The UN Sustainable Development Goals have significant implications for animal welfare - understanding these connections helps advocates engage with mainstream development and sustainability policy.
The SDG framework represents a major opportunity and gap for animal welfare advocates. Current goals largely treat animals instrumentally - as resources for human welfare rather than as moral patients. However, animal welfare connects to many SDG targets: reducing zoonotic disease risk, antibiotic resistance, environmental sustainability and food system resilience all have strong animal welfare components. Advocates can engage with SDG reporting processes to highlight these connections and build the case for explicit welfare metrics in successor frameworks. The One Health approach, which integrates human, animal and environmental health, provides a bridge between welfare and mainstream development discourse.