Escaping the ‘Era of Pandemics’: experts warn worse crises to come; offer options to reduce risk

IPBES, Bonn (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services)

Highlights: Intergovernmental council on pandemic prevention; risk drivers include deforestation, wildlife trade; tax high pandemic-risk activities; 540,000 – 850,000 unknown viruses in nature could infect people; economic impacts 100x prevention costs

Future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than COVID-19 unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases, warns 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.

COVID-19 is at least the sixth global health pandemic since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, and 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 released on Thursday. 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.

“There is no great mystery about the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic – or of any modern pandemic”, said Dr. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance and Chair of the IPBES workshop. “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.”

Pandemic risk 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-livestock-human contact and help prevent the spillover of new diseases, says the report.

“The overwhelming scientific evidence points to a very positive conclusion,” said Dr. Daszak. “We have the increasing ability to prevent pandemics – but the way we are tackling them right now largely ignores that ability. Our approach has effectively stagnated – 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.”

“The fact that human activity has been able to so fundamentally change our natural environment need not always be a negative outcome. It also provides convincing proof of our power to drive the change needed to reduce the risk of future pandemics – while simultaneously benefiting conservation and reducing climate change.”

The report says that relying on responses to diseases after their emergence, such as public health measures and technological solutions, in particular the rapid design and distribution of new vaccines and therapeutics, 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 COVID-19 of $8-16 trillion globally by July 2020, it is further estimated that costs in the United States alone may reach as high as $16 trillion by the 4th quarter of 2021. The experts estimate the cost of reducing risks to prevent pandemics to be 100 times less than the cost of responding to such pandemics, “providing strong economic incentives for transformative change.”

The report also offers a number of policy options that would help to reduce and address pandemic risk. Among these are:

  • Launching a high-level intergovernmental council on pandemic prevention to provide decision-makers with the best science and evidence on emerging diseases; predict high-risk areas; evaluate the economic impact of potential pandemics and to highlight research gaps. Such a council could also coordinate the design of a global monitoring framework.
  • Countries setting mutually-agreed goals or targets within the framework of an international accord or agreement – with clear benefits for people, animals and the environment.
  • Institutionalizing the ‘One Health’ approach in national governments to build pandemic preparedness, enhance pandemic prevention programs, and to investigate and control outbreaks across sectors.
  • Developing and incorporating pandemic and emerging disease risk health impact assessments in major development and land-use projects, while reforming financial aid for land-use so that benefits and risks to biodiversity and health are recognized and explicitly targeted.
  • Ensuring that the economic cost of pandemics is factored into consumption, production, and government policies and budgets.
  • Enabling changes to reduce the types of consumption, globalized agricultural expansion and trade that have led to pandemics – this could include taxes or levies on meat consumption, livestock production and other forms of high pandemic-risk activities.
  • Reducing zoonotic disease risks in the international wildlife trade through a new intergovernmental ‘health and trade’ partnership; reducing or removing high disease-risk species in the wildlife trade; enhancing law enforcement in all aspects of the illegal wildlife trade and improving community education in disease hotspots about the health risks of wildlife trade.
  • Valuing Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ engagement and knowledge in pandemic prevention programs, achieving greater food security, and reducing consumption of wildlife.
  • Closing critical knowledge gaps such as those about key risk behaviors, the relative importance of illegal, unregulated, and the legal and regulated wildlife trade in disease risk, and improving understanding of the relationship between ecosystem degradation and restoration, landscape structure and the risk of disease emergence.

Speaking about the workshop report, Dr. Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary of IPBES said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of science and expertise to inform policy and decision-making. Although it is not one of the typical IPBES intergovernmental assessments reports, this is an extraordinary peer-reviewed expert publication, representing the perspectives of some of the world’s leading scientists, with the most up-to-date evidence and produced under significant time constraints. We congratulate Dr. Daszak and the other authors of this workshop report and thank them for this vital contribution to our understanding of the emergence of pandemics and options for controlling and preventing future outbreaks. This will inform a number of IPBES assessments already underway, in addition to offering decision-makers new insights into pandemic risk reduction and options for prevention.”

###

The full report is available here: http://www.ipbes.net/pandemics

Executive summary: http://bit.ly/PandemicReportExecSum

The report, its recommendations and conclusions have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by the member States of IPBES – it represents the expertise and perspectives of the experts who participated in the workshop, listed here in full: https://ipbes.net/biodiversity-pandemics-participants

The IPBES workshop report is one of the most scientifically robust examinations of the evidence and knowledge about links between pandemic risk and nature since the COVID pandemic began – with contributions from leading experts in fields as diverse as epidemiology, zoology, public health, disease ecology, comparative pathology, veterinary medicine, pharmacology, wildlife health, mathematical modelling, economics, law and public policy.

The report is also strongly scientifically substantiated, with almost than 700 cited sources – more than 200 of which are from 2020 and 2019 – which offers decision-makers a valuable analytical snap-shot of the most up-to-date data currently available.

17 of the 22 experts were nominated by Governments and organizations following a call for nominations; 5 experts were added from the ongoing IPBES assessment of the sustainable use of wild species, the assessment on values and the assessment of invasive alien species, as well as experts assisting with the scoping of the IPBES nexus assessment and transformative change assessments.

