly food choices easier for everyone to access, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
The Asia Food Innovation Challenge and ProVeg Asia-Pacific’s New Food Invest conference are two key initiatives that are focusing on increasing access to plant-based foods. The Innovation Challenge engages students from countries in the region, fostering creativity in the plant-based space and accelerating food-based solutions to health and environmental challenges. These programmes empower students, food companies, and innovators to put their solutions into practice in an attempt to lessen the impact of climate change and food insecurity. This approach is instrumental in improving nutrition and sustainability, particularly in densely populated regions where resources may be limited.
Europe and North America: Tackling excess
In Europe and North America, overconsumption and food wastage are two of the key issues, even as the poorest people in the world’s richest countries struggle to afford or access healthy food. In the US, it’s estimated that about 40% of the food is wasted, with a yearly value of $200 billion. In fact, it is often said that the food that Americans throw away every year could feed the world, and this is not too far from being accurate. Much of this excess includes imported goods, especially meat and feed crops, which exacerbate global inequality by placing additional pressure on land and resources in exporting countries.
A shift to plant-based diets would require far less water, land, and energy, and be a far less wasteful use of limited resources. Reducing the demand for animal-based products and embracing plant-based options is one of the most effective ways to make food production more equitable, sustainable, and efficient. Policies supporting plant-based meals in schools, workplaces, and community settings similarly reduce food waste through better use of resources. Such policies and behavioural changes help to foster healthier and more sustainable eating habits, while addressing the environmental and economic costs of food waste and excessive consumption.
ProVeg supports state initiatives in the US, such as California’s $100-million funding for plant-based meals in schools, Illinois’ updated School Breakfast and Lunch Program, and New York’s plant-based-meal legislation for hospitals. These efforts are mirrored in ProVeg programmes in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Czechia, where we advocate for more plant-based options in institutional food services and help to facilitate structural change.
Making the shift towards plant-based diets will help to resolve regional inequality around the world, by addressing food security, sustainability, and preserving local cultural and agricultural practices. Such an approach helps to amplify fundamental human rights by providing better food systems that are integrated into local economies and ecosystems. Focusing on plant-based diets can help to make nutritious and sustainable foods more accessible and available to everyone.
Here are three things you can do to support our mission of reducing the global consumption of animals by 50% by 2040:
Emily Styrka
Content Creator and Writer
