 Welcome everybody to the event. Hi, nice to see you all. I see people are still joining the room. I can go ahead and get us started on the introduction to the event while people continue to trickle in. So welcome everybody to animal welfare and sustainable development, key linkages, collective responsibilities and policy opportunities. This is a Stockholm Plus 50 affiliated webinar sponsored by the Stockholm Environment Institute and NYU Animal Studies. My name is Jeff Sebo. I teach animal studies, environmental studies, bioethics, medical ethics, philosophy and law at New York University. And I'm honored to be moderating this event. So our speakers today come from a fairly wide range of backgrounds and experiences, areas of expertise, but they all share an interest in this topic and are going to talk with us today about why animals matter for sustainable development, why sustainable development matters for animals and how governments can start to address these issues. This panel marks the release of an open letter co-authored by three members of this panel, among others, which calls on governments to consider animal welfare as part of sustainable development governance. And so far over 200 experts have signed, other people are still signing, showing that a lot of people all around the world agree that we need to start considering animal welfare sooner rather than later. And the open letter itself comes on the heels of a policy report that was published on animal welfare and sustainable development last week as a background paper for the Stockholm Plus 50 conference and which fed into a section on animal welfare for the official independent scientific report for the conference. And so discussion is starting to happen around this important issue, which is wonderful and welcome. So our goal today is to unpack the main information and recommendations in those documents and facilitate a conversation about them so that we can all start thinking together about how to ethically and effectively consider human, non-human and environmental health holistically and welfare holistically when we go about making climate change mitigation and adaptation plans and other plans that are part of global international environmental governance. And this topic is essential to discuss because our treatment of animals is contributing to global health and environmental threats like disease outbreaks and climate change related fires and floods. And then these global health and environmental threats are in turn impacting human and non-human animals alike as are our mitigation and adaptation efforts. Additionally, scientists increasingly recognize that very many non-human animals are sentient which means capable of consciously experiencing pleasure and pain and other positive and negative states and ethicists increasingly appreciate that all sentient beings, everyone capable of consciously experiencing pleasure and pain and other positive and negative states, they morally matter for their own sakes in a way that generates responsibilities for individuals and collectives like governments. So we need to consider the links between human, non-human and environmental health not only for the sake of us and fellow humans but also for the sake of all of the other fellow animals. And Stockholm plus 50 is the ideal time and place to have this conversation. This conference marks the 50th anniversary of the first major international environmental conference. And while animal welfare remains relatively neglected in this space, governments now have the opportunity to change that thanks in part to the groundbreaking work done by the members of this panel. So in a moment, I'll introduce our panel and then each speaker will provide brief initial remarks I'll then ask our speakers questions meant to extend and integrate the conversation. And then I'll ask them questions on behalf of the audience as well. So all along the way, you can be typing questions and comments into the Q&A tab. And when the time comes, I will read out the most upvoted questions in the Q&A tab to our panel and we can hear what you have to say and respond to that. Okay, so now for some introductions and then we can get started. I'll introduce each speaker and then the comments will follow. First of all, Dr. Zerubabal Gettichu holds a PhD in international studies specializing in sustainable development. He's former deputy permanent representative of Ethiopia at the UNON chair of the African group in Nairobi for the year 2019 and chief negotiator for the animal welfare environment sustainable development nexus resolution which I imagine we will discuss. Cleo Vercal is research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute's Oxford Center. She previously led SEI's policy engagement in the area of climate change and was a coordinating lead author of the first two fossil fuel production gap reports published in collaboration with the UN environmental program. She is also a coordinating lead author of a forthcoming UN report on food systems. Cleo is taught environmental law and policy and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, Bologna and was a policy officer with Climate Action Network International during the Paris climate negotiations. Maria Jose Hoetzel is a veterinarian with a PhD in animal science and is a professor of applied ethology and animal welfare at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. She specializes in farm animal behavior and welfare as well as in human animal interactions with studies involving animals, citizens, consumers, farmers and other stakeholders. Her recent interests include antimicrobial use and resistance in pig and dairy farming systems and the relationship with farm animal welfare as well as consumers, farmers and other farming industry stakeholders, practices, knowledge and attitudes. Finally, Lassa Brun is an advocacy expert in climate sustainable development and food systems. He leads 50 by 40, a collective impact organization and network comprising 70 plus organizations engaged in food systems change across the world. He has led local, national and high level multilateral dialogues and campaigns in over 20 countries. In 2021, he was appointed the Global Civil Society Lead for the UN Food Systems Summit Action tracked two shifts to sustainable consumption patterns and was co-leading the summit work on managed sustainably existing food systems. Lassa is a postgraduate in rhetoric and linguistics from the University of Copenhagen, a part-time organic farmer using agroecology and intercropping techniques to grow vegetables. So that is the wide range of backgrounds that our speakers have and I'm really looking forward to hearing what they have to say. So without further ado, Zehra Babel, whenever you're ready, please feel free to take it away. All right, thank you very much, Jeff for the introduction and then first and foremost I wish to express my gratitude for your invitation to be part of this important webinar. Initial remark will be focused on why we have decided to negotiate on the resolution titled Animal Welfare Sustainable Development and Environment Nexus and what is the main ask of that resolution? First, we have come to appreciate or understand the concept related to animal welfare, I think, in relation to our participation in African Animal Welfare Conference that was successfully held by UNEP and the African Network for Animal Welfare Organization. So having participated in those meetings, we, the delegates in Nairobi started to appreciate the importance and the centrality of animals not only in achieving sustainable development, but beyond. So it is those many things that made us appreciate the animal welfare concepts. And then we have started to look into how the UN system somehow captures issues related to animal welfare. There are some provisions here and there on the UNGA Regulations 70 slash run, even on the Sustainable Development reports, but we couldn't be able to come up with or to find somehow provision that really captures the need. So we came up with and then we tried to bring a resolution for UNEA and then UNEA, as you knew, is the United Nations Environmental Assembly. So any resolution that is going to be adopted there is about the environment because it's the ministers of environment that adopt those resolutions. So again, the COVID pandemic has also taught us a huge lesson on our engagement with animals and how that affects within the framework of the environment affects the livelihood of human beings as well as animal welfare. So we try to fashion or coin this resolution with three