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This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Can’s impact evaluation for 2025. At the end of this post we share links to more information, including the full report and...
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I'm currently reviewing Wild Animal Initiative's strategy in light of the US political situation. The rough idea is that things aren't great here for wild animal welfare or for science, we're at a critical time in the discipline when things could grow a lot faster relatively soon, and the UK and the EU might generally look quite a bit better for this work in light of those changes. We do already support a lot of scientist in Europe, so this wouldn't be a huge shift in strategy. It’s more about how much weight to put toward what locations for community and science building, and also if we need to make any operational changes (at this early stage, we’re trying to be very open-minded about options — anything from offering various kinds of support to staff to opening a UK branch).
However, in trying to get a sense of whether that rough approach is right, it's extremely hard to get accurate takes (or, at least, to be able to tell whether someone is thinking of the relevant risks rationally). And, its hard to tell whether "how people feel now" will have lasting impact. For example, a lot of the reporting on scientist sentiment sounds extremely grim (example 1, 2, 3), but it's hard to know what level the effect will be over the next few years -- a reduction in scientific talent, certainly, but so much so that the UK is a better place to work given our historical reasons for existing in the US? Less clear.
It doesn't help that I personally feel extremely angry about the political situation so that probably is biasing my research.
Curious if any US-based EA orgs have considered leaving the US or taking some other operational/strategic step, given the political situation/staff concerns/etc? Why or why not?
Really appreciate you @mal_graham🔸 thinking out loud on this. Watching from Uganda, I totally get the frustration the US climate feels increasingly hostile to science and progressive work like wild animal welfare. So yeah, shifting more focus to the UK/EU makes sense, especially if it helps stabilize research and morale. That said, if you’re already rethinking geography and community building, I’d gently suggest looking beyond the usual Global North pivots. Regions like East Africa are incredibly underrepresented but ecologically critical and honestly, there’s a small but growing base of people here hungry to build this field with proper support. If there’s ever a window to make this movement more global and future-proof, it might be now. Happy to chat more if useful.
Thank you for your comment! It's actually a topic of quite a lot of discussion for us, so I would love to connect on it. I'll send you a DM soon.
Just for context, the main reason I've felt a little constrained to the US/UK context is due to comparative advantage considerations, such as having staff who are primarily based in those countries/speaking English as our organizational common tongue/being most familiar with those academic communities, etc.
I definitely think the WAW community, in general, should be investing much more outside of just US/UK/EU -- but am less sure whether it makes sense for WAI to do so, given our existing investments/strengths. But I could be convinced otherwise!
Even if we keep our main focus in the US/UK, I'd be very interested in hearing more about how WAI might be able to support the "people hungry to build the field" in other countries, so that could be another thing to discuss.