WBI Studies Repository (WellBeing International)
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Sustainable Development Matters for Animals Too: Governments Have a Responsibility to Recognize That.
Get PDFAnimals matter for sustainable development, and sustainable development matters for animals. Yet animal welfare remains largely neglected in sustainable development governance. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to protect species, biodiversity, and habitats, but not individual animals. This June, governments will convene for the UN Stockholm+50 Conference, which marks 50 years of international environmental decision making. At this conference, governments have an opportunity to recognize the importance of animal welfare for sustainable development, and to aspire to harm animals less and benefit them more as part of sustainable development governance. We call on governments to take these steps for the sake of human and non-human animals alike
Social Progress Index
Get PDFWellBeing News has carried several stories about global happiness (e.g., World Happiness Report), subjective well-being, and happiness research centers. Happiness (and subjective well-being) research is booming, but these are not the only ways to measure global well-being. The Social Progress Imperative is a US-based non-profit that assesses international, national, and local progress using non-financial measures. The organization is best known for the Social Progress Index, which measures societal well-being using three dimensions. These dimensions include – basic human needs (e.g., nutrition, shelter, clean water), foundations of wellbeing (e.g., access to knowledge & information, wellness, environmental quality), and opportunity (e.g., personal rights & choice, inclusiveness, and access to advanced education). In all, the Index includes 53 social and environmental indicators to determine “what life is like for everyday people.” The Social Progress Index (Index) measures outcomes rather than inputs but does not include individual happiness, life satisfaction, or income and investment measures. It is, therefore, a different measure than the happiness/subjective well-being reports described in previous newsletters
Chinese Consumers’ Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare: Behaviors, Beliefs, And Responses To Messaging
Get PDFDespite being comparatively neglected until recently, the suffering of animals in Asia is starting to command more attention from global animal advocacy activists. In particular, as the largest country in the world by both human and farmed animal population, and among the largest when measured by economy and land mass, China plays a central role here. However, the key question of how best to improve outcomes for farmed animals in China remains difficult to answer, due to the recency of the movement and a comparative lack of research on the topic.
Although China’s per capita meat consumption is lower than most wealthier, Western countries (Ritchie & Roser, 2017), the country’s size and the rapid growth of its meat industry means that it houses and slaughters more farmed animals than any other country in the world (Faunalytics, 2022). Despite this, animal welfare remains a relatively fringe issue in China. Because of the scale of China’s agriculture industry, even small changes have the potential for an outsized effect.
For these reasons, research on animal protection in China is crucial. While previous reports (including Phase 1 of this study) have focused more on China’s animal protection community, this report seeks to shed light on Chinese consumers, and in particular, explore advocate assumptions that we identified in Phase 1.
After seeking input from members of the farmed animal protection community in China, we conducted focus groups regarding the attitudes of Chinese consumers towards meat consumption, the concept of farmed animal welfare, different types of messaging and strategies for encouraging movement growth
Animal Sentience: Moving Forward
No full textSpain has just passed a law declaring animals to be sentient, while the UK bill on animal sentience now includes invertebrate cephalopods and decapod crustaceans
Dog Ecology and Demographics in Several Areas in the Philippines and Its Application to Anti-Rabies Vaccination Programs
Get PDFUnderstanding dog population dynamics plays a vital role in planning both rabies and dog management interventions. Establishing a human to dog ratio and an understanding how the urban/rural nature of the community might affect the overall dog population estimate provides an easy-to-use reference to estimate approximate dog populations in a range of communities. A total of 10,664 households were interviewed in 10 locations in the Philippines (2017 and 2018) to understand the dog population variations among the urban, semi-urban and rural areas. Epicollect5 and OSM tracker applications were used to conduct household interviews using a predesigned fixed set of questions. All answers were recorded directly using mobile phone applications. The survey results showed that for every 1000 humans, there are 256.3 dogs in rural areas, 213.8 dogs in semi-rural areas, 208.7 dogs in urban areas and 170.0 dogs on small islands of the Philippines. We estimate a total dog population in the Philippines of 23.29 million dogs (CI 95%, 22.51–24.07 million). Based on the survey findings from Quezon City and Cebu City, targets, resources allocations and vaccination approach were adjusted for the anti-rabies vaccination program at two locations in 2018, which lead to a 3- to 4-fold increase in the total number of dogs vaccinated in each city compared to previous years
Humane Management of Global Dogs
Get PDFIn 2000, international animal protection organizations were spending around 400 million globally on animal protection, with approximately 5 billion a year on animal protection in the USA, with perhaps 10 million annually on dog projects. In the Far East, the number of animal groups in China, South Korea, Thailand, Japan, and the Philippines has increased substantially in the past twenty years. Municipalities and states (e.g., Uttarakhand and Sikkim in India) also have devoted funds to humane dog management. While nobody knows how much is spent on dog well-being and sterilization worldwide, dog protection has accelerated substantially this century
What might decapod sentience mean for policy, practice, and public?
Get PDFCrump et al. provide eight criteria for evaluating sentience in decapods, with scope for for application to other taxa. Their work has attracted the interest of policymakers. This commentary discusses the limitations of conceptual and legal acknowledgement of sentience in chainging practice and public attitudes. More work is needed. Social science may be able to help
Unconscious humans, autonomous machines and the difficulty of knowing which animals are sentient
Get PDFThe framework proposed by Crump et al. still leaves much doubt about whether invertebrates such as crabs are sentient. For example, many complex behaviours - even in humans - occur without sentience. Also, simple machines could easily meet all of Crump et al.’s eight proposed criteria for sentience. Acknowledging the limitations of what we currently know about sentience is important both for formulating legislation correctly and for advancing scientific understanding of this most puzzling of biological phenomena
How much of a pain would a crustacean “common currency” really be?
Get PDFWe should be suspicious of the idea that experiencing pain could enable animals to trade off different motivations in a common currency. It is not even clear that humans have a common motivational currency reflected in evaluative experience. Instead, pain may capture attention, inhibiting attention to competing motivations and needs, thereby making genuine trade-offs harder. Our criteria for pain in invertebrates should be part of a more subtle theory of the relationship between pain and decision-making
United Nations - Convention on Biological Diversity and COP15
Get PDFWith wildlife and biodiversity in an unprecedented crisis, pressure weighs heavily on the UN‘s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a multilateral environmental treaty that went into effect in 1993.
In December 2022, the CBD’s fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP15) will convene in Montreal to adopt an updated post-2020 Global BiodiversityFramework (GBF). This Framework replaces the 2011-2020 strategic plan including the Aichi five goals and twenty targets. These targets have not been met and now need to be updated.
Planning for this update on a new Global Biodiversity Framework at COP15 began in 2016. COP15 was initially scheduled to be held in Kunming, China, in October 2020. However, it has been repeatedly delayed because of the pandemic. A virtual first phase of COP15 was held from October 11-15, 2021. The in-person COP15 that should adopt the new GBF is scheduled for Montreal (where the CBD secretariat is located) from December 7-19, 202