variables. The first variable being animal welfare, the second variable being the environment and the third variable being animal welfare. And the third one being sustainable development. So we wanted to understand before we start prescribing, we should treat animal welfare in such a way or in this way or in the other first, we need to understand the nexus between this variable, especially we need to understand the nexus between animal welfare and the environment. That should be the starting point. That was our conviction. So we wanted to provide a context and then sustainable development happens to be or is the natural take to be the context within which we want to study the nexus. So this is how we crafted the resolution. At the very beginning, there were resistance here and there but we were determined to go all the length and finally we have achieved or the world adopted this historic resolution on animal welfare. And the main aspect of the resolution is asking UNEP to generate a report on the nexus between animal welfare environment and sustainable development. And in so doing, we understand that UNEP didn't have the entire mandate on animal welfare. So the resolution also invites other interested partners such as FAO, WHO, OIE and other pregnant expert panels to assist UNEP in the preparation of that report. So physically, this is where we started from and this is what we achieved during UNEP iPhone 2. Thank you very much, Jeff. Wonderful, thank you so much for those remarks. Very, very interesting context. Cleo. Yeah, thank you, Jeff and hi, everyone. I'm delighted to be part of this panel today because as Jeff was saying, the Stockholm Plus 50 conference that takes place next week marks the 50th anniversary of global environmental governance. And because of that, it's a really important opportunity to take stock of progress and challenges in environmental governance to date. And it's certainly clear that animals and their welfare have been overlooked in UN sustainable development policy over these last 50 years. So as perhaps the starkest illustration of that, the world has a global development agenda, the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, which contains 17 goals and 169 targets, but makes no mention of animal welfare. The agenda does have goals and targets related to preserving wildlife, habitats, and biodiversity, which are really important both for sustainable development and for safeguarding animal welfare, but they do only provide a partial picture. The focus on the species level doesn't take into account the welfare and intrinsic value of individual animals, which as Jeff was saying, we have an increasing understanding of the important self. In addition, the focus on wild animals in the 2030 agenda also overlooks the welfare of hundreds of billions of other animals with which we interact, such as farmed animals, also animals kept for entertainment and animals kept for research. So the UN Environment Assembly resolution that was just mentioned is a really important step forward in recognizing that the welfare of individual animals matters and that there are links with sustainable development. And it's really thanks to the leaderships of countries like Ethiopia, as well as civil society that this issue is higher on the agenda than it was even a few years ago. But we're not at a stage at all where we can take this progress for granted. For instance, for anyone who wants to take a look at the Stockholm Plus 50 website, there are official background papers there summarizing the state of the leadership dialogues that have been taking place over the past few months ahead of the Stockholm Plus 50 conference. Those documents don't mention animals or the animal welfare, except as I was saying earlier, like the 2030 agenda does on a more species and ecosystems level. So as Jeff mentioned, last week, the Stockholm Environment Institute together with CEW put out a policy report with input from a team of researchers around the world on why we should be considering animal welfare and sustainable development policy and how to do so. And I'll just share a few key messages from the report in these remarks. So the first reason that we need to include animals and sustainable development policy is that the way we treat animals directly impacts our prospects for sustainable development. There's many examples I could mention, but a really clear example of this are the impacts of the industrial livestock industry, which are known to cause high amounts of suffering for the animals that are involved. But the industrial form of agriculture like this also enables very high amounts of animal protein consumption and production, particularly in rich countries and among rich consumers, fueling adverse health impacts ranging from antimicrobial resistance to rising risk of infectious diseases, as well as in the case of red and processed meats, increased risk of non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. Industrial animal agriculture is also a significant contributor to many of the world's most urgent environmental challenges. The livestock industry is known to be responsible for around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It's also a key driver of deforestation, land use change, air and water pollution, as well as biodiversity decreases. So all these issues impact our ability to achieve sustainable development. And the second reason to consider animals in sustainable development policy is that sustainable development directly matters for animals. Just like us, animals are stakeholders of sustainable development. And the sustainable development challenges that we face are not only harming many humans currently, but also leading to large amounts of animal suffering. And as Jeff was also already mentioning, you only need to open a newspaper these days to read literally about billions of animals suffering or dying as a result of disease outbreaks like bird flu currently, or extreme weather events including heat waves, droughts, storms, flooding, et cetera. Perhaps less obviously, animals are also affected by the actions we take to mitigate or adapt to sustainable development challenges. For instance, if we shift from beef to chicken consumption for climate or health reasons, which is already happening in some places, we might actually harm many more animals due to the many more animals required for the same amount of food and the intensive housing conditions in which poultry tends to be kept. So from a policy perspective, we think that animal welfare impact assessments could play a key role in helping us understand these trade-offs and synergies better and to better identify policies that would support both mitigation and adaptation to environmental risks, as well as supporting animal welfare. And this brings me briefly to the third reason to consider animals in sustainable development, which is that there are a range of policy solutions out there to better mainstream animal welfare. To better mainstream animal welfare into sustainable development policy, which are co-beneficial to our health, to the environment, and to animals. And I expect that we'll get more into those policy solutions in the discussions. They're also covered in-depth in our reports. I think Lindsey has shared the link in the chat. So for now, I'll leave it at this. But animals do matter for sustainable development. Sustainable development matters for animals. And I think it's for our sakes as well as theirs that we need to start taking this issue more seriously in sustainable development policies. Thank you. Thank you so much, Cleo. Great, great summary of the policy report and animal welfare section in the official independent scientific report. Yeah, really, really important three points to keep in mind. We can now turn to Maria. So Maria, whenever you are ready, feel free to take it away. Thank you, Jeff. And also thank you, all of you attending and the former speakers that opened to what I was said to speak here, which is about animal, one health, one welfare, and why should we discuss animal welfare as a sustainable development goal? I think that Cleo explained much of what I wanted to say in very good words. But what I wanted to emphasize here is that we have some policies. One health is a framework that brings much of what Cleo was explaining. And we have focused much of this discussion on the health issues that arise from all these interactions that we are seeing. So we have many important and very critical issues like zoonosis. We have all seen what happened with the pandemic and how it can disrupt