[2 of 6] Why hasnât WAI implemented interventions yet?
In short: Because thatâs not what weâve been trying to do.
If we had been spending the last six years trying to find interventions that could be implemented as soon as possible, and our progress to date is all we had to show for it, then that would be extremely disappointing. If thatâs what weâd been aiming for and this is where we landed, then I think itâd be fair to say we failed â or at the very least, we definitely shouldnât be an ACE-recommended charity.
What we have been doing instead is pursuing a strategy that is entirely focused on building wild animal welfare science up into a self-sustaining academic field that is positioned to produce the research needed to reduce wild animal suffering as much as possible over the long run.
Iâm glad you brought up Rethink Priorities and Happier Lives Institute, because I think the contrast between us is very illustrative. Like most EA research orgs, RP and HLI mostly conduct research with the aim of directly informing policymaking, philanthropy, or movement strategy. Although the particular topics theyâre focusing on are highly neglected, those topics are often close enough to longstanding human concerns (e.g., public health, agricultural productivity) that they can build on the deep bodies of literature that have been developed by mature academic fields (e.g., development economics, human psychology, farm animal veterinary medicine).
Wild animal welfare science is at best several decades behind those fields. The problem is not that potential interventions havenât been evaluated yet; itâs that we lack the basic scientific knowledge of how to evaluate most interventions. The few interventions we can evaluate with confidence are evaluable precisely because they have very limited impacts or only work under a narrow set of conditions.
Thatâs why we have optimized for field-building over intervention research: not because there are no interventions worth trying now, but because thereâs a very low ceiling to how much impact you can have before you know how to measure welfare across different several classes and phyla, how to account for compensatory mortality, how to predict and monitor for effects on non-target species, etc.
Which is not to say we have done no research on interventions. Rather, we have chosen to research interventions insofar as we think it will contribute to field growth, such as by attracting interest and funding, providing opportunities to refine research methodologies, building bridges with relevant research communities, or simply serving as a proof of concept for the field.
I explicitly acknowledged your stated strategy and the need for foundational research. My question is when you expect that strategy to translate into real-world impact.
To move this forward, letâs try to crystallise what youâve said:
1. What exactly counts as a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare?
Is that defined by number of labs? Funding sources? Course offerings? Publication volume? âSelf-sustainingâ risks becoming an unending horizon.
2. What does âthe long runâ mean in practice?
A strategy without a time-bound target is very difficult to evaluate. Is the honest answer simply âas long as it takesâ? As long as people are willing to fund it?
3. How much funding do you estimate is required to reach this self-sustaining point?
If the answer is âwe donât knowâ, thatâs fineâbut then we need some proxy indicators or budget ranges that would count as reasonable expectations.
Is the reality that donors are effectively funding an open-ended research project with no agreed stopping rule? Your answers make it hard not to reach that conclusion.
Iâm not trying to exhaust you with relentless questions. Iâm trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in what youâve said. Long replies run the risk of diverting away from the central thrust of discussion.
Hi Siobhan! Iâm the Science Director at WAI. Iâm stepping in to answer your questions here because Cam is on medical leave.
âWhat exactly counts as a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare? Is that defined by number of labs? Funding sources? Course offerings? Publication volume? âSelf-sustainingâ risks becoming an unending horizon.â
Ultimately, what we care about is generating scientific research that can guide action towards improving wild animal welfare and carries the credibility to persuade policymakers to implement it (or that enables wildlife managers to base decisions on welfare and not just population sizeâwhich weâre working towards through projects like this). However, we think that both of those things require a scientific field to do effectively at scale. Operationally, we define a âself-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfareâ primarily in terms of institutions and funding sources. We would be satisfied that there is one when it has most of the institutional trappings of a field â e.g. at least two out of three of a) a regular conference, b) a dedicated journal, and c) a professional society â with significant momentum coming from value-aligned scientists outside of Wild Animal Initiative, AND a majority of funding for the field coming from sources other than WAI (say >$1M per year). That needs to happen while keeping the priorities of the field aligned with benefiting as many animals as possible by as much as possible, which requires more careful progress than if we were satisfied with a field focused on the welfare of endangered species, for example.
We feel on track to achieve the âinstitutionsâ part within the next 5 years at our current level of funding, as weâve seen great signs of progress in just the last year as some of our earliest grantees (from 2022) have stuck with the field and begun to organize their own events and collaborations related to wild animal welfare.
