Preparing international cooperation on pandemic prevention for the Anthropocene
Colin J. Carlson, Gregory F. Albery, Alexandra Phelan
Abstract
### Summary box The COVID-19 pandemic has centred zoonotic viruses in nearly every discipline’s efforts to reckon with modernity. This has been particularly highlighted in environmental policy, given the rise of paradigms like ‘One Health’ that centre the interconnectedness of human health and the environment, and that have given conservation organisations a seat at the table in global health. For those communities of practice, COVID-19 has underscored issues with the sustainability and safety of contact between humans and wildlife, and concerns about how unsustainable practices could contribute to the future emergence of novel coronaviruses or similar pandemic threats.1–3 More broadly, these conversations have pointed to a broader need to address the upstream drivers of poor health and disease burden outside of pandemic settings. In the One Health or planetary health tradition, pandemics can be viewed the product of several proximate drivers (eg, climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation), all of which share an ultimate cause: the explosion of consumption, and destruction of the natural world, caused by capitalism, globalisation, colonialism and neoliberal economic policies. Insufficiently addressed by national and international policies to date (and, possibly, by proposed solutions for future sustainable growth),4 this process has pushed civilisation outside of a narrow zone that safely balances human well-being and economic growth against environmental preservation and long-term sustainability.5 6 This …