our lives and we're still learning of the origins and the consequences. But I think it was a good sample that we don't want to replicate too often. We have a very important issue that we have stopped talking a little bit because of the pandemic, which is the antimicrobial resistance issue. And that we exemplify very easily this interconnection. But when we discuss all this, we always keep living animal welfare aside because we speak of the animals for our benefit. It's not that people only care about our benefit, but it's easy to talk this way. So there's a growing movement to include animals more officially in our discussions. And in our scientific discussions, our policy discussions and our understanding of these interactions. So we now speak of one welfare, which is seeing all this interconnectedness, but considering animal welfare and human welfare as more central in the debate. And so what we're talking about animal welfare, and I think it's very important that we have a very good discussion and some conclusions about the conception that we make of animal welfare. Because the conception that we make of animal welfare will guide the goals that we want to achieve or can achieve with any discussion like we're having today. So it's growingly understood that animal welfare first is part of sustainability. It's also increasingly understood that animal welfare is a concern that comes from society. So we have to pay attention what society thinks about animal welfare, not just from a scientific point of view. So animal health is of course paramount to animal welfare, but we also have, but has already been mentioned twice, which is I think very important for society, which is that animals are sent in beings. And so we have to consider them central in this debate, not because of us, but for their own sake. And also another important issue that sometimes is important when we talk about what we will do about this issue, which is the natural lives of animals that they come after so many centuries of natural selection and that make animals the way they are and not the way we want to keep them in different ways. So if we can consider all these aspects in how we conceive animal welfare and we emphasize that animals, as has been said, I think it's one of the main important messages that animals matter morally for society and then we can move on. And if we analyze animal welfare and how it is connected to all other issues related to sustainability that were mentioned like biodiversity, greenhouse gas, all these issues that we have seen, they're not separate, they're all together. So this makes us understand very simply why we have to discuss animal welfare as one important issue in sustainable development. So thank you, Jeff. Great, thank you so much for that, Maria. Yeah, I agree that carefully distinguishing animal health and welfare and then biodiversity and ecosystem impacts is crucial because it is really important to protect biodiversity and to protect ecosystems. We absolutely need to do that, but we can keep a species from going extinct even while very many members of that species are suffering and dying unnecessarily because of human activity and that would still be a shame. So considering the animal welfare in addition to biodiversity is such a crucial part of this conversation. Great, thank you so much. And then last but not least, we have Lassa. Whenever you are ready, feel free to take it away. Thank you so much, and it's great to hear the speakers before me and welcome to everybody who's tuning in today. There's so many great points have been made already that I wanted to touch on. So I'll kind of skip those in the interest of time as well, but I thought it might be useful just to kind of set the scene for the work that I do, the premise of my work to speak, so to speak, because I want to zoom out a little bit and look at the food system more widely. And so a few things that I hold to be true. One is that we have a broken and fragile food system and that a fair and healthy and compassionate food system necessitates resilience, which we don't have at the moment. And also there's no global approach to addressing a just transition that is necessary of the food system. And there's no common theory of change across countries and lots of that on the institutions. And last but not least, the current global north and south balance of food and feed production is essentially a continuation of the colonial heritage we're dealing with. And all of this is very relevant for livestock production, which is some of the things I want to touch based on now, but I will be touching based briefly on why improved animal welfare would be good for the climate, the health and the economy. So the basics of why, what's wrong with the livestock production system now was already covered really well by Cleo. So I want to jump into talking a little bit about the people that produce the food that we eat. And it's crucial to prevent further unsustainable agricultural intensification and expansion in the global south, as was mentioned before as well, because actually the increasing animal production and consumption threatens livelihoods as small co-holder farmers. Because when CAFOS come into their countries, they are all competed and put out of work and often end up working for those farms. And that is very strongly then related to job creation. And some of you will know that the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Labor Organization in 2020 came out with a report that estimated that, looking at specifically at the Caribbean and Latin America that if a transition was made to more plant-based food production, they would see net increase in 15 million jobs by the year of 2030 and coinciding with the SDGs. So one of the things to take out of that report was that jobs in the plant-based food productions are safer, more equitable. They support gender parity and they strengthen rural economies when they're coupled with increased public services. So actually we're seeing the situation where as we are facing out some of the worst animal production system, like the CAFOS, the concentrated animal feeding operations and focusing much more on much less and better productions. We will be revitalizing rural economies. We'll be creating more jobs that are better and more equitable as well. And that will also increase the equitable food distribution across the planet. There's also some available lessons I wanted to tell just to mention here from the energy sectors for work on the just transition away from fossil fuels. We need to take those into consideration, not look at not just the socioeconomics but also the overall signal and sense. When you start overall talking about transitions in food production at a big scale multilaterally but also how it trickles down to national and local context, people start picking that up and it starts changing the mindset. So we have a coupling with the consumption aspects of behavioral change and the production of the food. So we need to take some of those lessons that we have learned from shifting away from a fossil fuel based economy to renewable based economy and use those techniques and those methodologies for the livestock sector. And that's what we've coined as the just livestock transition. So politically multilaterally, we need to talk about the common but differentiated responsibility when we have to do this because it's clear that we need to focus on those who've created the problems are the ones who have to clean up the mess in the first place which means that the only sub-responsibility of cutting down on animal protein consumption, sorry, production and consumption lies with the G20 countries particularly. So what does all this have to do with animal welfare and sustainable development? Well, it seems there is a way we can shift to feeding the global a planet in a way that provides ecosystem services, provides equitable food distribution and remains within the planetary boundaries, strengthens a financial growth trajectory and animal welfare plays a big part in them. And why is that? Well, some of the points were made already but I just think personally that without the basic respect for animal lives and the wellbeing, it will also be difficult to further extend that to nature and climate. If people do not have an inherent respect for other living creatures, how can they worry about the climate, about the rivers, about the forest? And I think when you talk about, we can talk about cognitive dissonance later on, but when you talk about the respect for the living beings, animals will have to be