We have made less progress so far on bringing new mainstream funders explicitly into the field. However, we expect this to follow âinstitutionalizationâ of the field, as it comes to their attention in a credible way. This year in particular we have seen some evidence of new funding outside of EA. There have also been early conversations starting this year around particular kinds of academic events and structures that we consider signposts of the field becoming institutionalized (some examples described here), so weâre hopeful to have clearer timelines on this in the near future.
Additionally, in the meantime, many of the projects we fund build on existing projects in some way, which represents indirect co-funding that increases cost-effectiveness.
Itâs worth noting that the pathway we are on (of institutionalization â funding diversification) wasnât/âisnât the only way things could proceed towards field-building. Without the support WAI has received from EA donors, we likely would have prioritized funding diversification first to start building the field, but that would have been much less likely to succeed at all and certainly would have taken much longer to build the field than we currently think it will (at current levels of funding) for us to reach a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare.
Just as an anecdotal piece of evidence, I have worked at WAI since it started in 2019, coming from an academic research background, and I am very surprised and grateful for how the field has been able to develop over this timespan.
âWhat does âthe long runâ mean in practice?â
Youâre right that the honest answer is âas long as it takes,â as with most cause areas. The ultimate goal of improving wild animal welfare is something that we expect will require ongoing management, research and development, like public health for humans. However, academic field building is simply a means to that end, and we do expect it to be âachievedâ at some point in the not-so-distant future, as described in my answer to #1.
Overall, weâre basically hoping to take a process that generally occurs over about 50-80 years and shorten it to 15-20 (including the 6 years weâve already operated) for full success, with the turning point of having mainstream funding being the primary funding source sooner than that.
âHow much funding do you estimate is required to reach this self-sustaining point?â
If weâre right that institutionalization will catalyze the entry of more mainstream funders into the field, then I think we could reach that goal within another 5-10 years with a total operating budget of $5M/âyr (closer to 5 years) to $3M per year (closer to 10 years; our current budget).
So overall, if you think farmed animal welfare can easily absorb an additional $5M per year and maintain high cost effectiveness, and you prefer immediate gains to long term strategies, WAI and wild animal welfare may not be the ideal giving opportunity for you! But if you are comfortable with funding longer-term theories of change, we think it is as cost effective or more so in expectation than farmed animal welfare â particularly at the margin, as there is some reason to think that the farmed animal welfare movement cannot currently absorb more funding than Coefficient can provide.
[2 of 6] Why hasnât WAI implemented interventions yet?
In short: Because thatâs not what weâve been trying to do.
If we had been spending the last six years trying to find interventions that could be implemented as soon as possible, and our progress to date is all we had to show for it, then that would be extremely disappointing. If thatâs what weâd been aiming for and this is where we landed, then I think itâd be fair to say we failed â or at the very least, we definitely shouldnât be an ACE-recommended charity.
What we have been doing instead is pursuing a strategy that is entirely focused on building wild animal welfare science up into a self-sustaining academic field that is positioned to produce the research needed to reduce wild animal suffering as much as possible over the long run.
Iâm glad you brought up Rethink Priorities and Happier Lives Institute, because I think the contrast between us is very illustrative. Like most EA research orgs, RP and HLI mostly conduct research with the aim of directly informing policymaking, philanthropy, or movement strategy. Although the particular topics theyâre focusing on are highly neglected, those topics are often close enough to longstanding human concerns (e.g., public health, agricultural productivity) that they can build on the deep bodies of literature that have been developed by mature academic fields (e.g., development economics, human psychology, farm animal veterinary medicine).
Wild animal welfare science is at best several decades behind those fields. The problem is not that potential interventions havenât been evaluated yet; itâs that we lack the basic scientific knowledge of how to evaluate most interventions. The few interventions we can evaluate with confidence are evaluable precisely because they have very limited impacts or only work under a narrow set of conditions.
Thatâs why we have optimized for field-building over intervention research: not because there are no interventions worth trying now, but because thereâs a very low ceiling to how much impact you can have before you know how to measure welfare across different several classes and phyla, how to account for compensatory mortality, how to predict and monitor for effects on non-target species, etc.
Which is not to say we have done no research on interventions. Rather, we have chosen to research interventions insofar as we think it will contribute to field growth, such as by attracting interest and funding, providing opportunities to refine research methodologies, building bridges with relevant research communities, or simply serving as a proof of concept for the field.
I explicitly acknowledged your stated strategy and the need for foundational research. My question is when you expect that strategy to translate into real-world impact.
To move this forward, letâs try to crystallise what youâve said:
1. What exactly counts as a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare?
Is that defined by number of labs? Funding sources? Course offerings? Publication volume? âSelf-sustainingâ risks becoming an unending horizon.
