Thanks for the questions Brian, and for the work you’re doing in the Philippines. We estimate the Philippines has the 10th highest number of vertebrate farmed animals alive at any time—mostly farmed fish—but we currently only have one Filipino farm animal grantee. So I’d love to hear from you and other Filipinos interested in doing EA animal advocacy. (Anyone reading this can email info@openphilanthropy.org or message me.) On your questions:
Your ranking of issues looks good to me. My main advice in your situation would be to look primarily at tractability in making this ranking. Our general experience in nations with lots of animals but less existing advocacy (e.g. China, Indonesia, Vietnam) is that tractability trumps scale (and neglect is largely irrelevant, since most approaches are neglected). Of course there are limits to this—don’t start a farm sanctuary. But within the large-scale issues you’re considering, I’d focus on which is most tractable, both because we’ve seen huge differences in this between issues and because I think the most important thing is to get some initial progress, which will then make it easier to advance all issues.
On the Open Phil side I’m excited to fund any promising new farm animal or alt-protein work in the Philippines (and in other large Southeast Asian nations). That’s true for how I think about the EA Fund too, though I’m only one of four managers there.
Thanks for the questions Brian, and for the work you’re doing in the Philippines. We estimate the Philippines has the 10th highest number of vertebrate farmed animals alive at any time—mostly farmed fish—but we currently only have one Filipino farm animal grantee. So I’d love to hear from you and other Filipinos interested in doing EA animal advocacy. (Anyone reading this can email info@openphilanthropy.org or message me.) On your questions:
Your ranking of issues looks good to me. My main advice in your situation would be to look primarily at tractability in making this ranking. Our general experience in nations with lots of animals but less existing advocacy (e.g. China, Indonesia, Vietnam) is that tractability trumps scale (and neglect is largely irrelevant, since most approaches are neglected). Of course there are limits to this—don’t start a farm sanctuary. But within the large-scale issues you’re considering, I’d focus on which is most tractable, both because we’ve seen huge differences in this between issues and because I think the most important thing is to get some initial progress, which will then make it easier to advance all issues.
On the Open Phil side I’m excited to fund any promising new farm animal or alt-protein work in the Philippines (and in other large Southeast Asian nations). That’s true for how I think about the EA Fund too, though I’m only one of four managers there.