Climate change is creating new and intensifying existing welfare challenges for billions of domestic and wild animals, requiring urgent consideration of how adaptation strategies incorporate animal welfare outcomes.
Climate change creates both acute and chronic welfare threats for animals. Acute events like floods, wildfires, and heat waves cause direct suffering and death. Chronic changes including shifting seasons, altered food availability, and new disease pressures create ongoing welfare challenges for wild populations. Farm animals face escalating heat stress as temperatures rise, requiring expensive cooling infrastructure that many producers cannot afford. Adaptation planning must explicitly include animal welfare outcomes rather than treating them as secondary considerations.