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IPBES 2019. Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
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IPBES 2019. Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services - Full Document
No full texthttps://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/boocov/1025/thumbnail.jp
The Meatless Thanksgiving Dinner Paradox
Get PDFAmericans will eat more plant-based Thanksgiving dinners this year. The percentage of Americans who do not eat meat has doubled in the past two decades. Per capita meat consumption in the U.S., though, has not changed in decades and remains among the highest in the world
Sentience and sentient minds
Get PDFMy commentary builds on Rowan et al.’s (2022) comprehensive review to address the question ‘what do we mean by sentience?’ It suggests how we might recognise degrees of sentience within the animal kingdom, ranging from primitive sensations such as hunger and pain to more complex emotions that determine quality of life
Of course crustaceans are sentient: But there\u27s more to the story
Get PDFWe are in basic agreement with Crump et al. that animal welfare, particularly with regard to the experience of pain, is a topic of importance. However, we come to the issue from a different perspective, one in which all species are sentient and can feel pain. The implications of this theory are discussed
Fine-tuning the criteria for inferring sentience
Get PDF“Sentience” means the capacity to feel, and feelings are private affairs. Sentience is hence extremely difficult to quantify in nonhuman animals. We have no direct means of determining whether an animal is sentient. Thus we rely on a series of indirect measures or criteria which collectively provide some level of confidence about the probability that an animal is sentient. Crump et al. propose a modified framework based on 8 criteria for estimating the likelihood of sentience in a target taxon. Whereas I very much like their proposed framework, I would suggest a couple of amendments that may improve it further: a weighting for each criterion and the addition of a “data insufficient” category (to differentiate lack of evidence from evidence of lack)
Why the recognition of sentience is so important for animal welfare
Get PDFRowan et al. (2022) provide a useful summary of the history and development of the philosophical, public, and legal recognition of animal sentience and its importance in improving the welfare of animals. Here I argue for the incorporation of the precautionary principle in sentience recognition, and the wider significance of sentience recognition to the current climate, biodiversity and human health crises
Living with Lions
Get PDFLions face many challenges in the modern world. We have written about lion breeding and conservation and lion trophy hunting in previous WellBeing News posts. But lions also suffer the consequences of human-wildlife conflict, and many are poisoned or killed by exasperated livestock owners when the lions prey on domestic animals. Recently, in a webinar on the lions of Zimbabwe by Dr. Andrew Loveridge of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (Oxford University), a new method of preventing human-lion conflict was described
UK Passes its own Animal Sentience Act after Leaving the EU
Get PDFWhen the UK (United Kingdom) voted to leave the European Union (EU), one of the
consequences would be the loss of legislation on various issues covered in
existing EU laws. The UK government had to pass new laws covering the many
items in EU legislation that would no longer apply to the UK, including the
statement in the EU governing treaty that animals were sentient. The
Conservative Government had promised to address the complicated range of
legislative gaps, including the declaration that animals are sentient beings, that
would be precipitated by the UK’s departure from the EU via new omnibus
legislation. As expected, the very complicated omnibus EU-departure legislation
did not address all the “gap” issues. In particular, the issue of animal sentience
was omitted. This omission prompted public dismay that animals would no
longer have the protection of the EU declaration that they were sentient beings
and led to a campaign calling on the Government to correct the omission. The
Government promised to do so and eventually developed an Animal Welfare
(Sentience) Bill to take the place of the EU language. On April 28, 2022, the United
Kingdom (UK) Government bill stating that animals are sentient received Royal
Assent from Queen Elizabeth, meaning that the bill is now an Act, the law of the
land. What does this new law mean in practice
Land Use & Food Supply
Get PDFIntensive animal agriculture provides increasing amounts of milk and meat (and fish) for human consumption. However, it also consumes many planetary resources and contributes to climate change. Given current trends, it seems almost impossible that we would change our eating habits to reach a point where we might both feed 10 billion people while also repurposing farmland for vanishing wildlife populations. However, several organizations have begun to question the ever-growing demand for animal products by pointing to the devastation animal agriculture is wreaking on the earth and examining the financial wisdom of continuing investment in the firms raising and supplying animal products for us to eat