Without change, more pandemics loom
The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on the environment, experts say.
ELLANIE SMIT
WINDHOEK
The risk of pandemics can be significantly lowered by reducing human activities that drive the loss of biodiversity.
Future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than the coronavirus unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases.
This is the warning in a major new report on biodiversity and pandemics by 22 leading experts from around the world.
Convened by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for an urgent virtual workshop about the links between degradation of nature and increasing pandemic risks, the experts agree that escaping the era of pandemics is possible, but that this will require a seismic shift in approach from reaction to prevention.
According to IPBES, the coronavirus is at least the sixth global health pandemic since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918.
Our own fault
“Although it has its origins in microbes carried by animals, like all pandemics, its emergence has been entirely driven by human activities,” says the report.
It is estimated that another 1.7 million currently undiscovered viruses exist in mammals and birds, of which up to 850 000 could have the ability to infect people.
“The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on our environment. Changes in the way we use land, the expansion and intensification of agriculture and unsustainable trade, production and consumption disrupt nature and increase contact between wildlife, livestock, pathogens and people. This is the path to pandemics,” said Dr Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance and chair of the IPBES workshop.
The report says that the risk of pandemics can be significantly lowered by reducing the human activities that drive the loss of biodiversity by greater conservation of protected areas and through measures that reduce unsustainable exploitation of high biodiversity regions.
This will reduce wildlife-human-livestock contact and help prevent the spillover of new diseases.
“We still rely on attempts to contain and control diseases after they emerge, through vaccines and therapeutics. We can escape the era of pandemics, but this requires a much greater focus on prevention in addition to reaction.”
Prevention better than cure
The report says that relying on responses to diseases after their emergence, such as public health measures and technological solutions, is a “slow and uncertain path”, underscoring both the widespread human suffering and the tens of billions of dollars in annual economic damage to the global economy of reacting to pandemics.
Pointing to the likely cost of the coronavirus of US$8 to 16 trillion globally by July 2020, the experts estimate the cost of reducing risks to prevent pandemics to be 100 times less than the cost of responding to such pandemics.
The report also offers several policy options that would help to reduce and address pandemic risk.
“The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of science and expertise to inform policy and decision-making,” said Dr Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of IPBES.
According to statistics of Monday Namibia has recorded 13 012 confirmed coronavirus cases, 11 201 recoveries and 1 678 active cases.
WINDHOEK
The risk of pandemics can be significantly lowered by reducing human activities that drive the loss of biodiversity.
Future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than the coronavirus unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases.
This is the warning in a major new report on biodiversity and pandemics by 22 leading experts from around the world.
Convened by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for an urgent virtual workshop about the links between degradation of nature and increasing pandemic risks, the experts agree that escaping the era of pandemics is possible, but that this will require a seismic shift in approach from reaction to prevention.
According to IPBES, the coronavirus is at least the sixth global health pandemic since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918.
Our own fault
“Although it has its origins in microbes carried by animals, like all pandemics, its emergence has been entirely driven by human activities,” says the report.
It is estimated that another 1.7 million currently undiscovered viruses exist in mammals and birds, of which up to 850 000 could have the ability to infect people.
“The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on our environment. Changes in the way we use land, the expansion and intensification of agriculture and unsustainable trade, production and consumption disrupt nature and increase contact between wildlife, livestock, pathogens and people. This is the path to pandemics,” said Dr Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance and chair of the IPBES workshop.
The report says that the risk of pandemics can be significantly lowered by reducing the human activities that drive the loss of biodiversity by greater conservation of protected areas and through measures that reduce unsustainable exploitation of high biodiversity regions.
This will reduce wildlife-human-livestock contact and help prevent the spillover of new diseases.
“We still rely on attempts to contain and control diseases after they emerge, through vaccines and therapeutics. We can escape the era of pandemics, but this requires a much greater focus on prevention in addition to reaction.”
Prevention better than cure
The report says that relying on responses to diseases after their emergence, such as public health measures and technological solutions, is a “slow and uncertain path”, underscoring both the widespread human suffering and the tens of billions of dollars in annual economic damage to the global economy of reacting to pandemics.
Pointing to the likely cost of the coronavirus of US$8 to 16 trillion globally by July 2020, the experts estimate the cost of reducing risks to prevent pandemics to be 100 times less than the cost of responding to such pandemics.
The report also offers several policy options that would help to reduce and address pandemic risk.
“The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of science and expertise to inform policy and decision-making,” said Dr Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of IPBES.
According to statistics of Monday Namibia has recorded 13 012 confirmed coronavirus cases, 11 201 recoveries and 1 678 active cases.
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