Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge loss of life, and immense social and economic harm. Wildlife trade has become central to discourse on COVID-19, zoonotic pandemics, and related policy responses, which must focus on “saving lives, protecting livelihoods, and safeguarding nature.” Proposed policy responses have included extreme measures such as banning all use and trade of wildlife, or blanket measures for entire Classes. However, different trades pose varying degrees of risk for zoonotic pandemics, while some trades also play critical roles in delivering other key aspects of sustainable development, particularly related to poverty and hunger alleviation, decent work, responsible consumption and production, and life on land and below water. Here we describe how wildlife trade contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in diverse ways, with synergies and trade-offs within and between the SDGs. In doing so, we show that prohibitions could result in severe trade-offs against some SDGs, with limited benefits for public health via pandemic prevention. This complexity necessitates context-specific policies, with multi-sector decision-making that goes beyond simple top-down solutions. We encourage decision-makers to adopt a risk-based approach to wildlife trade policy post-COVID-19, with policies formulated via participatory, evidence-based approaches, which explicitly acknowledge uncertainty, complexity, and conflicting values across different components of the SDGs. This should help to ensure that future use and trade of wildlife is safe, environmentally sustainable and socially just.
Highlights
BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has caused a worldwide state of emergency, with immense human suffering, loss of life, and socio-economic instability
We argue that a risk-based multi-sector approach to wildlife trade policy post-COVID-19 can support health, livelihoods, and the conservation of nature
We provide a qualitative judgment of the positive contributions and negative contributions of each type of wildlife trade to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a worldwide state of emergency, with immense human suffering, loss of life, and socio-economic instability. While saving lives through pandemic prevention is undoubtedly a top policy priority, silver-bullet approaches such as blanket bans fail to acknowledge the heterogeneous public health risks present across species and contexts, and the diverse roles of wildlife trade in delivering sustainable development outcomes (Challender et al, 2015; UNEP and ILRI, 2020; Wang et al, 2020) These top-down approaches fail to account for the complexity, uncertainty and plurality of values associated with wildlife trade, with non-compliance and the emergence of illicit markets potentially undermining such approaches (Fournie et al, 2013; Bonwitt et al, 2018; Zhu and Zhu, 2020). Designing policy interventions in response to COVID-19 requires a holistic multi-sector approach, which explicitly acknowledges trade-offs, feedbacks and pluralistic values, and seeks to minimize direct public health risks from zoonoses, whilst optimizing benefits across other SDGs
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