Brighter Green

05/28/2026

Happy the elephant spent decades confined in captivity before her death this week.

Her story is part of a larger question: what does it mean when living beings are treated as objects for entertainment, profit, or production?

There is not a separation between animal rights and environmental justice. In Brighter Green’s recent paper on industrial megafarms in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, we document how systems of confinement harm animals, ecosystems, and Indigenous communities alike. From elephants in captivity to factory-farmed animals confined by the millions, the same systems treat living beings and ecosystems as expendable.

Stories of Human and Nonhuman Rights under Pressure from Animal Megafarms By Mia MacDonald and Isis Alvarez To read the entire paper, click here. Summary Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula is known for its beaches, Mayan archaeological sites like Tulum and Chichén Itzá, and its forests and cenotes (a n...

04/30/2026

The second annual MOTH Festival of Ideas will take place in London this year, May 14th–16th!

Our Executive Director Mia MacDonald and Associate Isis Alvarez will present “Exploitation, Resistance, and Resilience in Mexico’s Yucatán: Stories of Human and Nonhuman Rights under Pressure from Animal Megafarms.” Their paper is an analysis of the investigative reporting in Mexico that Brighter Green has supported for the past two years.

If you’re in London, the discussion will take place on May 14th at 2:30pm!
Purchase tickets for the festival at

The living world is stitched together by a diversity of beings whose rich and complex interactions define its everyday drama. Humans—despite their disproportionate capacity to modify the living world—comprise only a small part of this vast web of relations. Yet, anthropocentrism has been a hallm...

04/24/2026

In honor of Earth Month and before the semester ends and graduation, please join the Department of Environmental Studies for career and job advice and insights from four NYC-based professionals, including two NYU adjunct faculty members. The event will be held in person on Wednesday, April 29th at 5:30pm in the 6th-floor conference room at 79 Washington Square East. Come earlier for food, beverages, and mingling!

Our Executive Director Mia MacDonald will be a panelist!

New York University NYU Animal Studies

04/22/2026

In a recent interview with Guardian, author Rebecca Solnit described today’s reactionary backlash as evidence that “a new world is being born.”

Two decades earlier, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai delivered a similar message in her Nobel lecture:

“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness… A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”

For Brighter Green, Maathai’s legacy is deeply personal. She mentored our founder, Mia MacDonald, and collaborated with her on several books exploring the connections between environmental protection, justice, and the dignity of all life.

That time is still now.

The work of building a more just and sustainable world continues.
Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai

Source: Zoe Williams, “ ‘A new world is being born’: author Rebecca Solnit on the ‘slow revolution’ the far right cannot tolerate,” The Guardian, March 25, 2026.

04/20/2026

Congratulations to the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize winners! Brighter Green is a nominating organization to the Prize. This year is the first in the Prize's 37-year history that all the winners have been women. You can read about their achievements and follow their work at: goldmanprize.org/2026

Celebrating grassroots leaders who prove that ordinary people can have an extraordinary impact on their environment.

04/19/2026

New research published in The Guardian suggests s***m whales use vowel-like sounds structured similarly to human language.

Not noise, but communication.
Not instinct, but expression.

Thanks to Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) for exploring s***m whales’ language and community structures within an ethical, rights-based framework.

Brighter Green’s project, Justice at the Intersections, explores how the theories of animal rights and rights of Nature and MOTH (more than human) rights complement as well as diverge from one another. The text includes examples of whales being recognized as legal “persons”–and new efforts to advance cetacean personhood and protections. If other species have complex, cultural ways of communicating and obvious societies, the ethical boundaries we draw between us and them begin to unravel.

https://brightergreen.org/justice-at-the-intersections/]
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/s***m-whales-alphabet-vocalizations-similar-humans

Analysis shows whales’ coda vocalizations are ‘highly complex’ and remarkably similar to our own

04/17/2026

“People of ordinary backgrounds doing extraordinary things to save our Earth.”
—Richard Goldman, philanthropist and co-founder

The 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize prize winners will be announced on Monday, April 20! Watch the ceremony live on the YouTube channel on Monday, April 20, at 5:30 pm PDT / 8:30 pm EDT. goldmanprize.org/ceremony

Bright Green is a nominating organization that has successfully nominated two winners of the Goldman Prize: Sharon Levigne (2021) and Marcel Gomes (2024).

Levigne is ​​a special education teacher turned environmental justice advocate who successfully stopped the construction of a US$1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana.

Gomes coordinated a complex, international campaign that directly linked beef from JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, to illegal deforestation in Brazil’s most threatened ecosystems.

04/16/2026

Overjoyed to be part of the World Federation for Animals and a movement that is putting animal welfare at the heart of global policy.

In 2025, we secured real gains for animals: from the historic Pandemic Agreement and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 's AMR resolution, to advancing a Wildlife for Climate Action Declaration at COP30.

Explore WFA's 2025 Annual Review and discover what we achieved together wfa.org/2025ForAnimals

03/26/2026

“I’ve seen the uncontrolled increase in animal farms, especially pig farms—more than 500 farms, some with 50,000 or 100,000 pigs. These are volumes of waste, excrement, and other hazardous substances generated, along with the use of hormones and antibiotics in the industrial processes of pig farming. All of this is having a tremendous impact on the aquifers.” — UN Special Rapporteur Marcos Orellana.
Following a visit to the Yucatán Peninsula, the UN Rapporteur warned about the environmental risks posed by the rapid expansion of industrial pig farms. More than 500 operations—some housing tens of thousands of animals—produce waste that can infiltrate the region’s highly vulnerable groundwater system.
Brighter Green has supported research and investigations by Patricio Eleisegui that examine the expanding footprint of these megafarms and their impacts on ecosystems, water resources, and rural communities.
Read more:
https://www.lajornadamaya.mx/.../relator-de-la-onu...
https://brightergreen.org/the-sprawling-reach-of.../

03/19/2026

"Defenders of the Yucatán" is a new online photo exhibition documenting the impacts of industrial animal mega-farms on Mayan communities in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

Created by investigative journalist Patricio Eleisegui and filmmaker Maricarmen Sordo, the project builds on Slaughter-land, winner of the 2025 Yale Environment 360 film contest, and emerged from reporting supported by Brighter Green’s Animals and Biodiversity Reporting Fund.

The exhibition features communities in Sitilpech, Kinchil, and Santa María Chí, where large-scale pig operations threaten water, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Nearly 70 percent of the region’s 800 mega-farms are located within the protected Ring of Cenotes.

First presented during the People’s Tribunal against Ecogenocide at COP30, the exhibition is now available online in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

View and share!

Denouncing a “slaughter-land” of exploitation and extraction A photo exhibition by independent journalist Patricio Eleisegui and independent filmmaker Maricarmen Sordo documenting the effects of mega-farms producing pigs and chickens on three Mayan communities. Click on each place name link belo...