Main topic: Human-animal relations

The future presents enormous challenges with respect to non-human animals. Domestic animals have contributed to the creation and development of human civilization since its origin. Today, technology replaces most of the labor that animals were once used for. This raises questions about whether it remains useful and profitable to maintain a big sized population of domestic animals, the demand for which can be expected to drop further with the adoption of meatless diets in the future. Thinking about the role of domestic animals in the future can help us plan for a demographic transition. The aesthetic, educational, and recreational properties of some domestic animals count in favor of their preservation, but what should their status be? Should they be recognized as citizens? Should we enhance their capabilities to integrate them into human civilization? 

As for wild animals, there are reasons to expect their suffering to increase in the future. For example, climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters in the mid/long-term. How should we most efficiently prevent wild animal suffering caused by those events? How should we prevent animal suffering caused by predators; should these be enhanced, and/or their population reduced? More generally, the size and composition of the wild animal population will change in the future; the risk that some species will be fully extinguished is high, while others will flourish in numbers. The development of animal welfare and animal population ethics can help us evaluate these risks and plan for eventual interventions. There is also a growing literature on animal sentience and cognition, that has in important respects revised previous views of which animals are likely to be sentient (Browning & Birch etc) . This literature will inform this theme. 

Following Kymlicka and Donaldsons taxonomy, liminal animals are wild animals that live in our midst. As human civilization expands to other planets, so will the population of liminal animals. What should we think about these?