In a recent blog, Charis Enns and other members of Wildlife Trade Futures argue that, to minimise the risks of future zoonotic pandemics like COVID-19, we need to look beyond wildlife trade bans and fundamentally rethink how we interact with the more-than-human world instead.
You can access the blog here, but we’ve included some highlights below:
- Calls to ban wildlife trade to prevent future zoonotic pandemics have proven to be ineffective and difficult to enforce
- Measures also risk impacting the food security, livelihoods, and cultural rights of millions of people around the world
- Policy action is needed that centres sustainable food systems rather than absolute bans on wildlife trade and continuing support for status quo industrial food systems
- Action should include support for practices that minimise the risk of zoonotic disease transmission, such as agroecology and indigenous and community conserved areas
The blog was published by the University of Manchester, where Charis is a Presidential Fellow in Socio-Environmental Systems. Additional authors include: Katerina Gladkova, Francis Massé, and Brock Bersaglio.
