For twelve days now, I’ve made a conscious effort to steer clear of eating animal products as part of my two-week vegan challenge. A recent UN study revealed that industrialized agriculture is a key player in climate change and resource depletion. It suggested a world-wide diet shift away from meat and dairy products is essential for alleviating our species’ growing environmental footprint.

In my upcoming posts, I’ll be exploring that vision for the future, and I invite you to do the same. If you have positive ideas and visions about how the future could change if we all backed away from animal products (for whatever reasons, be they moral, political or environmental), I invite you to share them. Let’s brainstorm. Let’s get excited about the possibilities.

I’m discovering that there are two ways to execute a vegan diet: You can either eat only those foods that are prepared vegan-ready, or you can learn to make meals for yourself by reworking ingredients, experimenting with recipes and learning about the food you’re preparing. Personally, I like the second option.

Female genital cutting is the practice of mutilation of a woman’s genitalia for non-medical purposes. The Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project works to educate and fight against the practice of FGC. This procedure is still performed in villages and countrysides around the world. Due to the unsanitary conditions of the procedure, many women suffer infection to their genitalia. These procedures are carried out by midwives and untrained medical personnel often without anesthetics. Women are already at a higher risk than men for HIV transmission because the mucous membrane that lines the vagina is porous, and FGC increases the already high risk of HIV transmission. Doctors assert that there are no medical benefits for the girls and women who undergo the surgery. It is an unsafe and painful process that scars young women mentally, emotionally, and physically for a lifetime.

This past December, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD)  found that Japanese authorities breached the rights of two Greenpeace activists who had uncovered corruption in the Japanese whaling program.