Shared fight

Six years on from the Covid pandemic, the fear has not really left us. Neil Vora, formerly of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who spent years fighting Ebola
outbreaks on the ground, puts the matter bluntly. The question is no longer if another pandemic will occur: it is only a matter of time. Vora’s figures reveal that six major pandemics have taken place since 1918, roughly one every 15 years. Multiple studies now project that this frequency will rise sharply in the coming decades.

The link between deforestation and the emergence of new diseases is evident. When a forest is cleared, a new and unnatural boundary appears — the so-called forest edge. It is along this edge that humans, livestock and wildlife come into contact. Pathogens that have lived in bats or rodents thus find a route into the human body. But it is not a matter of proximity alone. Animals that lose their habitat experience chronic stress that weakens their immune systems, making them potent carriers of pathogens.

Climate change compounds the threat. Heatwaves, wildfires and erratic rainfall are pushing wildlife toward new territory bordering human settlements. Over half of the known infectious diseases have been intensified by climate change.

It would be a mistake to believe that the problem is confined to distant rainforests. The Sundarbans’ mangrove belt has been shrinking. Dense forest covers in North Bengal and in the Northeast are giving way to tea estates, mining and road-building. The consequences are alarming — outbreaks of the Nipah virus, which originates in bats, are now common.

Is the tension between development and conservation irreconcilable? Or has it
been curated that way? Government documents, policies and investment proposals frame forests as obstacles to be cleared rather than assets to be protected. What that framework consistently omits is the cost on the other side of the ledger. However expensive forest protection appears, the price of a pandemic dwarfs it many times over. Covid did not just cost lives on a staggering scale; it set back the global economy for years. The same money, directed toward conservation, might have prevented the crisis altogether. The sooner that arithmetic becomes central to policy, the better for the country.

One further dimension deserves attention. Wildlife trade, including the import of exotic animals for the pet industry, is a significant driver of this risk. This trade is not confined to Africa or Southeast Asia. The first outbreak of Mpox outside Africa was traced to the import of African rodents into the United States of America in 2003.

Researchers agree on one fundamental point: the knowledge and the tools required to meet this threat already exist, and there is no longer a credible excuse for delay. Protecting forests is not only about preventing the next pandemic but it also
fights climate change and preserves biodiversity. The stretches of the Amazon that remain intact have not produced large-scale spillover events on the scale seen elsewhere. That outcome is not accidental. It is evidence that conservation, where it is genuinely pursued, works.

The eradication of smallpox offers the clearest precedent for what collective will can achieve. Countries poured time, money and effort into eliminating this contagion. They did it because they understood that an outbreak anywhere became everyone’s problem eventually. That same logic applies today. Protecting forests, containing climate change, and preventing future pandemics are not three separate agendas competing for attention and funding. They are one fight; progress on one cannot happen without progress in others.