The aim of our work is to understand how COVID-19 is reshaping the global wildlife trade landscape. We wish to provide policymakers with evidence-based guidelines on how to mitigate the ecological and public health risks of wildlife trade in the (post)COVID-19 era in ways that are attentive to power relations, inequality and justice.

In our work, we use a range of social science perspectives to show how changing human-wildlife relationships, structural inequalities and power relations impact wildlife economies in a variety of ways, including heightening the risks of zoonotic disease.

Our research activities focus on three areas: (1) tracking global trends in policy responses to COVID-19 and wildlife trade; (2) assessing the impacts of COVID-19 on wildlife trade supply/value chains and livelihoods, focusing on Cameroon and DR Congo; and (3) collating insights into how critical social science perspectives can enhance our understanding of the relationship between wildlife economies and zoonosis.

These activities are being carried out in collaboration with researchers from the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). We are also hosting a seminar series that brings together researchers from around the world to discuss how they use critical perspectives on gender, racism, (post)colonialism, geopolitics, political ecology and more-than-human geographies to reveal the hidden impacts of COVID-19. Outputs from our work will be accessible through this website. For example, you can access recordings of our virtual seminar series here.

Wildlife Trade Futures is funded by a UKRI GCRF/Newton Fund grant (GCRF_NF94) managed by the University of Birmingham and implemented in collaboration with partners at the University of Manchester, Northumbria University, University of Sheffield and CIFOR.

Our Team