WWF warns of next pandemic if urgent actions are not taken

Nagpur: While the world continues to grapple with devastating consequences of Covid-19, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has called for urgent global action to address key drivers which will cause future zoonotic disease outbreaks.
In a new report - ‘Covid 19: Urgent call to protect people and nature’, WWF says environmental factors driving emergence of zoonotic diseases are - trade and consumption of high-risk wildlife, land-use change leading to deforestation and conversion, expansion of agriculture and unsustainable intensification and animal production.
WWF is an independent conservation organization with over 30 million followers and a global network active in 100 countries.
Numerous warnings from scientists and thought leaders, such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), have been made about the risk of a global pandemic. WEF ranked pandemics and infectious diseases as one of the top global risks over a decade ago, posing ‘an acute threat to human life’.
Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, said: “We must urgently recognize the links between destruction of nature and human health, or we will soon see the next pandemic. We must curb high risk trade and consumption of wildlife, halt deforestation and land conversion as well as manage food production sustainably. All these actions will help prevent spillover of pathogens to humans, and also address other global risks to our society like biodiversity loss and climate change. There is no debate, and science is clear - we must work with nature, not against it. Unsustainable exploitation of nature has become an enormous risk to us all.”
Questions remain about exact origins of Covid-19, but all available evidence suggests that it is a zoonotic disease, meaning it jumped from wildlife to humans. China announced a comprehensive ban on consumption of wild animals on February 24, which WWF supports and now, the National People’s Congress (NPC) is supporting the revision of the existing law on protection of wildlife, which, if implemented in full, could position China’s wildlife protection law as one of the world's most robust and stringent. Other governments must also follow suit and close their high-risk wildlife markets and end this trade once and for all.
However, addressing high-risk wildlife trade and consumption in isolation will not be enough to prevent the next pandemic. “Our unsustainable global food system is driving large-scale conversion of natural spaces for agriculture, fragmenting natural ecosystems and increasing interactions between wildlife, livestock and humans. Since 1990, 178 million hectares of forest have been cleared, which is equivalent to the size of Libya, the 18th largest country in the world, and around 10 million hectares of forest are still being lost each year through conversion to agriculture and other land uses,” the report states.
Ravi Singh, Secretary General & CEO, WWF India, said, “It is hard to think right now beyond the tragic impacts of ongoing Covid-19 health crisis. But it is also an opportune moment for us to act if we are to deliver a recovery that benefits people and nature. The challenge and opportunity before us today is to begin to think of development through the lens of environmental health.”
“It is imperative to look at the link between the health of nature and humanity and adopt more sustainable methods of production and consumption for a green and just recovery from the pandemic. A productive, diverse, and sustainable natural world has been the basic asset for the success of our civilization, and will continue to be so in future,” Singh said.
The Key Dangers
* Trade and consumption of wildlife
* Land-use change leading to deforestation and conversion.
* Expansion of agriculture and unsustainable intensification and animal production.
* Unsustainable exploitation of nature.
* Fragmenting natural ecosystems and increasing interactions between wildlife, livestock and humans.