up there as one of the first points to move to the other aspects. So I think as we decrease livestock production, there'll be fewer animals present and those who are left can be treated better. And all those aspects was mentioned by the previous speakers, but particularly within for the economy, I think that's important because unless we can talk about having a better system for animals like a sustainable development that takes into consideration and welfare that also takes into consideration growth, trajectory, increasing better GDPs. I don't think we have a winning case. So the economy here plays a really big part. And finally, as Maria just want to mention that I strongly believe that in the inherent value of animals and that the sentiment for the inherent value of animals is actually a natural thing that is incremental to human nature and often it is external factor society that takes us away from that sentiment. Thank you, I'll be there. Great, thank you so much for that. The connection between social, economic and environmental justice is just crucial here as crucial as the link between human, non-human and environmental health and recognizing the need to couple these efforts with just transitions for consumers and workers, for example, to make sure they can access food and income that can be helpful and sustainable. And with respect to international relationships making sure that high income nations who are disproportionately responsible for the problem are disproportionately responsible for helping to address the problem in a way that works with other countries and provides them with support. So thank you very much for mentioning those important points. I am now going to open up a discussion with our panelists. And I have a brief follow-up question to ask each of them in order to extend and integrate the discussion together. But beyond that, I hope to be able to relay audience questions and comments to them. And I know we have a lot of people here and looking at the list, I can see that a lot of people here are experts on this topic. So please again, do feel free to enter your questions and comments in the Q&A tab and I will then present as many as I can to our speakers and we can hear what they have to say in response to you. Okay, so to get us started, Zero Bottle, I was wondering if you could help set our expectations. What can we realistically expect as an outcome from Stockholm plus 50 related to animal welfare? I know sometimes change is excruciatingly slow. It takes many years, but other times positive change can happen surprisingly fast as we witnessed with the animal welfare resolution earlier this year. So can you tell us what you would hope and expect to see at this conference around this issue? Thank you, Jess, for the question. Yeah, it is really the right question at this point in time. Yeah, we need to appreciate where we're coming from. We're coming from all these STGs, you know, all of these indicators. Then we have what, none of them are about animal welfare. We need to appreciate where we are coming from. And then the other day we had adopted that important resolution on animal welfare. Even during the negotiation, the first, like one of the primary talents we faced was first to have a common understanding on the term animal welfare itself. For the practitioners, for the academia, I think issues pertaining to animal welfare, you know, the arguments, you know, all the angles, the perspective that the theories are there, but, you know, it's absence from the policy-making platform somehow was one of the primary challenge that we faced even to introduce the resolution and so on. So that was the primary, that was the primary challenge. You know, after we have invited experts, you know, renowned expert from all over the world, from, you know, from the civil society, from the African Union Inter-Bureau for Animal Resources. You know, that's when, you know, we started, you know, delegations start to, you know, appreciate even the concept of animal welfare. And, you know, the next question becomes, okay, you're talking about animals, then what are you like, this is the wrong platform to discuss about animals. I think, yeah, we discussed the environment. So you're bringing, you know, an alien, a very strange concept into, you know, this discussion, and it's difficult for us to, you know, continue this discussion on negotiation because first, we don't have the mandate to do so, second, we didn't even understand the concept to begin with. So these were, you know, the initial reactions from several delegations. Of course, we don't understand that, you know, not all delegations should not be, you know, you need to, you know, read the line, you know, between the line and beyond the line. Like, I don't understand, you know, the political stance behind these assertions. I don't take them, you know, literally forward, like forward. So, well, we have started, you know, being honest from nowhere. I'm not saying that there were no attempts elsewhere. Yes, I'm aware that, you know, there are attempts, you know, even within the UN system, you know, to come up with this, you know, to champion animal welfare in intergovernmental policymaking, but we couldn't be able to do so. So this is why, you know, like, this is why we wanted to limit ourselves to wanting to understand the nexus. So we're not going to say, because like, yes, like an academic person would come up with an argument, would come up with, you know, the fact, you know, or the premises with the logic and model, you can come up with, you know, a full-fledged argument, but that doesn't work in intergovernmental policymaking. You know, there are, you know, there's only what perspective think, because like everything is central to a unique perspective. This is why, as I said, we limited ourselves. Okay, we're not going to prefab anything here because we ourselves, the sponsoring countries, seven of us, we ourselves wanted to understand the nexus. We know there is a nexus, but we're not going to talk about, you know, whether the nexus goes this way with this kind of magnitude and latitude and latitude. We don't do that. Let us have an independent independent panels, independent scientific board or expert sitting together, the same way UNEP developed the global environment outlook, let's have the same assessment report on this nexus. Let's science tell or inform the policy. That's the beginning. That's what guides everything. Coming to the, what do we expect during or on called last 50? Understand to understand, I see evolution. I see continuity. Concepts that were not there were integrated along the way. When, for instance, like we, when humanity met in Stockholm 50 years back, the issue was, I think, are we going to what, prioritize the environment or are we going to prioritize human development? Those were the two pillars dividing the way. That's what the reports are telling us. But we managed to reconcile these two important variables and we came up with these three pillars of sustainable development. So, you know, that's, you know, a compromise that the world has reached. You know, like at this point in time, what we have reached, what humanity has reached, that compromises, you know, these three pillars should come together so that, you know, we have a future for ourselves. So, so my understanding of continuity in this process, my understanding of compromise, even if like, like at this point in time, I cannot say, oh, we're going to have an action point on animal welfare on this one, on this one. But I think like, like, it's like, you know, a relay. Like, you know, it's like, you know, it's not, you know, a short distance race. This is a relay where, you know, you need to contribute your fair share of, you know, the thing and then the, you know, the other will, will, will follow suit. So I think in Nairobi, we did this. We have appreciated, understood the concept of animal welfare. We have seen, we have seen its relation with environment, its sustainable development, but we want science to prove to us, to tell us, to inform us, to educate us so that we can come up with the right policies. So I'm not sure, like, I hope this resolution is going to be the first and the last resolution. Many more will come depending on the report. We want now science to tell us. And I'm sure Stockholm, I think there is an opportunity now because, you know, there is knowledge out there, unlike other times. Now we know more about it. Now that the least thing we know is continuity. The least thing we know is what? There is interconnectedness among different