2. What does âthe long runâ mean in practice?
A strategy without a time-bound target is very difficult to evaluate. Is the honest answer simply âas long as it takesâ? As long as people are willing to fund it?
3. How much funding do you estimate is required to reach this self-sustaining point?
If the answer is âwe donât knowâ, thatâs fineâbut then we need some proxy indicators or budget ranges that would count as reasonable expectations.
Is the reality that donors are effectively funding an open-ended research project with no agreed stopping rule? Your answers make it hard not to reach that conclusion.
Iâm not trying to exhaust you with relentless questions. Iâm trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in what youâve said. Long replies run the risk of diverting away from the central thrust of discussion.
Hi Siobhan! Iâm the Science Director at WAI. Iâm stepping in to answer your questions here because Cam is on medical leave.
âWhat exactly counts as a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare? Is that defined by number of labs? Funding sources? Course offerings? Publication volume? âSelf-sustainingâ risks becoming an unending horizon.â
Ultimately, what we care about is generating scientific research that can guide action towards improving wild animal welfare and carries the credibility to persuade policymakers to implement it (or that enables wildlife managers to base decisions on welfare and not just population sizeâwhich weâre working towards through projects like this). However, we think that both of those things require a scientific field to do effectively at scale. Operationally, we define a âself-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfareâ primarily in terms of institutions and funding sources. We would be satisfied that there is one when it has most of the institutional trappings of a field â e.g. at least two out of three of a) a regular conference, b) a dedicated journal, and c) a professional society â with significant momentum coming from value-aligned scientists outside of Wild Animal Initiative, AND a majority of funding for the field coming from sources other than WAI (say >$1M per year). That needs to happen while keeping the priorities of the field aligned with benefiting as many animals as possible by as much as possible, which requires more careful progress than if we were satisfied with a field focused on the welfare of endangered species, for example.
We feel on track to achieve the âinstitutionsâ part within the next 5 years at our current level of funding, as weâve seen great signs of progress in just the last year as some of our earliest grantees (from 2022) have stuck with the field and begun to organize their own events and collaborations related to wild animal welfare.
We have made less progress so far on bringing new mainstream funders explicitly into the field. However, we expect this to follow âinstitutionalizationâ of the field, as it comes to their attention in a credible way. This year in particular we have seen some evidence of new funding outside of EA. There have also been early conversations starting this year around particular kinds of academic events and structures that we consider signposts of the field becoming institutionalized (some examples described here), so weâre hopeful to have clearer timelines on this in the near future.
Additionally, in the meantime, many of the projects we fund build on existing projects in some way, which represents indirect co-funding that increases cost-effectiveness.
Itâs worth noting that the pathway we are on (of institutionalization â funding diversification) wasnât/âisnât the only way things could proceed towards field-building. Without the support WAI has received from EA donors, we likely would have prioritized funding diversification first to start building the field, but that would have been much less likely to succeed at all and certainly would have taken much longer to build the field than we currently think it will (at current levels of funding) for us to reach a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare.
Just as an anecdotal piece of evidence, I have worked at WAI since it started in 2019, coming from an academic research background, and I am very surprised and grateful for how the field has been able to develop over this timespan.
âWhat does âthe long runâ mean in practice?â
Youâre right that the honest answer is âas long as it takes,â as with most cause areas. The ultimate goal of improving wild animal welfare is something that we expect will require ongoing management, research and development, like public health for humans. However, academic field building is simply a means to that end, and we do expect it to be âachievedâ at some point in the not-so-distant future, as described in my answer to #1.
Overall, weâre basically hoping to take a process that generally occurs over about 50-80 years and shorten it to 15-20 (including the 6 years weâve already operated) for full success, with the turning point of having mainstream funding being the primary funding source sooner than that.
âHow much funding do you estimate is required to reach this self-sustaining point?â
If weâre right that institutionalization will catalyze the entry of more mainstream funders into the field, then I think we could reach that goal within another 5-10 years with a total operating budget of $5M/âyr (closer to 5 years) to $3M per year (closer to 10 years; our current budget).
So overall, if you think farmed animal welfare can easily absorb an additional $5M per year and maintain high cost effectiveness, and you prefer immediate gains to long term strategies, WAI and wild animal welfare may not be the ideal giving opportunity for you! But if you are comfortable with funding longer-term theories of change, we think it is as cost effective or more so in expectation than farmed animal welfare â particularly at the margin, as there is some reason to think that the farmed animal welfare movement cannot currently absorb more funding than Coefficient can provide.