Welfare biology

Welfare biology is a proposed interdisciplinary field concerned with the welfare of sentient beings in relation to their environment. The concept was introduced by the economist Yew-Kwang Ng in 1995, when he defined it as the study of living organisms and their surroundings with respect to welfare, understood as the balance of enjoyment and suffering.

The field has been discussed in relation to biology, welfare economics, animal ethics, animal welfare science, and ecology. Writers on wild animal suffering have argued that welfare biology could provide a framework for studying the lives of non-human animals outside direct human control. Proposed research directions include the use of demographic and ecological data to assess welfare outcomes. A proposed subdiscipline, urban welfare ecology, would study the welfare of animals living in urban, suburban, and industrial environments.

Welfare biology was first proposed by the welfare economist Yew-Kwang Ng in his 1995 paper "Towards welfare biology: Evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering". Ng defined welfare biology as the "study of living things and their environment with respect to their welfare (defined as net happiness, or enjoyment minus suffering)". He distinguished between "affective" and "non-affective" sentients: affective sentients have the capacity to perceive the external world and experience pleasure or pain, while non-affective sentients have perception without corresponding experience. Ng argued that the welfare of non-affective sentients is therefore zero. Based on his model of evolutionary dynamics, he concluded that suffering dominates enjoyment in nature.^[1]

In 2006, Matthew Clarke and Ng used Ng's framework to analyse the costs, benefits, and welfare implications of the culling of kangaroos, classified as affective sentients, in Puckapunyal, Australia. They concluded that their discussion "may give some support to the culling of kangaroos or other animals in certain circumstances", while adding that preventive measures might be preferable to culling.^[2] In the same year, Thomas Eichner and Rudiger Pethig analysed Ng's model and raised concerns about the lack of suitable determinants for assessing organism welfare, which they attributed to the early stage of welfare biology.^[3]

In 2016, Ng argued that welfare biology could help address a problem in animal welfare science, raised by Marian Dawkins, concerning the difficulty of studying animal feelings. He also made practical proposals for improving the welfare of captive animals.^[4] Todd K. Shackelford and Sayma H. Chowdhury responded that, rather than focusing on improving the welfare of captive animals, it would be better not to breed them, because this would "eliminate their suffering altogether".^[5]

Ng and Zach Groff published an update to Ng's original paper in 2019. They identified an error in the original model and revised its conclusion, presenting a less pessimistic view of the extent of suffering in nature.^[6]

Researchers in environmental economics have noted Ng's claim that the "time is ripe for the recognition of welfare biology as a valid field of scientific study", while observing that welfare biology had not developed as an established research field 25 years later.^[7] Animal Ethics and Wild Animal Initiative have promoted welfare biology as a field of research.^[8]

Some writers in animal ethics have argued that there are moral reasons to reduce the suffering of sentient individuals, including wild animals.^[9][10] Stijn Bruers argues that ecosystems are not sentient and do not have interests in biodiversity, while sentient animals do have interests in their own welfare.^[11] Bruers and Philipp Ryf have argued that resources used for conservation biology should instead be directed toward welfare biology.^[11][12]

Adriano Mannino has argued that systematic, large-scale efforts to help wild animals would first require several questions to be answered, and that large-scale actions should follow a long phase of successful small-scale trials.^[13]

Some researchers have argued that life history theory is relevant to welfare biology, because certain life history traits may be associated with poorer welfare outcomes and with sensitivity to habitat fragmentation.^[14] Because welfare biology has had few empirical studies on the welfare of wild animals, it has been proposed that existing demographic data, already used in biodiversity conservation, could be used to guide future research.^[15]

Reviews of the welfare effects of fire on wild animals have been presented as an example of using existing ecological studies to define welfare biology and suggest research priorities.^[16] The possible use of welfare biology in rewilding projects has also been studied, with one thesis proposing collaboration between local people, conservationists, authorities, and policymakers.^[17]

In The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics, the philosophers Catia Faria and Oscar Horta suggest that welfare biology could develop from animal welfare science by extending its scope beyond animals under direct human control. They also propose that it could develop within ecology, with attention to how environments affect the well-being of sentient beings. Faria and Horta argue that animal well-being is often given little weight because of speciesist and environmentalist views among life scientists and the wider public. In their view, this may slow the development of welfare biology.^[18]

Faria and Horta have proposed urban welfare ecology as a subdiscipline of welfare biology. It would study the welfare of animals living in urban, suburban, and industrial ecosystems. They argue that much research on animals in these environments has focused on reducing their negative effects on humans or conserving particular species. They suggest that this knowledge could also be used to reduce harms experienced by urban animals, and that human-modified environments may be suitable for small-scale intervention studies because they are already under substantial human influence.^[18]

• Ng, Yew-Kwang (2015). "Welfare Biology as an Extension of Biology. Interview with Yew-Kwang Ng" (Interview). Interviewed by Max Carpendale. doi:10.7358/rela-2015-002-carp. ISSN 2280-9643.
• Animal Ethics (6 December 2019). "A library of scientific references relevant to welfare biology". Effective Altruism Forum.
• Bernard, Laura Justine (2020). From Theory to Practices: the Implementation of Welfare Biology in Rewilding (Master's thesis). Radboud University Nijmegen.
• Soryl, Asher A.; Moore, Andrew J.; Seddon, Philip J.; King, Mike R. (15 March 2021). "The Case for Welfare Biology". Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. 34 (2): 7. Bibcode:2021JAEE...34....7S. doi:10.1007/s10806-021-09855-2. ISSN 1573-322X. S2CID 233590948.
• Veit, Walter; Browning, Heather (1 January 2021). "Extending animal welfare science to include wild animals". Animal Sentience. 6 (31). doi:10.51291/2377-7478.1675. ISSN 2377-7478.
• Ng, Yew-Kwang (2022), "Animal Welfare: Beyond Human Happiness", Happiness—Concept, Measurement and Promotion, Singapore: Springer Singapore, pp. 161–166, doi:10.1007/978-981-33-4972-8_16, ISBN 978-981-334-971-1, S2CID 244887730{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)