Health

“Pandemics such as the COVID-19 outbreak are a predictable and predicted outcome of how people source and grow food, trade and consume animals, and alter environments.”

Just as the 2019 IPBES report found that land-use change, primarily related to industrial livestock production, and wildlife exploitation are the two major drivers of biodiversity loss, the recent Dasgupta review on The Economics of Biodiversity as well as the IPBES Workshop Report on Biodiversity and Pandemics highlight that these same drivers are primarily responsible for the emergence of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. This was underscored in the report Preventing the Next Pandemic by UN Environment (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which stated: “Pandemics such as the COVID-19 outbreak are a predictable and predicted outcome of how people source and grow food, trade and consume animals, and alter environments.”