A new peer-reviewed study in published in Science on July 24 explores how investments to prevent tropical deforestation and wildlife trade could significantly reduce overall costs associated with widespread zoonotic diseases that have rampaged through human populations in recent years. SARS, MERS, H1N1, HIV, and now the virus behind COVID-19 are all linked to human contact with wildlife. The economic and mortality toll of COVID-19 alone may cost as much as $16 trillion. The research team estimates the virus prevention costs for 10 years to be valued at only about 2% of the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The research team includes CEOS Co-Director Amy Ando from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, medical and environmental scientists, other economists, and conservation practitioners from 14 institutions and nonprofits. They explain that zoonotic viruses most often pass from wildlife to human populations in one of two ways: directly through handling wildlife or indirectly through caring for and consuming affected domestic livestock. Transference most often occurs in areas where tropical deforestation has pushed disease-carrying animals like primates, rodents and bats to exist near humans, as well as through the global wildlife trade.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc globally, the costs in healthcare and economic meltdown have never been more obvious. To thwart the next virus, it is necessary to ensure that disease-carrying wildlife and humans have few points of contact. The authors point out that tropical deforestation increases habitat loss and fragmentation, and investments to reduce deforestation would dramatically decrease zoonotic virus spillover from animals to humans. International funds to support land-use zoning, market and credit restrictions, and state-of-the-science satellite monitoring have already proven to reduce forest fragmentation in the Brazilian Amazon forest, and direct payments could supplement those policies.
According to Ando, “These preventive programs would only have to reduce the chances of another pandemic like COVID-19 by about 25% for their benefits in pandemic prevention to outweigh their costs – and the science indicates these programs will meet that standard of effectiveness.” Investments to conserve tropical forests and support reforms to cut the global wildlife trade (like suppressing the exotic pet and bush meat industries) are indeed likely to pay for themselves, as they make the difference between having another global pandemic and containing the next novel zoonotic virus.
Direct link: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6502/379
CITATION: “Ecology and Economics for Pandemic Prevention,” Andrew P. Dobson, Stuart Pimm, Lee Hannah, Les Kaufman, Jorge A. Ahumada, Amy W. Ando, Aaron Bernstein, Jonah Busch, Peter Daszak, Jens Engelmann, Margaret Kinnaird, Binbin Li, Ted Loch-Temzelides, Thomas Lovejoy, Katarzyna Nowak, Patrick Roehrdanz, and Mariana M. Vale; Science, July 24, 2020. DOI:10.1126/science.abc3189