variables. Like, we cannot think in silos anymore. So at least the least thing that we could do is to recognize that there is a need to address it. Because even if we don't know it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist. So we need to leave room for maneuver. And I think this resolution, somehow positively contributes, you know, for my, you know, positive, what, expectation towards this, towards, you know, how Stockholm philosophy would, you know, I think absolutely no capture issues but then into animal welfare. Like, honestly, like, I really want to be well, like pragmatic in this one. Like my expectation is not, you know, that much, but I would be happy. Like, personally, I would be happy very much and come from a country, Ethiopia. You know, well, you know, the cattle population is huge. Like, first in Africa, I think 9 or 10 in the world. And understanding how Michael, like our people, our communities like, like understanding the interaction between animals and like my community. And I think, I think Stockholm, I think it's like, should be the starting point of recognizing animal welfare. And I think, and then everything will follow from that. That's my humble expectation. Thank you very much. Great, thank you so much. That was very, very, very interesting and helpful. So thank you for that. Just so our other speakers know, we now have about a dozen really great questions the Q&A tab, which is already too many for us to address. So I will ask you a few follow-up questions before we get to the audience questions. But if we can keep the answers to a minute or two, then we can get more questions in from here. So with that in mind, Cleo, I know you were the lead author of the policy report that was just published as a background paper and fed into the official independent scientific report. And that included specific policy recommendations about how to implement the idea that animals matter for sustainable development and sustainable development matters for animals. And we can find co-beneficial solutions for humans and other animals at the same time. So I was wondering if you could give us one or two examples of policy recommendations that are made in the report. Sure, Jeff, thank you. I will keep it brief, but I think it's important to sort of note that the report talks about mainstreaming animal welfare into sustainable development governance, which kind of already implies that it's not one silver bullet policy that is going to fix these problems. It's actually just like all other sustainable development issues, something that really needs to be considered across different sectors at different levels of governance. The international level is one. Different environmental agreements, trade agreements, for instance, could be considering animal welfare more. Maria also talked about the One Health framework, which is gaining increasing recognition and attention, including at the UN level, which is great. But still at the moment, we see that framework tends to emphasize animal health rather than welfare, and also emphasize the health of animals primarily insofar as it's relevant to the health of humans rather than recognizing it as an important issue in itself. So those are definitely areas that at the international level could use more work and that can trickle down to the national and local levels. I also just wanted to highlight better reports. Identifies quite a few different policy responses that are relevant to the national and local levels. And I'll just mention them briefly. They include things like information and awareness raising. Governments really do have a responsibility in that area that are labeling in terms of animal welfare impacts of different products, not just food products, but the other products that we consume could be valuable in that regard. Think finance is a huge issue that we should be looking into more at the moment governments, even from the very richest countries, subsidize big animal agriculture in a way that's detrimental to our health, the environment and animal welfare. And we could be redirecting those subsidies to have co-benefits in all these areas. Regulatory, we just need stronger rules in many places to protect animals and also a better implementation of the rules that exists. And just to pick up again on Lasz's points, because it's so important about just transitions, like if we know we need to shift to healthier, more environmentally friendly and more compassionate societies, that is going to mean changes in different sectors and lifestyles. And governments can play a really important role nationally and locally, sort of assisting that transition, investing in education and skills and jobs to help people move that along. But also there's again, an important international dimension there where we were talking about common but differentiated responsibilities and that the global North really has a responsibility to support other countries in making these shifts towards more sustainable and healthier and compassionate policies globally. Thanks. Great, thank you. Very, very comprehensive and I think good ideas. So Maria, I have a kind of parallel question for you which is obviously these issues are very complicated and there are a lot of uncertain needs that we are still facing. And so while we do have these initial policy recommendations that we can advocate for implementing, we also need to be conducting research so that we can be answering some of the new questions that we face if we wanna do this work well, questions about animal welfare, about human-animal environmental interactions. So I was just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit, what are some of the research questions that you see as particularly pressing that would help us to create better approaches to our interactions with other animals? Thank you for the question. I was reading also some of the questions that people made and we will not be able to answer all. So I thought of these questions to answer this question. First of all, we are focusing a lot here in animal production for food, but we have to acknowledge that it's a larger issue of food production. I think it's a very important issue, but it goes beyond because even indirectly to aid food production, but in itself we use animals for research, we use animals for education, for entertainment, for many other reasons. And we have to manage animals that are interacting with us in different ways. So to have answers to propose to this different sustainable way of seeing animal welfare, first we need to continue having basic research, to continue giving the answers to what animals feel how they cope with the environments that we have and that we change where they live and so on. So the basic research is very necessary too, but we also need beyond the natural sciences, we need to integrate the social sciences is a very important aspect of animal welfare science and to do interdisciplinary science so to understand the issues of the animals and what we are doing to the animals and also have the ethical debate in this scientific analysis say because this is some of the questions that people ask. Are we analyzing all this from an animal welfare from an animal rights perspective? And so we need to know more about how society sees these issues too, because we don't have much information about that. We have general ideas. So I think it's also very important to have this type of research too. What civil society, what consumers, what all the people that are users of the animals, direct users of the animals like farmers, like people that manage the animals and that have an interest what they do to the animals and why they do these things to the animals and what would they change or not because otherwise we propose solutions that are not sustainable because they will not be able to use them or they won't want to use them. So it's not a single question, not a single research question, it's simple, but I think it has to be integrate the natural and the social sciences and try to be more interdisciplinary. And another thing I think is important is that we have in parallel to our discussion much more research on continuing to do the things as we do. So we have to somehow do all these researchers to understand that sustainability and all the issues that we're saying, including animal welfare is also important for them. So I think this is important to them. Great, thank you so much. Yeah, I think that highlights one of the main themes of this discussion which is the interconnections across these issues. If human and non-human and environmental