The United Nations: Deadlier pandemic may occur in the future

As reported yesterday by the United Nations' biodiversity panel, future pandemics will happen more often, kill more people and wreak even worse damage to the global economy than COVID-19 without a fundamental shift in how humans treat nature. 

According to the U.N. warning, seventy percent of emerging diseases, such as Ebola, Zika and HIV/AIDS, are zoonotic in origin, meaning they circulate in animals before jumping to humans. Around five new diseases break out among humans every single year, any one of which has the potential to become a pandemic. In fact, there are 850,000 existing viruses capable of animal-mediated transmission. The chances for them to be passed on human has been persistently increased since the industrial revolution, after which human-wildlife contacts become more and more frequent. 

The main reason for that is over-exploitation by human beings.  The U.N. panel reported that one-third of land surface and three-quarters of fresh water on the planet is currently taken up by farming, and humanity's resource use has rocketed up 80 percent in just three decades. Driven by our never-ending need for space and resources, we cut down trees to convert wildlife habitat into road or agriculture, forcing wild animals to leave their homeland and putting them in closer contact with human beings. That is a self-annihilation, especially in areas within tropical regions, where the climate shaped a perfect environment for viruses and their hosts (bats and rodents in particular). 

There needs to be better planning all around the world  to try and develop sustainable exploitation to keep wildlife in their habitats and reduce spillover events. 

Reference
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20201029-nature-loss-means-deadlier-future-pandemics-un-warns