Law&Ethics: Deep Ecology, Climate Change, and Norway’s Wolf Policy

Fear is mounting over the rise of animal-to-human, so-called zoonotic, diseases, in which category the 2019 coronavirus falls. This “once-in-a-century” pandemic, according to some politicians, is a quite foreseeable consequence in the eyes of scientists, due to climate change and biodiversity disturbance. Preventing the next pandemic by reconsidering practices toward animals and shared resources is thus the new imperative, as the United Nations’ Environment Program has readily stated to policymakers. In the meantime, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has announced that its sixth Assessment Report, to be published in 2021, will consider the link between pandemics and human pressures on the natural world. Moreover, during the course of the present coronavirus pandemic, animals have occupied the minds of not onlyacademics, environmental officers, and scientists, but also the press, which reported on goats taking over the streets in Wales and coyotes in the urban landscape of San Francisco. What does the growing importance of animals in the policy and information space tell us about law? In this paper, I sketch some considerations on law and ethics, specifically on how the Norway-born philosophical movement known as Deep Ecology can suggest some ways forward for law and policy during the time of climate change.