impacts are linked and if social and economic and environmental justice links, then we need to study those issues in linked ways, which means working together, collaborating across academic disciplines, the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences in a way that researchers are not often used to doing. We all stay in our silos. So we need to break out of our silos and work together across fields in order to address these issues. So thank you for making that point. And then finally, Lassa, I wonder, Zero Bottle and others have touched on this briefly, but I wonder if you could say a little bit more about why it has taken us so long to get to even this point of talking about animal welfare in the context of sustainable development. What are some of the biases and other obstacles that stand in the way of future progress that we should be mindful of as we try to have these discussions? Well, that's a big question. If I could answer that very correctly, I would probably have been a good place to write a book about it, but I'll take an attempt here, make an attempt. There are several things to it. I think one is that in particularly in the case of development, animal welfare has always been seen as a luxury. Like people are dying, the planet is coming to a close, there's inequitable food distribution. Why should and could we even care about how animals feel when people are dying? That's an old school dichotomy differentiation that's always been there. You know, we're still as a society, particularly in the global north, very influenced by a Catezian thinking, whether we like it or not, it still triggers through the mindset. So I think that that's one thing is that it's always been seen as a luxury as an add-on and not as something that actually can bring positive benefits, co-benefits for human development and for planetary development as well. It's not based on science, it's based on perception, I think. And also like some of my fellow panelists have been speaking to that. So I think that's one thing. The other thing is also around cognitive dissonance. And I think like you can start the question like, who does governance, also does policies and convention govern people or do people govern policies and conventions? And it should be the latter. And there's a general progression in society where people are starting to see the importance of farm animals as well as part of sustainable development. Because the cognitive dissonance issue here is that most people have an affinity for pets, dogs, cats. Horses, what have you, rabbits. And less so for farm animals. And that cognitive dissonance is slowly, I think being blown into pieces because people are starting to see the connection between the animals that are produced for food and how that might as well be something that happened to their dog. So there are a lot of thinkers doing work in this field. And I think slowly we're starting to see some breakthroughs there. But overall, I think it's also part of a societal progression. Like we've seen in recent years, there's been so many breakthroughs for women's rights. Just look at what the Me Too movement has accomplished like lives matters. And so many other fields where massive breakthroughs have been made in terms of taking those who before have been disadvantaged or being pushed down, giving them some space and allowing for society to develop to a space where everybody's equal. Well, this has been mainly within the human space, but the development of society generally should leave space for an open-minded thinking that will take into consideration other living beings as well. And that's all in one of the comments or questions as we talk about anthropocentrism. And I think, of course, that is a big issue here. Great, thank you so much. And there are so many questions now in the Q&A tab. So I'm going to try to get through as many as possible. I suggest that as much as possible, we limit each question to one response so that we can try to get through as many questions as we can. So I can also group some of them together. Several people have asked variations of the question, does this policy report do these recommendations go far enough? We spent some time talking about why some people might be worried they go too far. Animal welfare is a luxury. We need to focus on humans and prioritize humans. So maybe considering animal welfare goes too far. But other people wondered, does this not go far enough? Perhaps we need to be considering stronger frameworks, more expansive definitions of welfare, animal rights, animal justice, and a stronger set of policy recommendations that would incorporate these stronger definitions of welfare along with rights and justice. And so I wonder what your thoughts are about that, as well as this related question, how do you strike a balance in this kind of context between your ideal set of recommendations and a more practical achievable set of recommendations? Does anybody have thoughts on that? How about you, Cleo, since you were the lead author of the policy report? Sure, thanks, Jeff. I can make a start. Yeah, thank you for the question. I think it's a really important one. And in many ways it really just reflects the state of the debates around animal welfare and rights, which there are many different people with many different views on this topic. And there's not one view that we know is correct. And Mr. Getichio was also referring to that. In our current policy brief, we have really been trying to speak to the audience of sustainable development policymakers. And as we heard during this panel, this issue just hasn't been on the radar of sustainable development policymakers much at least explicitly for the last decades. And so we thought it would be valuable to come in from an entry point of a definition of animal welfare that has been agreed by the World Organization of Animal Health so that governments have already subscribed to. And then go from there to see what implications that definition has for our sustainable development practices. And we find that even with that very modest definition, actually really significant changes are necessary in our treatments of animals and also by implication how we do and achieve sustainable development. That's not to preclude other approaches that might be stronger. And I think definitely there needs to be a space to continue those conversations. But we hope that this report, as well as obviously the UN Environment Assembly resolution can sort of open the door for these discussions more. So that we can have a much more holistic discussion about the welfare and the rights of animals and also bringing different worldviews and cultural views, not just the science community, but other indigenous communities that aren't usually reflected in these discussions. So definitely this is not like the only way to think about it, it's one way to think about it and we're hopeful that it will lead to much more conversation and thinking on this topic. Can I add something? Yes, please do. Just following on what Claire was saying and also what Blasi was saying earlier, I think that we're advancing in our thinking about animals, I mean society. So I agree with this point of view that we have to have a starting point from where to advance. And I think we will advance very fast if we start talking more about this, making animal welfare more visible to society. And then this is what I was saying that we need research even on that, on understanding better what people understand, what different people understand about animal welfare to exactly to include this on the agendas I think. Great, yeah, thank you so much. I think a lot of people can assume or believe that welfare and rights are conflicting ideals that we can either promote one or promote the other. But I think if you do them well, they can be mutually reinforcing and promoting animal welfare could be a step on the path towards stronger visions of how humans can interact with non-humans and adjust an equitable way in the future. And so hopefully this conversation can be in service of that. Okay, there are also some questions actually which maybe Maria and Zerubaval would be well positioned to answer from a scientific and international policy perspective questions about animal welfare. So you mentioned that in the lead up to the resolution in the spring, there were a lot of discussions about how are we defining animal welfare and is that definition strong enough one person in the Q&A asked about the five freedoms and other conceptions of animal welfare that go beyond mere preventing them from experiencing