The animal governance system focuses on the health, welfare, and rights of individual animals. The biodiversity governance focuses on species conservation. These governance systems inevitably overlap and interact, resulting in synergies and trade-offs. The project explores issues where trade-offs are particularly evident when it comes to considering issues of animal ethics in conservation: so-called Invasive Alien Species, rewilding and non-subsistence hunting.
The project analyses relationships between governance systems at all levels of governance, from the global to the local. At the national level, she currently focuses on the Netherlands, the UK, Kenya and South Africa. An Integrative Governance framework is used, drawing on an interdisciplinary body of literature, including political and natural science, more-than-human geography, critical feminist and posthumanist theory, amongst others. The relationships are explained based on four clusters of explanatory factors: discourses, institutions - the rules influencing governance, actors - the people and organisations involved, and wider societal structures. The project looks forward to what transformative change for animals in conservation might look like.