Session 4

Animals Affected by Climate Change

Date: Friday, November 20, 2020

In the fourth session, we want to gain a deeper understanding of which animals are most vulnerable to climate change. 

First, we want to consider the effects of climate change on animals: How are wild animals, sedentary animals, migratory animals, companion animals, and many others affected by forces of climate change, such as drought, the encroaching rise in sea levels, availability of food, accessibility of space, habitability, maintenance of borders, and securitization? Climate change also creates winners, so are there animals who will be better off? Will climate change do more good or harm to animals, and how can we tell? 

Second, we will examine how humanity’s actions in response to climate change are affecting animals: Are there examples of how either mitigation or adaptation strategies/policies have been explicitly designed to reduce harmful impacts on animals? Do these examples raise moral dilemmas – for example, do they involve sacrificing the interests of individual animals to benefit the species (as in captive breeding or forced relocation)? Are there examples of how mitigation/adaptation policies are in fact exacerbating the harmful impacts for particular animals (or where policies designed to benefit certain animals impose costs on other animals)? Stepping back from individual policies, are there examples of how animals’ interests are being institutionalized within decision-making processes around climate change (e.g., via animal representatives or advocates or audits)?

Moderator: Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton)

Speakers: Irus Braverman (University at Buffalo School of Law, The State University of New York), Jonathan Lovvorn (Yale Law School), Shaina Sadai (University of Massachusetts)

Abstracts

Irus Braverman

Coral Conservation: From Polarization to Coralation: Corals are not only canaries in the coalmine, visible manifestations of the radical changes we are causing our ecosystems and cultures; they are also bellwethers, sounding the way through this mess toward a more mutualistic way of being in the world that resists classification, linearity, and binary thinking. And while their acute bleaching around the planet provides a sign that something has gone terribly wrong on a global and fundamental scale, the multiple and varied ways that scientists, managers, and the corals themselves have been dealing with bleaching, and the science-law collaborations that have evolved to protect corals, remind us that the situated, the local, and the relational may still make a difference for our coralated future on this planet.

There is also much to learn from the corals themselves. Corals indeed challenge our all-too-humanistic definitions of what it means to be human and our understandings of what is nature. They urge us to rethink how we may wisely govern life, be it terrestrial or oceanic, and how we may care better for our “coralated” communities and futures. Perhaps more importantly than thinking with corals, this project highlights the rarely examined emotional layers in the work of coral scientists. Giving these scientists a face and a voice and explaining their work to the wider public is critical at a time when the rift between experts and laypersons is growing, species and ecosystems are threatened at an accelerated pace, and scientific reasoning is being questioned by central political administrations.

Jonathan Lovvorn

Animals & The Climate Crisis: Global protests and a flurry of scientific reports have highlighted the existential threat climate change poses to both people and animals, including the predicted loss of one million species. But how do these dire statistics translate into on the ground suffering of animals? And what does the impact of climate change on animals tell us about our own fate? With few exceptions, researchers and policy advocates looking at the impact of climate change on animals tend to focus on species loss and biodiversity at a macro level. But climate change is also having profound impacts on the individual lives and well-being of billions of animals. Large-scale human use of animals for food is also a significant and often overlooked cause of climate change emissions.

This talk will focus on the unique role animals play as both a cause and victims of climate change, and explore the intersection of climate, animal welfare, and environmentalism. Climate change is fundamentally changing longstanding policy and legal campaigns to protect wildlife and domesticated animals, and posing new and challenging questions, such as how and when we should engage in “assisted migration” and other interventions for animals whose current territories are becoming uninhabitable. This talk also will suggest some new ideas for confronting and mitigating the rapidly emerging global climate crisis, and how different social movements can work together to protect animals, people, and the planet.

Shaina Sadai

Climatic change and multispecies justice: Physical changes to the earth system resulting from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are already having myriad impacts on all parts of our shared planet. The extent of climate impacts on nonhuman animals varies geographically, temporally, and by individual experience. Current and projected changes in sea ice extent, marine heatwaves, and ocean acidification present unique challenges to animals, and are occuring at a pace unprecedented in Earth history. Determining the impacts of climate change, adaptation, and mitigation on the wellbeing of individual nonhuman animals is an important avenue to develop as we seek to build a plan to confront the climate crisis that will meaningfully take into account issues of multispecies justice.

Drawing from my research on the climate impacts of instabilities in the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) and resulting changes to ocean dynamics I will discuss how cryosphere and ocean changes are impacting species who dwell partially or completely within oceans including penguins, sea stars, and plankton. AIS instability will impact land as well due to sea level rise. Humans are implementing adaptation measures to address shoreline inundation. However, without a robust consideration for the needs of nonhuman individuals human responses to climatic change have the potential to cause harm to already burdened populations, and can prevent animals from attempting their own adaptations. Through these examples we will gain an understanding of how Earth system changes interface with human action to impact nonhuman animals, and consider ways of developing a more just and inclusive way forward in a changing climate.

Resources

Braverman, I. (2020). Corona and Climate: One Planet, One Health. Sydney Environment Institute. Opinion. Posted on June 5. Link

Braverman, I. (2020). Shifting Baselines in Coral Conservation. Nature and Space: Environment and Planning E (special issue) 3(1): 20-39. Link

Braverman, I. (2019). Living on Coral Time: Debating Conservation in the Anthropocene. Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia (Spring 2019), no. 1. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. Link

Braverman, I. (2018). Law’s Underdog: A Call for Nonhuman Legalities. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 14: 127–144. Link

Braverman, I. (2018). Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink (University of California Press). Link

Braverman, I. (2015). Wild Life: The Institution of Nature (Stanford University Press). Link

Jasanoff, S. (2004). “The Idiom of Co-Production.” In States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order, edited by Sheila Jasanoff, 1–12. London: Routledge.

Rutz, C., Loretto, MC., Bates, A.E. et al. COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 1156–1159 (2020). Link

Pepper, A. (2019), Adapting to Climate Change: What We Owe to Other Animals. J Appl Philos, 36: 592-607. Link

Sadai, S and Sebo, J. The Coasts Are Disappearing, We Need to Protect Them for Everyone. Sentient Media, 2020. Link

Reo, N.J., Ogden, L.A. Anishnaabe Aki: an indigenous perspective on the global threat of invasive species. Sustain Sci 13, 1443–1452 (2018). Link

IPBES (2019): Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondizio, J. Settele, S. Díaz, and H. T. Ngo (editors). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany

IPCC, 2019: IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, N.M. Weyer (eds.)]. In press.

Sadai, S., Condron, A., DeConto, R. & Pollard, D. Future climate response to Antarctic Ice Sheet melt caused by anthropogenic warming. Science Advances 23 Sep 2020: Vol. 6, no. 39, eaaz1169 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz1169

Healey, R., Pepper, A. Interspecies justice: agency, self-determination, and assent. Philos Stud (2020). Link

Molly M. Ashur, Nicole K. Johnston, Danielle L Dixson, Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Sensory Function in Marine Organisms, Integrative and Comparative Biology, Volume 57, Issue 1, July 2017, Pages 63–80, Link

J.F. Piatt et al. Extreme mortality and reproductive failure of common murres resulting from the northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2014-2016. PLOS ONE. Published January 15, 2020. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0226087. Link