An estimated 200 million working animals are essential to the livelihoods of many communities around the world. Because working animals display outward traits of stoicism and endurance, people often neglect their socio-economic value as well as their health and long-term welfare. Strong working animals can also play a crucial role in building resilience in the community. For example, they can assist with restoring income and productivity after a disaster and help their owners resume work.

In many lower and middle-income countries, people are highly dependent on draught animals. Most animal owners live in conditions of severe poverty and working animals are often their biggest and most precious asset. Working animals not only enable their owners to participate in work, boosting their economic capacity, they can also promote gender equality, access to essential services and offer opportunities to take part in money saving schemes. Animal labour is a particularly suitable and accessible energy source to smallholders and family-level production. Working animals are the power behind agricultural systems, generating essential income for their owners and enabling them to save other expenditures.

As a means of rural traction and transport, agricultural use of working animals is common. For example, working animals help to tend land by pulling ploughs and carts, they herd livestock, collect water and other supplies for production as well as deliver goods to market. In urban areas, working animals are also a reliable workforce, carrying people and goods as well as facilitating industry and local services, including construction and refuse collection. Where cost or terrain restrictions mean mechanical vehicles are impractical, animal transport enables communities to utilise local food markets, thereby increasing the potential for quality nutrition.

It is for these reasons the Alliance has come together by acknowledging this crucial role working animals play, as such a vital part of livelihoods and communities, that we can bring together voices and foster positive relationships that can support education and further action.