At World Animal Net, one of our key initiatives is to help animal protection organizations around the world better understand and leverage international policy opportunities to improve the lives of animals. Unfortunately, WAN was unable to personally attend the recent Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Marrakech. However, we are pleased that our colleagues Tozie Zokufa of Humane Society International, the Pan African Animal Welfare Alliance, and member of WAN’s International Policy Forum and Caroline Wimberly of Brighter Green were kind enough to prepare reports of their experiences and work at the convention as well as outcomes and future directions for advocacy at the UNFCCC with the wider animal protection community.

As we set our sights on our goals and resolutions for 2017, we have a unique opportunity to assess our advocacy for animals and incorporate a fresh approach to our strategies in the coming year.

2016 was a busy year for WAN. We do everything it takes to achieve policy change for animals across the world, and this year this has taken us to Paris, Washington, D.C., Addis Ababa, Malawi, and Guadalajara, Mexico, working for progress for animals everywhere.

We are proud to announce that the Model Animal Welfare Act, released earlier this year for viewing and download on our website, is now available as a paperback book! We know exactly what you're thinking—just in time for the holidays! 

Last week, I was excited to have had the opportunity to attend the World Organisation for Animal Health’s (OIE’s) 4th Global Animal Welfare Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico. Together with WAN co-founders Wim de Kok and Janice Cox, and Model Animal Welfare Act co-author Dr. iur. Sabine Lennkh, we joined numerous other animal protection organizations (APOs) in representing the interests of animals at the conference.

I am sorry I was not able to attend the 2016 Effective Animal Advocacy Research Symposium which was held at Princeton University on November 12-13th. Interestingly, I note that this was organised and co-sponsored by Animal Charity Evaluators, so this ties in nicely with our last blog on Effective Altruism. Overviews of the conference presentations can be read on the event website. We were pleased to see that there were contributions on social science and movement building from Zachary Groff and Ling-Ann Hsiung, which we believe to be a crucial aspect of lasting social change.

WAN is pleased to announce a new resource on our website! This is “Best Practice for Animal Welfare Development and Implementation", which pulls together some of the Best Practice (or more accurately “Best Available Practice”!) on animal welfare in order to help a wide range of stakeholders to incorporate animal welfare in their work.