The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has cautioned the world that new zoonotic diseases are emerging at an alarming rate due to the humanity’s ‘broken’ relationship with nature.
The emerging zoonotic diseases have the potential to wreak havoc on health, economics and global security and the COVID-19 crisis demonstrated the devastating costs of global pandemics. The latest pandemic also reconfirmed how people and nature were interlinked and a negative impact on the natural world could increase the risk of future pandemics.
The WWF released a special report on “COVID-19: Urgent call to protect people and nature” with several key findings. In the recent decades due to escalating levels of contact between humans, livestock and wildlife, the frequency and number of new zoonotic diseases originating in animals and transmitted to people had risen drastically.
Giving out the reasons for emerging zoonotic diseases, the report said that unsustainable food systems and large-scale conversion of land for agriculture was increasing ‘interaction’ between wildlife, livestock and humans. “The problem is set to worsen as the challenge of feeding growing population increases and diets shift. Secondly, poor food safety standards, including permitting the trade and consumption of high risk wildlife species are increasing human exposure to animal pathogens,” it said.
The COVID crisis exemplifies the devastating costs of global pandemics. Between December 2019 and May 2020, the report said that 3.7 lakh people died due to COVID-related causes in more than 200 countries, which is three times the number of people killed by armed conflict and terrorism every year. The economic impact has been estimated at between US$ 2.4 and US$ 8.8 trillion in lost output. About half of world’s workforce is at risk of losing their livelihoods, with social and economic effects, affecting already marginalised groups more, including women and indigenous communities.
COVID may also impact food security — people at risk of acute hunger could rise from 135 million to 265 million by end of 2020, impact global stability with tensions escalating in volatile areas and geo-political rivalries between countries predicted to worsen, the report warned.
Call for global action
WWF called upon governments, all companies and industries, civil society organisations, general public to tackle the key drivers of pandemics, land use change, expansion and intensification of agriculture and animal production and consumption of high risk wildlife.
It urged governments to protect and restore natural habitats, halve the footprint of production and consumption, eliminate deforestation, implement global biodiversity framework. It called upon all industries for credible action to promote sustainable production, encourage consumers to make sustainable dietary choices, and appealed to the civil society organisations to work with governments and industries to develop sustainable solutions and high risk wildlife exploitation, increase accountability of governments, international institutions.
