Letters from the President

Hot summer in the city | Photo credit: Tomwang112, iStock

Nov 10, 2022 COP27 – Can We Move Forward?

Posted at 16:44h In Environment Well-being, Ethics, Regulation, Law, Letter from the President, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil and Kathleen Rowan CEO, WellBeing International

Under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) opened in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on November 6 and runs through the 18th. World leaders, climate campaigners, and climate stakeholders are gathered amid challenging world economic dynamics,...

Pincushion protea | Photo credit: RapidEye, iStock

Oct 03, 2022 Biodiversity and the Smallest Floral Kingdom

Posted at 12:21h In Articles, Environment Well-being, Letter from the President, Sustainability/Biodiversity - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil and Kathleen Rowan CEO, WellBeing International

As attention to global biodiversity heats up because of the upcoming December meeting (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, media stories on the state of the globe's biodiversity are becoming more numerous. Humans love lists, and someone would inevitably produce a list...

Aug 24, 2022 The United Nations, Animal Welfare and the Environment

Posted at 10:55h In Animal Well-being, Animals, Environment Well-being, Letter from the President, Public Awareness/Attitudes, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil and Kathleen Rowan CEO, WellBeing International

IntroductionA sustainable global future requires the world to address the well-being of not only people but animals and the environment. This view is also the founding premise for WellBeing International (WBI). A one-minute video produced by WBI includes the following message. "A responsible caretaker of...

Jul 05, 2022 One Health for the SDGs but also for Nature and Animals

Posted at 11:29h In Articles, Letter from the President, One Health, Well-being - By Andrew Rowan

Earlier this year, an open-access paper on One Health and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was published (in the CABI One Health journal). The authors (from institutions in the USA, Sweden, and Brazil) noted that human, non-human, and environmental health are linked in the...

Fox and her kits | Credit: Fuchsfilm Helmut Seuetsch

Jun 02, 2022 The Well-Being of Wildlife

Posted at 09:53h In Animal Well-being, Articles, Letter from the President, WellBeing News, Wild Animals - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

The Wild Animal Initiative is a project to improve the well-being of wildlife. The project recognizes that improving the well-being of wildlife is very challenging but is, nonetheless, taking a proactive approach to the issue. Several members of the Initiative were speakers at the recent...

Octopus vulgaris | Photo credit: TheSp4N1SH

May 02, 2022 UK Passes Its Own Animal Sentience Act After Leaving the EU

Posted at 16:34h In Animal Sentience, Animal Well-being, Animals, Articles, Ethics, Regulation, Law, Letter from the President, Public Awareness/Attitudes, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

When 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...

Mar 31, 2022 Living with Lions

Posted at 14:12h In Animal Well-being, Articles, Letter from the President, WellBeing News, Wild Animals - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

Lions 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...

Mar 03, 2022 Plastic Pollution – Challenge for Life Below Water and Life on Land

Posted at 10:32h In Articles, Letter from the President, Oceans, Well-being, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil and Kathleen Rowan CEO, WellBeing International

[caption id="attachment_11965" align="alignright" width="300"] Endangered Hawksbill Sea Turtle caught in a discarded net[/caption] The Challenge The plastics revolution launched in the 1950s has led to the cumulative production of 8,300 million tonnes (MT) of plastic products and vast quantities of plastic pollution (6,300 MT). According to a...

Jan 31, 2022 Human-Wolf Conflict and Wolf Protection

Posted at 12:08h In Animal Well-being, Articles, Letter from the President, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News, Wild Animals - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

While there may be as many as one billion domestic dogs in the world today, estimates of the global population of grey wolves (from whom domestic dogs evolved) put the number at a paltry 200,000-250,000. Once, there were an estimated 2 million wolves in North...

Father and son | Photo credit: Avalon_Studio

Dec 31, 2021 Back to the Future and a Sustainable World

Posted at 12:56h In Articles, Letter from the President, Public Awareness/Attitudes, Well-being, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

As we bid goodbye to 2021, the world continues its struggles with Covid-19 and its new variants. It is only natural to focus on the present and tempting to reflect on periods in the past – a concept encapsulated in the "back to the future"...