Giving Compass' Take:

• Impossible Foods received the 2019 United Nations Global Climate Action Award, and as more youth activists are demanding environmental accountability, they are turning their focus to plant-based meat companies like Impossible Foods.

• How can donors help support youth environmental activism focused on the plant-based food movement?

• Read about why these plant-based foods are more than a fad.

Impossible Foods has won a major environmental award from the United Nations and is urging youth activists to accelerate the global transition to a sustainable food system. The Silicon Valley food tech startup received the 2019 United Nations Global Climate Action Award, part of the UN’s wider effort to mobilize action and ambition as national governments work toward implementing the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals .

Impossible Foods’ award came in the “Planetary Health” category, which recognizes novel solutions that balance the need for human health and a healthy planet. Later today, Impossible Foods’ CEO and Founder Dr. Patrick O. Brown will accept the award with other winners at the 2019 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP25) in Madrid, Spain.

COP25 is the year’s most important environmental conference, with more than 25,000 participants from nearly 200 countries and about 50 heads of state. The conference focuses in part on how to reduce the impact of our meat-centric food system, including the depletion of freshwater, emissions of toxic greenhouse gases and biodiversity collapse.

The scientific community is quickly realizing that shifting to a plant-based diet is a simple, realistic solution to the existential threat of global climate change – not merely a way to significantly reduce ongoing GHG emissions but a realistic chance to turn back the clock on climate change.

Raising animals for food overwhelmingly dominates the humanity’s land footprint. All the buildings, roads and paved surfaces in the world occupy less than 1% of Earth’s land surface, while 45% of the land surface of Earth is currently in use as land for grazing or growing feed crops for livestock. The global demand for meat, fish and dairy foods is a primary driver of the catastrophic collapse in diverse wildlife populations and ecosystems on land and in oceans, rivers and lakes.

In 2019, more than 3 million young activists have taken to the streets to demand environmental accountability.

Read the full article about impossible foods at Malvern Daily Records.