According to Business Insider, “China’s wildlife-farming industry, which was valued at $74 billion, has been permanently shut down” to prevent the spread of Coronavirus and other diseases. This means that the nation’s citizens can no longer buy, sell or eat wild animals. This measure has been carried out in an effort to stop zoonotic diseases from being passed on to humans. Changes to legislation were at first temporary but urged on by leaders world-wide, China has made them permanent.
The Huanan Seafood Wholesale market was the first to be closed by officials, this was followed by the ban of live-animal trade at all markets in the city of Wuhan. Professor Andrew Cunningham, of the Zoological Society of London has said that “this needs to be done globally. There are wet markets throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa and a lot of other Asian countries too.” The risk of spreading disease is provoked by the levels of overseas travel, he said, adding: “These days, you can be in a central African rainforest one day and in central London the next.”
“Importing countries should create a new legal obligation, supported by criminal sanctions, for an importer of wildlife to prove that it was legally obtained under the source country’s national laws,” he said. “If we can blend taking a hard line against transnational organised wildlife criminals, while also opening up new opportunities for local communities, then we will see biodiversity, ecosystems and communities thrive.”
He emphasises that the COVID-19 outbreak is a warning from nature that we need to start taking extreme measures to protect it. The effects of destructive human activities such as deforestation for farming, mining and housing is driving wildlife so dangerously close to humans and allowing diseases to jump between species.
Cunningham points a finger at human activity stating that “it’s almost always a human behaviour that causes (disease outbreaks) and there will be more in the future unless we change”.
He urges: “I thought things would have changed after Sars, which was a massive wake up call – the biggest economic impact of any emerging disease to that date. Everybody was up in arms about it. But it went away, because of our control measures. Then there was a huge sigh of relief and it was back to business as usual. We cannot go back to business as usual.”
The impact of global daily life on nature is clear when we look at the recent rapid decreases in global CO2 emissions. Between the emergence of COVID-19 and the 19th of February, CarbonBrief analysed that China’s carbon emissions were temporarily down by a quarter. “Electricity demand and industrial output remain far below their usual levels across a range of indicators, many of which are at their lowest two-week average in several years,” the website states. One of these indicators is that coal consumption was down 36% at power plants alone.
China is the largest global emitter of carbon dioxide gas with investopedia stating that they emitted 9.8 billion metric tonnes in 2017, the aforementioned decreases in their output are massive. Now that countries such as Italy and the UK have also put lockdown measures into place, the global emissions will be plummeting.
Is this nature showing us that it is not only possible but absolutely necessary to reduce our emissions and take global action to ensure out planet survives for future generations?
by Yasmin Burt