Resource persons who contributed information but were not authors of the report included experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Often described as the “IPCC for biodiversity”, IPBES is an independent intergovernmental body comprising more than 130 member Governments. Established by Governments in 2012, it provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity, ecosystems and the contributions they make to people, as well as the tools and methods to protect and sustainably use these vital natural assets. For more information about IPBES and its assessments visit http://www.ipbes.net

Coverage highlights

Newswires

Reuters, via Yahoo news, United States (62,060,100) Protect nature or face deadlier pandemics than COVID-19, scientists warn, click here

Spanish: Falta de protección a biodiversidad desencadenará pandemias peores que el COVID-19: estudio, click here

Thomson Reuters Foundation, UK, Scientists propose tax on meat and livestock to help avert future pandemics, click here

Press Association, UK, via Daily Mail, UK (24,234,282) Worse pandemics to come without action to curb harm to nature, report warns, click here

Agence France Press, via Yahoo news, United States (62,060,100) Nature loss means deadlier future pandemics, UN warns, click here

French, via Le Figaro, France (28,585,893) Les pandémies vont se multiplier et faire plus de morts, selon des experts de l’ONU, click here

Portuguese, via Globo, Brazil (12,086,233), Protejam a natureza ou enfrentem pandemias mais graves do que a Covid-19, alertam cientistas, click here 

Agencia EFE, via Infobae, Argentina (36,782,390) Reducir la pérdida de la biodiversidad evitará una era de pandemias (Reducing biodiversity loss will prevent an era of pandemics), click here

ANSA, Italy (12,621,632) Covid: studio, rischio pandemie peggiori. Serve prevenirle (Covid: study, worse pandemic risk. We need to prevent them), click here

Deutsche Presse Agentur, Germany, Forscher: Naturschutz kann Pandemien vorbeugen (Researcher: Conservation can prevent pandemics), click here

Kyodo News, via Yahoo! Japan (potential impressions: 92,198,566) 環境破壊が動物由来の感染症招く コロナの損害16兆ドル試算 (Environmental destruction causes infectious diseases of animal origin Corona damage estimated at $ 16 trillion), click here

The Canadian Press, via CTV News, Canada (14,461,132) Nature loss means deadlier future pandemics, UN warns, click here

* * * * *

Major news sites

UK

Daily Mail

Worse pandemics to come without action to protect wildlife: Scientists warn there are up to 850,000 undiscovered viruses in birds and mammals that could infect humans, click here

The Guardian (87,129,192) Protecting nature is vital to ‘escaping era of pandemics’ – report, click here

BBC News (75,721,184) Cheaper to prevent pandemics than ‘cure’ them, click here

New Scientist, Controlling deforestation and wildlife trade could prevent pandemics, click here

The Independent, Halt the climate and nature-loss crises to prevent more pandemics, scientists tell world leaders, click here

USA

The Hill (24,796,323) UN warns of deadlier pandemics, click here

Gizmodo, Why Saving Nature Is the Best Way to End the Pandemic Era, click here

France

Le Monde (26,209,339) Prévenir les pandémies plutôt que guérir serait cent fois moins coûteux (Preventing pandemics rather than curing would be a hundred times cheaper), click here

Le Parisien (18,817,118) L’ONU anticipe des pandémies plus fréquentes et plus meurtrières (The UN anticipates more frequent and deadly pandemics), click here

20 Minutes (16,456,797) Les pandémies vont se multiplier et faire plus de morts, avertit l’ONU (Pandemics to multiply and kill more, UN warns), click here

Germany

Der Spiegel (24,711,886) Weltbiodiversitätsrat fordert Strategiewechsel im Kampf gegen Viren (World Biodiversity Council calls for a change in strategy in the fight against viruses), click here

Süddeutsche (14,705,059) Zoonosen Das Pandemiezeitalter muss nicht kommen (Zoonoses The age of pandemics need not come), click here

Spain 

LaVanguardia (32,424,925) Los expertos reclaman rearmar el planeta contra pandemias “más frecuentes, mortales y costosas” (Experts claim to rearm the planet against pandemics “more frequent, deadly and costly”), click here

El Diario (12,162,225) La ONU certifica que las mismas agresiones ambientales detrás del cambio climático causan las pandemias como la COVID-19 (The UN certifies that the same environmental aggressions behind climate change cause pandemics such as COVID-19), click here

Latin America

Infobae, Argentina (36,782,390) Las pandemias del futuro serán más mortales y costosas sin cambios en los modelos de producción (Future pandemics will be more deadly and costly without changes in production models), click here

El Tiempo, Colombia (13,807,544), ¿Qué es el ‘efecto dilución’, clave para evitar futuras pandemias? (What is the ‘dilution effect’, key to avoiding future pandemics?), click here

Poland

Onet (21,015,525), Eksperci nie mają dobrych wieści: kolejne pandemie będą gorsze niż obecna (There is no good news for experts: future pandemics will be worse than the current one), click here

Korea 

Daum (28,902,455) 미발견 바이러스 170만종 중 85만종 인간 감염 가능 (850,000 out of 1.7 million undiscovered viruses can infect humans), click here

Coverage summary in full, click here

News release in full, click here