What happens when the cows don’t come home? This report was commissioned by the World Society for the Protection of Animals and investigates the “economic impact of losing livestock in a disaster”. It covers a wide range of material relating to the role of livestock in development, the economics of disasters, the treatment of livestock in disaster recovery efforts, and case studies on particular disaster events.
The purpose of this research is to highlight the current state of the literature relevant to livestock and disasters and to suggest future research areas that would help to understand better the impacts of losing livestock in a disaster.
This review focuses in particular on low-income countries. This is because livestock are extremely important to economic development and welfare in most low-income countries. Animals represent more than food — they represent livelihoods. When people are affected by natural disaster, their animals (and thus their livelihoods) are also affected. As experts in this field have put it:
From a global perspective, one of the most pressing needs [in disaster relief] is to improve livestock relief programming with communities who rely heavily on livestock for their social and economic well-being.
Source: LEGS 2009 p2
As such, this report reviews literature that relates to livestock in economic development, and also to the way disasters impact on economies. Considerable research has focused on the role of livestock in economies, and at the economic effects of natural disasters. We review the main themes of this work in the two main parts of this report. In doing so, we hope to outline, explain and expand on the value of livestock and their role in disaster recovery, and to make this importance easier to demonstrate to a wider audience.
We begin in Section 1 by examining the role of livestock in all economies. We see that in high-income countries, livestock are mainly treated as a financial asset and one of many sources of food. This is in stark contrast to low-income countries, where livestock have a range of functions. Animals provide meat, milk and eggs; they assist with ploughing fields; they can be sold for cash and play a role in cultural identity. We see that livestock in low-income countries have direct and indirect values relating to food, agriculture, savings and cultural values. The results of Section 1 are summarised below.
|
Livestock and Food |
|
|
Direct values |
Indirect values |
| Reduced quantity of food available due to livestock death and injuries during disaster. | Increased levels of malnutrition due to reduced consumption of animal-sourced foods. |
Reduced quantity of food through reduced livestock productivity due to:
|
Effects of malnutrition on children’s physical and mental development. |
| Effects of malnutrition on worker productivity. | |
| Reduced food security due to lack of animal-sourced foods to smooth fluctuations in agricultural crops. Crop yields are also likely to be less stable following a disaster. | |
|
Livestock and Agriculture |
|
|
Direct values |
Indirect values |
| Reduced availability of draft power. | Increased reliance on purchased fuels and fertilisers. |
| Reduced availability of manure. | Increased labour requirements. |
| Reduced agricultural output. | Reduced access to other markets through transport and haulage, further exacerbating food insecurity problems. |
|
Livestock, Savings and Income |
|
|
Direct values |
Indirect values |
| Lost savings in the form of livestock. | Increased vulnerability to future disasters through loss of insurance value of different species. |
Lost income from:
|
Increased variation in income due to lost ASF sales. |
|
Livestock and cultural values |
|
|
Direct values |
Indirect values |
| Reduced ability to use livestock for cultural obligations such as dowries. | The possibility that reduced herd size may force people to abandon pastoralism, losing livelihood base and the social support structures of herding communities. |
When livestock losses occur due to a disaster, it is direct values – those that can be estimated using market prices – that are generally considered in evaluating the cost of the losses. However, such valuation rarely incorporates the indirect values of livestock, which can be more difficult to observe, but often more important than the direct financial loss incurred in a disaster.
All these factors are affected when livestock are lost in disasters. Our literature review suggests that these values are often not considered in economic and general literature. We believe that an understanding and acknowledgment of these indirect roles is crucial in understanding the role of livestock in developing economies, and in understanding why their loss in natural disasters is so damaging.
Section 2 examines disasters and the economics thereof. Again, we focus largely on low-income countries, as these countries are more exposed and vulnerable to natural disasters than their high-income counterparts, and they also recover more slowly than high-income countries. Factors that influence disaster exposure and vulnerability include:
- Levels of disaster preparedness and mitigation;
- Economic factors including savings, productivity and trade links;
- Public institutions and governance;
- Demographic factors including population density, health and literacy.
