The coronavirus pandemic sweeping across the world is causing physical, social and economic disruption on an unprecedented scale.By April 21, 2020, around 2.5 million Covid-19 cases had been reported across the world. More than 170,000 people had died, and the numbers keep rising. A huge...
Sustainability has become a popular term encompassing the notion that we need to promote and pursue policies that will allow future generations of humans to live and benefit from the wealth provided by the Earth. In 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted the 2030 Agenda...
Introduction to Promoting Well-Being: Human-Animal Interaction to Improve Mental and Physical Health and the Quality of Life by Alan E. Kazdin, PhD by Andrew Rowan, DPhilAs the world negotiates its interactions with and responses to an emergent coronavirus, it seems like an appropriate time for WBI...
“The bad news is that everyone is a potential victim / But the good news is that everyone is a potential solution.”So begins a recent song from Ugandan reggae singer-turned-lawmaker Bobi Wine, who has spent years singing about urban poverty and injustice. The new song,...
At the beginning of this century, a review paper (Daszak et al, 2000) highlighted the importance of the consumption of wildlife as a major source of a series of dangerous new “emerging” pathogens.The most well-known of these is the AIDS virus that was first recognized...
As I sit here tapping out this essay, one thing on my mind is how best to respond to the latest proposal on cats being promoted here in Hawaii by the conservation community. Here in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, conservationists are pushing the...
In February 2019, Wellbeing News carried an article discussing ideas relating to the state of well-being of People, Animals and the Environment. This article was followed by an item on the United Nations’ World Happiness Report in Tales of WellBeing. The World Happiness Report is issued...
[caption id="attachment_7103" align="alignleft" width="500"] Elephant calf drinking in Zakouma, NP, Chad as part of the largest elephant herd in Africa. Photo by Thomas Clode[/caption]The Chadian government established the Zakouma National Park, a 3,000 Km2 area in the south-east of the country, in 1963. At the...
Most of us will have had an occasion to rescue an injured or ill wild animal, whether it be a mouse that the cat has caught, a bird that has flown into a window or something more exotic. I suspect that we then scramble to...
I remember seeing a quote some years ago that distilled the problems we face as a human society down to one fundamental reason - viewing other people and other species as less than ourselves. I’ve continued to think about this as the harm we cause our...
