[EDIT 2023-02-21: I criticized the version of the WAW movement I saw being pursued by organizations. To my knowledge, no organization currently works on WAW by trying to help microorganisms, or decrease wild animal populations (which perhaps could be done in relatively uncontraversial ways). I simply don’t have an opinion about a WAW movement that would focus on such things. There were some restrictions on the kinds of short-term interventions I could recommend in my intervention search. Interventions that would help microbes or help wild animals by reducing their populations simply didn’t qualify. Thank you to the commenters who made me realize this.]
I think increasing the welfare of wild animals via changing land use, thus impacting their population, is way more promising than improving their conditions (increasing their welfare per animal-year).
Interventions changing land use affect lots of wild-animal-years per $. I estimate funding the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF), which has made grants to decrease deaths from diabetes mellitus type 2 and hypertension, thus increasing the consumption of food and agricultural-land-years, decreases the living time of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes by 5.07 billion animal-years per $. For reference, I estimate cage-free corporate campaigns improve 10.8 chicken-years per $, decrease the living time of those soil animals by 57.7 M animal-years per $, and increase their welfare 1.15 k times as much as they increase the welfare of chickens.
In addition, interventions changing land use are more broadly appealing than ones improving the conditions of wild animals, which are overwhelmingly small invertebrates (see Table S1 of Bar-on et al. (2018)), and therefore advocating for them will tend to be more cost-effective. The cost-effectiveness of advocating for an intervention is the cost-effectiveness of funding the intervention times the money moved to the intervention as a fraction of the spending advocating for it. It is easier to fundraise for interventions that are broadly appealing. Fundraising for saving human lives cheaply (to decrease the population of soil animals if these have negative lives), or forestation (to increase the population of soil animals if these have positive lives) is much easier than for improving the conditions of soil animals. So advocating for interventions changing land use will be more cost-effective than for ones improving the conditions of wild animals even if the cost-effectiveness of funding them directly was the same.
Hi Saulius.
I think increasing the welfare of wild animals via changing land use, thus impacting their population, is way more promising than improving their conditions (increasing their welfare per animal-year).
Interventions changing land use affect lots of wild-animal-years per $. I estimate funding the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF), which has made grants to decrease deaths from diabetes mellitus type 2 and hypertension, thus increasing the consumption of food and agricultural-land-years, decreases the living time of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes by 5.07 billion animal-years per $. For reference, I estimate cage-free corporate campaigns improve 10.8 chicken-years per $, decrease the living time of those soil animals by 57.7 M animal-years per $, and increase their welfare 1.15 k times as much as they increase the welfare of chickens.
In addition, interventions changing land use are more broadly appealing than ones improving the conditions of wild animals, which are overwhelmingly small invertebrates (see Table S1 of Bar-on et al. (2018)), and therefore advocating for them will tend to be more cost-effective. The cost-effectiveness of advocating for an intervention is the cost-effectiveness of funding the intervention times the money moved to the intervention as a fraction of the spending advocating for it. It is easier to fundraise for interventions that are broadly appealing. Fundraising for saving human lives cheaply (to decrease the population of soil animals if these have negative lives), or forestation (to increase the population of soil animals if these have positive lives) is much easier than for improving the conditions of soil animals. So advocating for interventions changing land use will be more cost-effective than for ones improving the conditions of wild animals even if the cost-effectiveness of funding them directly was the same.