As with livestock loss, financial estimates of the cost of disasters tend to refer to direct impacts: the cost of physical damage to the factors of production (being people and animals, land and capital). Again, in addition to these direct costs, disasters also have indirect impacts. While these are often harder to estimate than direct costs, they can also be more important in understanding the full welfare impacts of disasters. Indirect impacts typically result from the damage caused to factors of production and the losses sustained until such time (if ever) that this damage can be repaired. The direct and indirect impacts of disasters are summarised below.
|
Direct Impacts |
Indirect Impacts |
|
|
Labour |
||
| Death, sickness and injury. | Lost wages of workers. | |
| Costs of treating the sick and injured and laying dead to rest. | Reduced productivity of workers and industries due to injuries and psychological trauma. | |
|
Capital |
||
| Damage to roads, housing, infrastructure, factories, machinery, etc. | Lost income from capital assets. Reduced productivity in capital-intensive industries. | |
| Costs to fix or replace damaged capital assets and infrastructure. | Reduced ability of governments and firms to provide services to the public. | |
|
Land |
||
| Damage to crops | Reduced food security | |
| Erosion, landslides, loss of nutrients. | Reduced agricultural productivity | |
| Costs of engineering to repair and restore land stability and soil quality | Rising food prices | |
Economists have attempted to model the costs of disasters, both direct and indirect, using regression analysis. We examine the efficacy of such modelling, and find that as it tends to be limited to macroeconomic factors, it sheds little light on regional effects – such as the loss of livestock.
In Section 3, we combine the findings of Sections 1 and 2 to help readers understand the impacts of losing livestock in disasters. The summary table of this concluding section is below.
|
Direct Impacts |
Indirect Impacts |
|
|
Labour |
||
| Loss of animal-sourced foods. | Loss of food securityLoss of nutrition with short term consequences for worker productivity and long-term consequences for education, community development and worker productivity. | |
| Loss of draft power, increasing demand for human labour. | Reduced labour availability. | |
| Loss of income generating opportunities. | Loss of a productive use of labour, particularly for women, children and the elderly.Reduced income security. | |
| Loss of culturally and socially important animals. | Reduced social/cultural opportunities, such as participation in weddings, funerals, etc.Loss of social support networks. | |
|
Capital |
||
| Reduced availability of draft power leading to increased demand for machinery and fuel. | Dependence on borrowed assets, or borrowing to finance their use. Increased dependence on external inputs such as fossil fuel. | |
| Loss of savings and investment. | Loss of investment income from animals.Inability to cover sudden expenses such as medical bills and school fees.
Herd sizes may become unviable leading to relocation, loss of social status and poverty. |
|
| Loss of livestock as an input to ASF related industries. | Reduced income or substitution from dairies, markets, abattoirs, butchers, retailers and restaurants | |
|
Land |
||
| Loss of draft power. | Reduced agricultural productivity, leading to reduced food security.Reduced crop residues leading to reduced livestock productivity and increased demands on other feed sources, such as communal grazing areas. Increased demands on these areas can lead to natural resource degradation. | |
| Loss of manure. | Reduced agricultural productivity, as above.Increased demand for chemical fertilisers, which may be expensive or unavailable.
Increased demand for alternative fuels, such as firewood, which can lead to degradation of forests and woodlands. |
|
Section 4 presents three case studies — the 2010 Pakistan floods, the 2010 dzud (harsh winter) in Mongolia, and cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar in 2008 — and discusses the direct and indirect losses of livestock in each.
Structure of the report
This report is divided into four main sections.
| Livestock in economies | To understand the impacts of losing livestock in a disaster it is necessary to understand the role livestock play in households and economies. This section looks at the livestock ownership in both high and low-income countries. |
| Natural disasters and economies | There are different definitions of disaster, different classifications and different ways of responding to them. This section also includes statistics on disaster occurrence and sources of information for disasters. This section looks at the various approaches to understanding the economic impacts of disasters, discussion of direct and indirect costs and economic modelling |
| Disaster impacts and livestock | This section summarises the economic impacts of losing livestock in a disaster referring to results in the earlier sections. |
| Case studies | Three case studies looking at disasters in Pakistan, Mongolia and Myanmar. |
