This year has seen an unprecedented amount of achievement for animals on the international stage.
As we end 2025, we have much to be proud of. Our movement has achieved important advances across global health, biodiversity, climate, and food systems forums to advance, secure, and protect meaningful progress for animals worldwide.
Taken together, they show something powerful: even in difficult global conditions, change for animals is possible when we act together.
Changing how animals are seen
An essential precursor to future policy success is a fundamental transformation in how animals are understood, not as expendable resources, but as integral to nature, health, and human wellbeing. In 2025, we saw the beginning of several important shifts in how animals are recognised across global policy spaces.
At the latest climate negotiations, COP30 in November, African leaders announced their intention to launch a Global Wildlife for Climate Action Declaration at COP31 next year. This reflects a growing recognition that protecting wildlife is a climate solution. Wild animals play a critical role in maintaining ecosystems that store carbon, regulate climate, and support resilience on land and in the ocean.
This shift was echoed within the Convention on Biological Diversity, where its scientific body called on countries to “prioritise the conservation and restoration of ecological integrity and ecosystem functions, including those mediated or affected by wild animals.” The message was clear: animals are an essential and special part of nature, ecosystems and the planet.
Connecting animal welfare to human wellbeing
Progress accelerates when policymakers also recognise that protecting animals is essential to protecting people.
A major step forward came in May, when Member States of the World Health Organization adopted the Pandemic Agreement. For the first time, this agreement recognised animal welfare as part of pandemic prevention, through a One Health approach.
Two months later, the Food and Agriculture Organization adopted a landmark resolution on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in agrifood systems. The routine use of antibiotics to compensate for crowded, unhygienic conditions animals are kept in industrial animal farming is a major driver of AMR, one of the top global health threats identified by the WHO. By acknowledging the role of animal health and welfare in addressing AMR, this resolution reinforced a simple truth: higher welfare systems are not just better for animals, they are safer and more sustainable for everyone.
Strengthening our movement
These successes would not have been possible without the ambition, expertise, and collaboration of the World Federation for Animals’ (WFA) members.
Across the world, our members have driven progress at national, regional, and local levels. In recent months alone, we have seen advances ranging from steps toward banning captive lion breeding in South Africa, to commitments to phase out animal testing in the UK, to landmark legislation beginning the phase-out of greyhound racing in Tasmania, and shifts in public procurement away from fast-growing chicken breeds in Sweden.
These victories differ in scale and context, but they share something important: they show that progress is possible, even under difficult conditions.
Looking ahead
As we come to the end of the year, whether Gregorian or lunar, we can take a moment to recognise both what has been achieved and how it was achieved. Through collaboration, persistence, and shared purpose, the movement for animals has continued to move forward.
By working together, we are helping build a world where animals are treated with kindness and respect, and where protecting their welfare strengthens the health of people and the planet we all share.
