Green Pulse Ep 37: Peter Daszak on nurturing nature to prevent future pandemics

13:10 mins

Synopsis: Every first and third Monday of the month, The Straits Times analyses the beat of the changing environment, from biodiversity conservation to climate change in this podcast series.

In this episode, ST’s environment correspondent Audrey Tan and climate change editor David Fogarty host Dr Peter Daszak, president of non-profit Washington-based Ecohealth Alliance.

A report linking environmental damage and pandemics was recently published based on the findings of a major meeting hosted by IPBES, the UN biodiversity panel. The authors, including Dr Daszak, found that future pandemics will happen more often, kill more people and wreak even worse damage to the global economy than Covid-19. What can be done to reduce the risks of future pandemics?

They discuss the following points:

1. How a recent scientific report shows increasing risk of new infectious diseases and pandemics in this globalised world (1:00)
2. This report estimates another 1.7 million undiscovered viruses that exist in animals and why up to 850,000 of them can infect people (3:43)
3. Why there needs to be a global programme to prevent pandemics instead of reacting to them after: Can health risks within wildlife trade and even consumer consumption habits be controlled? (8:33)
4. Weighing the costs of prevention programmes against global economic damages from pandemics and why time is running out (10:06)

Produced by: Audrey Tan (audreyt@sph.com.sg), David Fogarty (dfogarty@sph.com.sg) & Ernest Luis

Edited by: Adam Azlee

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