Earth and Respect for Its Inhabitants
A reflection on what it means to share the planet — drawn from four decades of teaching, fieldwork and the daily, unspectacular practice of looking after animals well.
Forty years in this work and the question I sit with most often is not whether what we do is justified, but whether it is generous. The animals in our care give us their lives. The least we can do is examine what we ask of them, and why.
A working definition of respect
Respect is not the absence of intervention. It is intervention that listens — to the animal in front of us, and to the world we keep them in.
Respect, in practice, looks like the same things welfare science already names — choice, predictability, the chance to engage in species-typical behaviour — but the framing matters. Welfare metrics make the case to a regulator. Respect makes the case to ourselves.
It is also a reminder that conservation is not a series of one-off heroics. It is the long, often boring, work of keeping promises.
About Professor Meera Deobhakta
Professor Meera Deobhakta has spent four decades in education and conservation, writing on the ethics of human–animal relationships and the role of zoological institutions in modern conservation.