UC Santa Barbara

Animal agriculture, despite being a substantial contributor to climate change, is often neglected in discussions around solutions to climate change. Animal agriculture is a prominent contributor to global deforestation, air pollution, water pollution, biodiversity loss, degradation of arable land, public health threats, animal cruelty, worker exploitation, and ocean pollution. This thesis attempts to understand why more environmental, and in particular environmental justice organizations do not prioritize the issue of animal agriculture. Furthermore, this thesis attempts to understand the relationship between the environmental justice and animal rights movements in the US and the UK, what tensions have emerged historically and presently between these movements, how organizations and activists are attempting to overcome these tensions and to understand successful instances of collaboration between the two movements. Through my research findings, I declare that despite decades of peer-reviewed research exposing that animal agriculture accounts for 10-17% of global GHGs, policymakers and advocates have neglected the issue at the global, national, and local levels. It is imperative to look at each level to illustrate how the attitudes and perceptions towards animal agriculture permeate national borders and space. I align with David Pellow and many other BIPOC leaders as a part of a normative stance, that the only way to tackle the climate crisis truly is to embrace a Total or Collective Liberation framework (used interchangeably) of justice to begin to heal tensions between AR and EJ movements. A crucial part of working towards an interspecies Total Liberation framework and overcoming these tensions, paradoxically, is to center human rights issues present in industrial animal agriculture and work to integrate food sovereignty principles in outreach efforts to bridge the gap. embrace reduceterianism, engage in intersectional advocacy, promote resource redistribution, and embrace the movement ecosystem.