What would be the most helpful research in economics and emergency management from an animal welfare perspective?
“What would be the most helpful research in economics and emergency management from an animal welfare perspective?” I was once asked this by a student beginning their PhD journey, and my immediate answer was: “A true understanding of the costs to the community.”
Economic modelling is a powerful tool. It influences policy, drives funding, and activates political levers. But in the context of Animal Welfare Emergency Management (AWEM), I’ve yet to see it fully capture the complex human-animal-environment interdependencies that emergencies expose.
Traditional economic models often overlook:
The social cost of eroded trust between communities and agencies.
The loss of genetic diversity in production animals: carefully bred lines can be lost in a single event.
The impact on biodiversity, ecosystems, and cultural connections to land and animals.
The emotional toll on animal custodians who are forced to make impossible decisions.
These are not side issues; they are central to how communities experience and recover from emergencies. Yet they are rarely counted, because they’re hard to quantify. Even when we do count, are we counting the right things?
I recently revisited New Zealand’s Foot and Mouth Disease Response and Recovery Plan, which includes macroeconomic modelling of the first year of an outbreak. It covers familiar metrics:
GDP
Job losses
Export volumes
Government response costs
But what’s missing is striking:
The environmental impact of the response itself includes chemical use, carcass disposal, and contamination of waterways and soils.
The social ripple effects extend not just to farmers but also to families, workers, schools, and rural communities.
The intergenerational trauma that follows is when the loss isn’t just economic, but cultural, emotional, and existential.
The strain on relationships between people and institutions, as well as between communities and the systems meant to protect them.
This isn’t about refining what we measure; it’s about redefining what matters.
New Zealand showed global leadership with the Wellbeing Budget, reframing economic success to include social, environmental, and cultural wellbeing. This thinking now needs to inform emergency management.
With emergency management legislation under reform, we have a rare opportunity to act. Imagine a system that:
Shifts from economic models to value models rooted in real-world interdependencies
Accounts for relational, ecological, emotional, and intergenerational costs
Recognises that emergencies don’t just impact “assets,” but the fabric of whole communities
Supports decision-making that values interconnected wellbeing, not isolated metrics
Numbers still matter. But what we choose to count and why determines who is heard, who is supported, and who is left behind.