pain and suffering, right? And so I guess my question is from a scientific perspective, Maria, what way of thinking about animal welfare do you think is most useful and productive in this context? And Zerubaval, what kind of definition of animal welfare do you think is most tractable and effective in this context? Sorry, I don't understand what did you ask? What definition? I think this definition that you can cope with the three elements that animal health, how animals are feeling and are they living reasonably natural lives? I think it is tractable because of course you have to then define it. So define three terms detailed in some, somehow. And I think, I don't know if I'm answering your question but I think it is a good starting point. No, you very much are. The question was related, the question and the question and answer was related to wild animals and how can we apply this? So we have many questions about these wild animals. We will want to manage them. We will maybe, some of them will die because we will try to save some others. And then it's an ethical question more than an animal welfare question. And sometimes we think about ways of killing them and what is a humane way of killing an animal? So it goes to the issue of animal feelings. Do we care about that or not? Because it's a wild animal. So I think this is one of the questions. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to talk more about that time permitting. Sarah Babel, I was wondering if you could speak to this question from a policy perspective? All right, actually this question we deliberately avoided it during the negotiations because we couldn't come up with definition that can satisfy everyone. So, yes, so the issue is even when you look at the resolution, it's one of the shortest resolutions. Even, I think that's kind of... I can still hear you and see you. Sarah Babel appears to be frozen. Are you back? Can you hear us? I can hear you, I think I'm back. Okay, great, yes, please continue, we can hear you. No, right. So I was saying that we have deliberately avoided the issue of definition because we couldn't come up with any single definition that can speak to everyone. So we left that to be handled in the report itself. This is why we have invited all the other partners such as WHO, FAO, OIE and there is the expert panel. So we wanted to avoid it because we know for sure that we couldn't be able to arrive as a consensus. So we just deferred it to the report and during the preparation of the report, I think each definition works better. I think the experts can debate and come up with that. So I think this is how we managed to avoid and create some sort of constructive ambiguity so that we achieve the main target and that is to agree on the need to have that message. Great, thank you very much. You got very, very interesting. And Maria, I also love that you mentioned wild animal welfare in particular in response to one of the questions. I think it can be very easy for people to forget about the wild animals and focus on the captive animals and many veterinarians are trained to specifically focus on farm animals, lab animals, other captive animals, as opposed to all of the many wild animals that were impacted by human activity. And so remembering that they are stakeholders too and for that matter, the liminal animals, the ones who live in cities and other quote unquote human environments, those animals are stakeholders too. So learning about their welfare is very important. I appreciate you making that point. I now have a question for Lhasa. There are a couple of questions in the chat that I thought you and possibly Cleo as well might be positioned to answer, which is can you say a little bit more about what kind of food system reform and transition would help reduce harm across the board, reduce harm to humans and animals and the environment across the board rather than, for instance, as Cleo mentioned, substituting beef and having chicken instead where maybe that would be better for the climate but worse for animals, right? So what kind of food transition would be good for humans and animals and the environment at the same time? And then another person asked, is there a version of that that does still include animal agriculture and animal products or is the only option to gradually with a just transition move towards a plant-based food system? Thanks a lot. Happy to give this a go. First of all, I think it's important to always look at food systems and change from a very holistic perspective, not just in terms of climate, environment and health but also in terms of multilateral connections. In fact, the way the food system is connected today through trade agreements, commodity markets is just so huge and so complex that making small changes are difficult. And just to put it into perspective, I used to work a lot on energy transition, just transition within that and there's roughly 40 million people working in the energy sector. There's about 1.2 to 1.3 billion people working in the food system whether it's small holders, large scale producers or what have you. So the transition we need is huge. So we need to be cognizant of the scale of what we're trying to achieve here. But the benefits of shifting to a system that is less reliant on livestock will be huge like we already talked about the environmental aspects of a climate change perspective, from a health perspective and from a general environmental like water protection, species protection and so forth that was already mentioned. But I think it's important to keep in mind that we as we make this shift as was already pointed out by Clio, that one-to-one focus on emissions for instance is not gonna cut it because if we shift from beef and land like the highest emission pieces of meat to chicken and fish for instance that will not be a good solution definitely not from a health perspective because of the system that entails definitely not from an environmental perspective and specifically not from an animal perspective. Another point to make is the importance of not shifting a one-to-one. You're seeing right now there's a huge growth in alternative protein which is great as transition food and has lots of great opportunities to it and alternative protein being like plant-based meats or cell-based meats. But also it's important that we just don't shift the ownership from a heavy meat production to heavy alternative protein production that within the shift we want to see we have to focus on a social justice and equitable food distribution and eventually be guided by food sovereignty because we need if we end up in a world where the same owners and we all know who they are of the food current food production, the biggest owners just as shifted from animal production to plant-based production we're not gonna see an equitable food distribution there's not gonna be affordability and accessibility to food and so forth. So we need to take all stakeholders including the animals into the consideration when we do those equations and have a much stronger collaboration between those who have nothing and those who have a lot and wants to shift it to something else they have a lot of and take that full equation because if we don't merge the market economy that drives like the burst of alternative protein with access to food, we're not gonna be in a good place. So to the second question and then I'll allow Nick Cleo to come in with a probably a much better perspective. The second question is could we be, should we be moving to like a quote unquote plant-based world? Well, from an utopian perspective that would be nice because it would be good for health it would be good for the animals it would be good for land use we could free up tons of land and bring back wildlife which right now wild animals constitute like 4% of the global biomass which is so tragic bring back all that but also realistically that's not gonna happen anytime soon. So I think it's important to keep talking about less and better as a guiding principle that we need a drastic decrease in animal protein production and consumption but at the same time what is left should be moved over to a system that is focused on working with nature as against nature and working with the animals as much as possible. It's not easy and for those who are into philosophy it's kind of merging a little bit of singer and French Yoni documentation here and finding the best way forward but I think as we are progressing as a society as we talked about before I think there is a way forward but it's gonna take a lot of effort and most of all