Animal Rights as an Integral Tenet of Environmental Policy: Statutory Constructs and Regulatory Pathways toward SDG 15 Realisation

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_22How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Animal Rights; Environmental Policy; SDG 15; Wildlife Conservation; Ecosystem Sustainability

Abstract

The crossroads of environmental protection and animal rights have become one of the defining key factors to the attainment of SDG 15, which is Life on Land. With the growing international understanding of the relationship between animal welfare, conservation of biodiversity and health of ecosystems, countries all around the world are redefining legal systems that are no longer based upon traditional anthropocentric theories. Animal protection in environmental governance is increasingly being incorporated into the wider international agenda through international instruments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and CITES, and through the emerging new standards of animal welfare and welfare standards. The acknowledgement by the European Union of animals as sentient beings, the innovative effort of the legislation in New Zealand and the constitutional reforms in Latin America have shown different but convergent methods. Nevertheless, a translation of the international commitments into practical domestic policies is not an easy task, especially in the developing countries that have been identified as rich in biodiversity. The case of India is quite interesting, whereby its constitutional provisions, as presented in the 48A and 51A(g), formed special grounds regarding the protection of the environment and animals. The presented paper evaluates animal rights as one of the key building blocks of environmental policy, determines the challenges of its implementation, considers the potential to transform the world through the recent Supreme Court ruling, and creates a coherent taxonomic legal model that puts animal rights at the centre to achieve SDG 15 goals and ensure balanced ecosystems, which serve human and ecological needs.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Swarnima Gorani
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/07
TI  - Animal Rights as an Integral Tenet of Environmental Policy: Statutory Constructs and Regulatory Pathways toward SDG 15 Realisation
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Conceptualizing Legal Framework and Policies for Domestic Animal and Wildlife Conservation: Issues and Challenges in Hybrid Mode (ICAR 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 268
EP  - 279
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_22
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_22
ID  - Gorani2026
ER  -