This past month, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) issued a 168-page publication entitled Making Peace with Nature. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, comments in a Foreword that “Humanity is waging war on nature” and “Making peace with nature is the defining task of the...
In 2021, it is hoped that the world will slowly return to normal as an increasing proportion of national populations are vaccinated. Such a return will likely mean fewer people working from home and more pets spending their days with less human companionship. Animal groups...
Sidney Lerner, a New York advertising executive who developed the campaign “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” (Charmin is a US toilet paper brand known for its softness), recently passed away at the age of 90 on January 12, 2021. WellBeing International would like to convey...
The Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) featured in the article on conservation management in this newsletter includes several member conservancies in Lamu County on Kenya’s coast who joined the NRT in 2013.The three eastern-most conservancies (Awer, Kiunga and Pate) have a combined area of 215,000 hectares...
Over the last twenty years (that is, this century), there has been an explosion of interest in measuring “happiness” and “subjective well-being.” These measurements are beginning to be used in the development of public policy. Bhutan is commonly regarded as a leader in the field,...
In an earlier ‘Letter from the President’ in WellBeing News (October 2020), we mentioned that the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) has predicted that the production of animal products would have to double to meet global demand in 2050. This prediction...
As the end of the calendar year approaches, it seems an appropriate time to revisit the core principles that underpin WellBeing International’s (WBI) initiatives during its first two years. These concepts include the original foundational idea of the importance of the interconnectedness of people, animals...
The global growth of the number of internet users is remarkable. According to Internet World Stats, 63.2% of the world’s population used the internet as of October 2020. If children aged 0-4 are removed from the calculation, that percentage increases to 69.3%. If children aged...
A relatively recent saying, attributed to many different people, is that “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” In contrast, Peter Drucker, the global management guru, is quoted as saying that “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” ...
An earlier issue of WellBeing News explored the shifting historical baselines phenomenon. This phenomenon illustrates the tendency of ecologists to use recent wildlife population numbers as the baseline for their studies, even though the recent wildlife population may be much lower than the population 50...
