{"id":9985,"date":"2026-04-08T14:17:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T14:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/portfolio\/pim-martens\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T07:48:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:48:21","slug":"pim-martens","status":"publish","type":"us_portfolio","link":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/portfolio\/pim-martens\/","title":{"rendered":"Pim Martens"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":12956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"us_portfolio_category":[45],"class_list":["post-9985","us_portfolio","type-us_portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","us_portfolio_category-new-template"],"acf":{"naam_van_het_proefschift":"Sustanimalism","samenvatting":"\u201cDe grootheid van een natie kan worden beoordeeld aan de hand van de manier waarop haar dieren worden behandeld,\u201d zei Mahatma Gandhi vele jaren geleden. Ergens tussen deze waarneming en het duurzaamheidsdebat van de afgelopen jaren is het misgegaan. Als we kijken naar de vele duurzaamheidsindicatoren die in de loop der jaren zijn ontwikkeld, is het opvallend dat dierenwelzijn nauwelijks een rol speelt. In dit proefschrift bestuderen we de duurzaamheid van onze relatie met dieren. Dierenwelzijn zou centraal moeten staan in het duurzaamheidsdebat: wat wij \u2018sustanimalism\u2019 noemen (in het Nederlands leidt de combinatie van \u2018dieren\u2019 en \u2018duurzaamheid\u2019 tot het neologisme \u2018dierzaamheid\u2019).\n\nZonder de pretentie de volledige complexiteit van onze relaties met dieren te dekken, verkennen we in dit proefschrift de duurzaamheid van de relaties die mensen hebben met de niet-mensen waarmee we samenleven op verschillende niveaus van interactie. Hoofdstuk 2 geeft een overzicht van hoe onze relatie met dieren is ge\u00ebvolueerd. Hoofdstuk 3 en 4 gaan dieper in op de relatie met huisdieren (honden en katten) en de toeschrijving van emoties door eigenaren. Hoofdstuk 5 en 6 verbreden de analyse door te kijken naar de sociale context en cultuur in relatie tot de houding tegenover dieren, met casestudy's onder Nederlandse en Belgische middelbare scholieren en de algemene Nederlandse bevolking.\n\nIn Hoofdstuk 7 beoordelen we de impact van gezelschapsdieren op het milieu door de introductie van de \u2018ecologische pootafdruk\u2019 (Ecological Paw Print, EPP). We kwantificeren de dieet-EPP en de uitstoot van broeikasgassen in China, Nederland en Japan. Ten slotte kijken we in Hoofdstuk 8 naar beleidsdeterminanten en verschillen tussen landen in dierenbeschermingsbeleid. De resultaten suggereren dat landen met sterkere democratische instellingen en meer op dierenbescherming gerichte maatschappelijke groeperingen waarschijnlijk een strenger dierenbeschermingsbeleid hebben.","summary":"\u201cThe greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated\u201d, Mahatma Gandhi said many years ago. Somewhere between this observation and the sustainability debate in recent years it has gone wrong. If we look at the many sustainability indicators that have been developed over the years, it is striking to see that animal-wellbeing hardly plays a role. Biodiversity and ecosystems indicators put more emphasis on the number and variety of different species than their well-being. Assuming that the words of Gandhi make sense, can we then conclude that the concept of sustainability has nothing to do with civilization? Or is it that animal-wellbeing is a blind spot in the sustainability debate?\n\nOf course our interaction with the environment, other people and other animals is part of our civilization. The reason that \u2018animals \u2018and \u2018sustainability\u2019 are not often mentioned together in one sentence is likely to be found in the fact that the sustainability debate has been hijacked in recent years by industry and governments; their view regarding sustainable development has significantly been subordinate to the dogma of economic growth with little regard for animal welfare. How short-sighted this is has been illustrated by the various outbreaks of animal diseases in intensive farming and the development of antibiotic resistance of many pathogens, in large part because our farmed animals are given too many antibiotics. These are just some examples, but it is increasingly clear that our own well-being is closely connected with the welfare of the animals with whom we live.\n\nWith this thesis, we study the sustainability of our relationship with animals. By looking at animals, you can put the sustainability debate on the map in an engaging way. Animal welfare should therefore be central in the sustainability debate: what we term \u2018sustanimalism\u2019 (in Dutch, the combination of \u2018dieren\u2019 (animals), and \u2018duurzaamheid\u2019 (sustainability) leads to the neologism \u2018dierzaamheid\u2019). With this in mind, it is also practical and easy to make a contribution to a sustainable society. Acting animal-friendly \u2013 for example, take good care of your animals and eating less meat \u2013 is not only beneficial to your health, but also to a better and more civilized world. We hope to encourage people to think about our interaction with the animals that surround us. What is sustainable and what is not, is not a black and white story. \n\nWithout claiming to cover the full complexity of our relationships with animals, in this thesis we explore the sustainability of the relations humans have with the non-humans we are living with on various levels of interaction. Chapter 2 gives an overview how our relationships with animals has evolved over time and what different relationships we have. On the one hand, animals can serve instrumental purposes: we currently use animals for clothing, for testing a range of human products, for gaining basic insights into human biology and behavior, and as food. On the other hand, human-animal relations are social. We review the current state of research on human-animal relations by focusing particularly on pets and on the psychological mechanisms involved in this special relationship. \n\nIn Chapter 3 we move closer into the relationships we have with our pets, in particular cats and dogs. In this chapter, we present, amongst others, information on how the attachment level of companion animal owners correlates to their attribution of emotions to their companion cat or dog. In Chapter 4 we go another step deeper into the relationship we have with our pets. we used photographs of dogs and cats to which companion-animal owners attributed an emotion and compared their assessments with those made by independent experts.\n\nChapters 5 and 6 broadens the analysis of our interaction with animals, by looking at the social context and culture of the individual in relation to their attitude towards animals. Chapter 5 presents a case study on Dutch and Belgian high school students; Chapter 6 analyses the data we gathered for the Dutch population.\n\nIn Chapter 7, we assess the impacts of companion animals on the environment, by introducing the \u201cecological paw print\u201d (EPP). Here, we explain the impact of companion dogs and cats; quantifying their dietary EPP and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions according to data we collected from China, the Netherlands and Japan, and discuss how to reduce their dietary EPP and GHG emissions.\n\nFinally, in Chapter 8 we broaden the scope again by looking at policy determinants and cross-country differences in animal protection policies. Results suggest that countries with stronger democratic institutions and more civil society groups focused on animal protection are likely to have stricter animal protection policies. For economic development and broad civil society strength we do not find significant effects.","auteur":"Pim Martens","auteur_slug":"pim-martens","publicatiedatum":"8 april 2026","taal":"EN","url_flipbook":"https:\/\/ebook.proefschriftmaken.nl\/ebook\/pimmartens?iframe=true","url_download_pdf":"https:\/\/ebook.proefschriftmaken.nl\/download\/50338e1e-ef4e-47b3-b2ae-6be943054c7c\/optimized","url_epub":"","ordernummer":"FTP-202604081415","isbn":"978-94-6380-893-4","doi_nummer":"","naam_universiteit":"Overig","afbeeldingen":12956,"naam_student:":"","binnenwerk":"","universiteit":"Overig","cover":"","afwerking":"","cover_afwerking":"","design":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/9985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/us_portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/9985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9988,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/9985\/revisions\/9988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"us_portfolio_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio_category?post=9985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}