Animals are key to our restoration of the planet, Kate Wall and Mark Hofberg of the International Fund for Animal Welfare explain in a report titled Thriving Together: The Critical Role of Animals in Achieving the SDGs. The world’s progress toward a sustainable society has been charted by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 goals that include environmental, social and economic projects deemed necessary to creating a just, equitable world that can live on its current resources instead of borrowing from the future. The SDGs address people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships that we need to put in place by 2030, but they do not include animals — they are mentioned once in the 8,600 or so words that document the SDGs.

When we take care of animals, we take better care of people. Biodiversity is the basis of the web of life and need to recognize that when you remove even a few nodes from a network it can make the entire system fragile. Unfortunately, we’ve removed hundreds of species from the natural world in which we evolved and the cost is falling on women, animals and all of us through greater exposure to zoonotic diseases that a resilient nature can help prevent. To make your impact, Mark and Kate suggest that listeners follow and support the Leaders Pledge for Nature, an international agreement that the U.S. has not signed, and Congressional action around a national biodiversity strategy and national wildlife corridors. You can learn more about the International Fund for Animal Welfare at https://www.ifaw.org