Green branding and misleading sustainability claims by companies, institutions, or policies.
The New York State Attorney General’s Office and the non-profit Environmental Working Group sued Brazil’s JBS and Tyson Foods over misleading “climate-friendly” claims for industrialised beef; after settlements, the companies retracted or revised their net-zero pledges, but eco-labels on packaging still need verifiable evidence.
In Andaman Sea mangrove villages, Muslim fishers, working with NGOs, have established community-managed protected areas—repairing seagrass beds destroyed by channel dredging, fighting for dugongs’ food, and shaking their heads at carbon-sink projects fencing off mangroves.
The insect protein race sparked by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report is really driven by soaring feed costs; French unicorn Ÿnsect has entered compulsory liquidation after becoming insolvent, while a UK Government-commissioned study shows that per-kilogram carbon emissions from insect meal far exceed soybean meal’s.
IPES-FOOD’s report Fuel to Fork dissects how the food system consumes at least 15% of the world’s fossil fuels—from nitrogen fertiliser in the fields and ultra-processed foods and plastic in factories, to supermarket refrigerated cabinets and household stoves—and offers eight decoupling recommendations.
Coaches day after day follow the same route along the village’s carefully arranged roads, telling eco stories to inspection groups and tourists; the scorched-black field ridges charred by herbicide beneath the rice paddies are selectively hidden in the display.
Meituan-funded environmental organisations once named and shamed food delivery plastic pollution, but their voices have grown quieter over the past two years. From the 2004 APP deforestation boycott by grassroots organisations to today’s waning civil-society oversight, the balance of power between public-interest organisations and polluting companies has shifted dramatically.
From deforested ranches in the Amazon to European supermarket shelves, Marcel Gomes of Brazil’s investigative organisation Repórter Brasil pieces together the route by which JBS and other Brazilian meat firms put illegally deforested beef into global markets.
Meituan, producer of food-delivery plastic waste, is now funding plastic-reduction environmental organisations. Shanshui Nature Conservation Centre co-founder Sun Shan and environmental advocate Ma Tianjie trace the complex funding relationships and strategic manoeuvres between public interest organisations and businesses, from Jinguang Paper to the Nestlé infant formula scandal.
American historian Bart J. Elmore traces how Coca-Cola used public tap water, government-subsidised sugar and discarded caffeine to build a market capitalisation exceeding one hundred billion dollars — while shifting the cost of plastic waste and obesity onto the public.
Starting with the 2,282-hectare community forest in Cambodia guarded by Bunong villager Long Heng, the report surveys global debates over REDD+, the voluntary carbon market and indigenous land rights, and asks whether emissions-reduction promises are credible.
