Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How to change the law to have a large-scale impact on animal welfare?, published by Melvin Josse on June 9, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

Convergence Animaux Politique (CAP) is a French charity specialising on political action for animals: discover our theory of change to save animal lives and reduce animal suffering. You can join our

crowdfunding campaign to support our efforts.

To understand the importance of theory of change, see this

previous post.

Most issues related to animals are intrinsically linked to institutionalized practices and frameworks, such as farming conditions, wildlife protection, animal testing regulations, and more. Animal protection goes beyond individual ethics; it is a matter of collective, political responsibility. To impact as many animals as possible, CAP operates at the political level on behalf of 25 partner NGOs, primarily on a national scale, to change the law in favor of animals.

The creation of CAP in 2016 resulted from the observation that while animal protection was becoming an important issue for public opinion and the media in France, politicians did not concern themselves with it, as they did not perceive it as a politically legitimate topic. Hence the law did not change, and animals did not see their condition improve. To quote

Lewis Bollard, "our challenge is to convert the popular support we already enjoy into the legal protections that [...] animals deserve."

Weaknesses of the French animal movement that CAP aims to address

We identified several reasons for this lack of political interest and action in France:

Very few Animal NGOs lobbied politicians and the ones that did, did it on a small scale and rather occasionally, which did not allow for the building of a sustained network of political allies.On the other hand, lobbies that favor the status quo and the exploitation of animals had long established influential networks, relying on significant financial resources.

NGOs sometimes had differing agendas and political demands, which made them less clear and less visible for politicians (who most often will not take the time to decipher the positions of various groups to draw a consensus).

Politicians interested in animal issues often did not know who to turn to for advice and support, because they lacked knowledge about the animal movement. There was a need for a clearly identified actor that would be able to act as an intermediary and to redirect politicians towards the relevant organizations on specific topics.

Because very few politicians took public stances or political action for animals, sympathizing Members of parliament (MPs) often did not dare to do so, by fear of being marginalized and hence losing political leverage.

How CAP seeks to bring about change

To achieve political change for animals, the main strategy of CAP is to bring more animal NGOs to lobby politicians, more massively and in a more coherent manner, and to create, grow and sustain a network of political allies in Parliament, in order to be able to mobilize it when needed, to build majorities, inside parliamentary groups, or more generally in parliament.

Indeed, the support of a few MPs is not enough for bills to be passed, or even debated upon: for a bill to be put on the agenda, a parliamentary group needs to collectively agree to prioritize it and use its right to set a chamber's (National Assembly or Senate) agenda.

CAP's actions can be summed up to four main inputs:

We obtain meetings with MPs and members of the government (nearly 350 in seven years). Our goals are to raise their awareness of animal issues and of the political demands of our partner NGOs and push them to act upon them. We also aim to sound out their opinion and their willingness to act upon specific issues, which will help us and our partners to know who to appeal to when...