“One Health emphasises how people, animals and the environment are interdependent on each other, and these same principles could be applied in tandem with climate change mitigation measures,” said James Compton, TRAFFIC’s Wildlife TRAPS Project Lead.

After the devastating fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, government leaders and climate negotiators at COP26 are already more aware of linkages between public health, animal and wildlife health than ever before, but it is the health of the environment which needs equal attention to ensure ecosystem integrity is not further compromised by changes in climate.”

James Compton, TRAFFIC’s Wildlife TRAPS Project Lead

At the intersection of these crises, wildlife trade continues to be an essential source of income and sustenance for many communities at risk of losing their livelihoods, homes, and natural resource base due to climate change. Ensuring that legal wildlife trade is sustainable as well as safe from disease risk will support food security for communities that rely on wildlife, and help reduce the need for large-scale land-use changes.

As highlighted in an article co-authored by Dr Serge Eugene Mpouam, TRAFFIC’s Wildlife TRAPS Project Officer in Central Africa, the spread of infectious animal diseases is driven by many factors, including the movement of humans and animals across borders, contact between wild and domestic animals, and between humans and animals.

Globally, the number of domesticated animals far outweighs wild meat in terms of consumption by humans¹, and domesticated meat sources harbour risk for zoonotic disease spread within large uniform populations of intensively-raised animals². Mitigating disease risks from the interactions between humans, domesticated animals and wildlife has led to the prioritisation of zoonotic diseases in several countries in order to better target limited resources for maximum preventative impact.

The pandemic has emphasised the urgent need for countries across the world to unite to regulate, manage and monitor harvesting, trade and use of wildlife – more specifically the disease risks of zoonotic origin associated with some wild animal trade – to prevent illicit and high-risk activities while also ensuring that any legal trade is also safe and sustainable." 

Dr Serge Eugene Mpouam, TRAFFIC’s Wildlife TRAPS Project Officer in Central Africa

2021 research on the impacts of removing wild meat from global food systems found that replacing wild meat protein with livestock would require approximately 124,000 square kilometres of extra agricultural land. Land-use change of this magnitude could drive large swathes of deforestation – a leading cause of climate change, force more than 260 species toward extinction and exacerbate the potential risks of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) at the human-animal-environment interface³.

The Collaborative Partnership on Sustainable Wildlife Management’s (CPW) four guiding principles to reduce risk from zoonotic diseases notes that global bans on wildlife trade would fail to target these root causes of zoonotic disease emergence and harm the livelihoods and food security of millions of people who rely on wildlife^.3. The CPW’s guiding principles underscore the need for context-specific responses that account for ecological, socio-political, economic and cultural factors to drive positive change.

“There is great scope for increased collaboration in science and policy to shape a post-COVID model that supports practical actions on One Health, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation,” said Sabri Zain, TRAFFIC’s Director of Policy.