Why animal welfare rarely makes the CSR agenda in India

Over the past decade, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in India has evolved significantly. CSR frameworks today operate with greater structure, clearer regulations, and growing accountability to boards, investors, and customers. Many companies are no longer asking how much they should give, but how their CSR investments create meaningful, long-term impact.

And yet, even within this more mature ecosystem, animal welfare remains largely absent from corporate CSR agendas.

This absence is not because animal welfare lacks relevance. India has a strong legal framework for animal protection, and the interconnections between animal welfare, public health, climate resilience, food systems, and urban sustainability are increasingly visible. Still, animal welfare accounted for only ~1.5% of total CSR spending in FY 2023-24.

The real question, therefore, is not whether animal welfare matters, but why, within corporate CSR agendas, it continues to be treated as a peripheral concern rather than a serious priority.

CSR teams work under real constraints. They are expected to deliver visible outcomes within defined timelines, often with limited flexibility. Projects that offer clear metrics, schools built, patients treated, beneficiaries reached, naturally rise to the top. These interventions are easier to plan, report, and justify internally.

Animal welfare, by contrast, rarely fits into neat annual cycles.

Its most effective interventions, disease prevention, humane population management, improved waste handling, climate adaptation, are preventive and systemic. Their impact compounds over time, rather than appearing as immediate outputs. This makes animal welfare harder to measure using traditional CSR frameworks, even when its long-term benefits are significant.

This challenge is compounded by perception. Animal welfare is often viewed as an emotive or charitable cause, rather than a development intervention. As a result, its contributions to reducing zoonotic disease risk, strengthening urban ecosystems, stabilising livelihoods, and building climate resilience are under-recognised within CSR conversations.

This does not make animal welfare less impactful. It simply means it requires a different way of thinking about impact.

Structural issues within CSR frameworks further compound the problem. Animal welfare initiatives are frequently grouped under broad categories such as environment, sustainability, or biodiversity, alongside climate change mitigation, renewable energy, and pollution control. In this crowded landscape, animal welfare is diluted, deprioritised, or treated as optional.

The result is a paradox: animal welfare is eligible under CSR law, but rarely prioritised in CSR strategy.

Chronic underfunding has predictable consequences. There are fewer large-scale pilots, limited investment in data and impact measurement, and weak documentation of outcomes. From a corporate lens, this creates a self-reinforcing loop: the absence of evidence makes the sector appear underdeveloped, which in turn discourages investment.

Importantly, this is not a failure of intent, on either side. It is a gap in design.

The growing global adoption of the One Health approach, recognising that human, animal, and environmental health are deeply interconnected, offers a useful lens here.

Animals are sentient beings. They experience pain, stress, and fear. They have intrinsic value, the capacity for natural behaviour, and a right to live with dignity. They share our cities, our landscapes, and our ecosystems. Any vision of inclusive development must recognise animals not as externalities, but as part of the communities we inhabit.

When animals are neglected, the consequences rarely stop with them. Poor animal health increases the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. Inadequate waste management and unmanaged animal populations strain urban systems. Climate stress and habitat loss push animals into closer contact with human settlements, intensifying conflict.

Importantly, the question is no longer whether corporations should shoulder this responsibility alone. A more promising opportunity lies in collaboration between CSR and strategic philanthropy.

In recent years, philanthropic engagement in animal welfare has begun to grow, not just in scale, but in sophistication. Philanthropic actors are investing in long-term capacity-building, advocacy, research, and ecosystem infrastructure, areas that CSR often finds difficult to support independently due to risk and reporting constraints.

This creates a powerful opportunity.

CSR programmes can partner with philanthropic platforms and funding circles to co-design pilots, share risk, and build evidence together. Philanthropy can absorb early-stage uncertainty, while CSR can help scale proven interventions. Together, they can fill critical funding gaps, particularly in prevention, systems strengthening, and implementation capacity.

Such partnerships also offer CSR teams clearer frameworks, stronger monitoring systems, and credible intermediaries, addressing many of the barriers that have historically kept animal welfare off the agenda.

Few corporations have meaningfully engaged with animal welfare through CSR so far. That also means the space is open for thoughtful leadership.

There is also a growing recognition of shifting consumer expectations. Young, urban consumers are increasingly mindful of ethical choices, from cruelty-free products to sustainable food systems. Brands that proactively address animal welfare not only do the right thing but also promote stronger consumer loyalty.

Animal welfare’s place on the CSR agenda will not be secured through obligation alone. It will come when it is understood for what it truly is: a foundational, preventive investment in healthier communities and more resilient systems.

The opportunity to do this, collaboratively, thoughtfully, and at scale, is already emerging. What remains is the willingness to engage with it.

(Siddharth Agarwal is Foundation Lead and Ambika Chandra, Manager - Communications at Upadhyaya Foundation.)