Policy & Advocacy
Advancing legal and institutional transformation so that the living world is written into the rules societies actually run by.
Changing the rules, not only the conversation.
Policy & Advocacy is the foundation's effort to move conviction into law — to ensure that the protection of animals, ecosystems, and human wellbeing is embedded in the institutions that govern everyday life, rather than left to goodwill.
Most harm to the living world is lawful. It happens not in spite of the rules but because of them — through subsidies, exemptions, and definitions that treat sentient animals as commodities and intact ecosystems as raw material. Persuading individuals to care is necessary, but it is not sufficient. As long as the underlying structures reward extraction, compassion remains a private exception to a public norm. This program exists to change the norm.
That work is not a separate cause bolted onto the foundation's mission. It is the same conviction expressed at the level of systems. One Kind World treats animal welfare, ecological repair, and human wellbeing as a single integrated concern; policy is where that integration becomes binding. A law that recognises animal sentience, protects a watershed, and reforms a food system is not three policies but one — three faces of the same obligation to the living world.
The program advances on four fronts that reinforce one another: recognition of animal sentience in law, stronger environmental protection, the transition to ethical food systems, and a unifying Charter for the Living World. To pursue them on the international stage, the foundation is working toward ECOSOC consultative status, targeted for 2027, which would give it formal standing within United Nations forums.
How the work is done
Advocacy at this level is patient and evidence-led. It begins with rigorous research — building the legal and scientific case for change — and translates that case into language legislators, regulators, and courts can act on. The aim is durable reform: statutes, standards, and treaties that outlast any single campaign or news cycle.
The foundation works alongside coalitions rather than apart from them, contributing analysis, draft language, and public argument to efforts already underway. Pursuing ECOSOC consultative status, targeted for 2027, is part of the same logic: a recognised seat in international forums turns a credible voice into a standing one, where the Charter for the Living World can be advanced on its merits.
The evidence behind our approachFour pillars of reform
The program concentrates on the structural changes that, taken together, would reset humanity's relationship with the living world.
Animal sentience in law
Advancing legal recognition that animals are sentient beings with interests of their own — and translating that recognition into enforceable protections rather than statements of principle.
Environmental protection
Strengthening the safeguards that keep ecosystems intact — closing the exemptions and incentives that make ecological harm the path of least resistance.
Ethical food systems
Reforming the policies, subsidies, and standards that shape how food is produced, so that humane and ecologically sound choices become the default rather than the exception.
Charter for the Living World
A unifying framework that brings animal, ecological, and human interests under one principle — advanced internationally as the foundation works toward ECOSOC consultative status, targeted for 2027.
One charter, one living world
The evidence that something has gone structurally wrong is now overwhelming. The WWF Living Planet Report 2024 records an average 73% decline in monitored wildlife populations in half a century, and finds that wild mammals account for only a fraction of mammal biomass on Earth — the rest is humans and the animals we raise. These are not the outcomes of bad individuals; they are the outcomes of rules working exactly as written.
Policy is where those rules can be rewritten. The Charter for the Living World expresses the foundation's wager: that animal welfare, ecological integrity, and human wellbeing are not competing goods to be traded off, but a single interest that law can be made to serve. Reform one in isolation and the system reasserts itself; reform them together, and the architecture of harm loses its footing.
Help write the living world into law
Lasting protection is won in statutes, standards, and treaties — slow work that depends on steady support. Your gift sustains the research, coalitions, and international standing this reform requires.
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