it's gonna take all of us working together. Thanks, great answer. Cleo, did you have anything that you wanted to add? Thanks, Jeff and Lassa, that's a great answer. I maybe could link this question a bit to an additional question in the chat which is about basically the differences between different countries with very different levels of developments and even within those countries people with very low incomes, et cetera. And I think this question and many of the other kind of policy issues that we touch upon in our report are really important context for what we're talking about because it really isn't the case that we can just mention or recommend one policy that fits across the board. We really need to be very careful and cognizant of these differences especially in the international sustainable development space where you have many people representing people who are not achieving basic development needs at the moment. And in those contexts, it's very understandable that people who are facing a lack of protein and micronutrients might actually benefit in the current context from the consumption of more animal products. Like Lassa said, there would be benefits in the longer term to perhaps shift away from these systems if we can find ways to support humans in other ways. But I think again, going back to these equity discussions and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is precisely because of these global inequities that also the global north really needs to be moving forward with this agenda much more quickly. That could help improve food security in the global south because currently grains grown elsewhere are used to feed livestock that rich consumers are eating. And so I think it's really important that richer nations are also thinking about how they can support more low income countries in making these transitions. And one additional aspect in there is for instance how the multilateral development banks are actually currently funding industrial animal agriculture in lower income countries. And we could really be thinking of more creative ways rather than sort of pursuing or replicating a very damaging status quo. We could be thinking about more sustainable healthier models that are better for animals and people rather than locking in these systems that really aren't working here and can't be replicated elsewhere either. But it's a very nuanced discussion and I think we need to keep having it. And again, I'm so glad that this report has been commissioned because I think it's the starting point for many of these approaches and also different contexts to come to the fore because they're central to finding the right solutions for different contexts. Great, thank you so much. So we have a couple of minutes left. So I thought I would take one of the remaining questions in the chat and pose it to each of you to offer a brief answer that can be coupled as your closing remarks. And the question is, what can we do next? As Zahra Babel mentioned, this is a marathon, not a sprint or a relay race, whatever racing metaphor you want to use. This is going to take a long time to pay off and see real policy change for non-human animals. So beyond Stockholm plus 50, what do we hope people in this community who care about animal welfare and sustainable development can be doing in order to raise awareness about these issues and affect positive change? So I'll call on you in the order in which you spoke. Zahra Babel, do you have any thoughts about that? Can we do the lessons speak on this one? Ah, okay, fair enough. So Cleo, how about you go? Sure, so I've already spoken quite a lot about what governments can do and that's also because our report is really focused on governments as key actors in the space. So maybe I'd like to highlight here the rule that other sustainable development organizations can play. Like I've been in the space for more than a decade. I follow a lot of the international environments and negotiations and all kinds of topics, climate, SDGs, et cetera. And there is just not that much coming from sustainable development organizations as related to this topic. There's really great work being done by animal welfare animal rights organizations trying to raise awareness of the relevance of these issues, but maybe an invitation to colleagues in the sustainable development space that there's a lot of research and policy questions, contextual questions that need answering and awareness raising that needs to happen. And I think it would be really valuable if the animal welfare and sustainability communities came together a bit more to try and resolve these issues because we really discussed how broad and how diverse these issues are. They really cross many issue areas from health environments, developments, jobs, incomes. And so we needed a lot of people working on these issues at the same time. Great, thank you, Maria. I'll be very short. I would like to invite all animal welfare scientists to become more enthusiastic and also invite other researchers to work on a framework where animal welfare is all about sustainability and not other possibilities like extending the systems that we know failed and have tools to change. Many of the ones present here are already in this, but we have to bring more to the boat. That's absolutely right. And thank you to all of those people for being here and doing that work. Lassa. I would move to what people individually can do and say use your financial voting power because I think it's one of the strongest tools you have in addition to political voting power, which is demand of your financial institutions to use their money in the right way, like in terms of investments every month, your salaries are being used for doubtful investments, including in operations that are very detrimental to sustainable development and animal welfare and demand that they change. And if they don't shift to an ethical bank or credit union, I think that plays a massive role and I would encourage anybody to scrutinize what their bank is doing. Wonderful, thank you. Sarah Babel. Finally, I think I concur with what my colleagues have just said, but let me say a few words on this one. You know, this resolution during union 5.2 was successful because we have followed unprecedented pattern. We have followed what we called innovative partnerships. For instance, maybe someday or maybe you're aware of it. We have used network of civil societies as our backgrounds to tell us more about their advocacy, the challenge and everything, we learned from that. We have engagement with the academy to have a relatively better understanding of the subject matter. So it's the combination of all these that made it possible. So yes, I really want to call everyone to break all the barriers, all these boundaries and everything. If you want to champion something, you should not work in civil society. You should come together. All the entities that are mentioned, Sustainable Development Organizations, the scientists, the researchers, the finance guys, we should attempt to bring them on board, to bring them together, to create this vast network so that our voices can make a difference. To some extent, this is what we did during UNIFI. So that integrated up for our approach, which what we call it innovative partnership. I think it will be essential. This is what happens. Thank you very much. Great, thank you so much to all of our speakers and thank you so much to everybody for attending this presentation. Really, it was an honor to be able to moderate it and be a part of the discussion. I think it was interesting, informative, inspiring. I know this is hard and slow work, but we are making positive change for animals one step at a time. And even though it took a while to get on the international governance radar, the topic is picking up momentum now. People are talking about it. Resolutions are being made and information is getting out there. And so I think if we do keep that up, it really is only a matter of time before we can see positive policy change at the international level around animal welfare and sustainable development. And so I just really appreciate everyone here for being a part of that work, both in the work that you do and in your participation in this and other conversations. So thank you again to everybody. Thank you again to the Stockholm Environment Institute and NYU Animal Studies for sponsoring this event and Stockholm Plus 50 for including this as an associated event. We really appreciate all of that. And I hope everybody has a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks again.