Conservation priorities to prevent the next pandemic
Leonardo Viotti, Luis Diego Herrera, Garo Batmanian, Franck Berthe, Rachael Kramp
TL;DR
This study addresses the rising threat of zoonotic spillovers by embedding disease prevention within conservation planning. It develops high-resolution, globally accessible maps that identify low-cost ecological countermeasures—specifically habitat restoration and deforestation prevention—in tropical regions across fifty countries, using two risk layers tied to wildlife–human interfaces and livestock pathways. By integrating biodiversity, livestock density, human population, and land-use change, the framework highlights priority areas where interventions could meaningfully reduce spillover risk, identifying roughly 277,000 km² for restoration and 198,000 km² for deforestation prevention, with most areas lying outside protected lands. The authors provide open data and a no-code platform to adapt the framework to local contexts, offering a practical, scalable tool to align conservation with pandemic prevention and broader co-benefits such as carbon storage and ecosystem services.
Abstract
Diseases originating from wildlife pose a significant threat to global health, causing human and economic losses each year. The transmission of disease from animals to humans occurs at the interface between humans, livestock, and wildlife reservoirs, influenced by abiotic factors and ecological mechanisms. Although evidence suggests that intact ecosystems can reduce transmission, disease prevention has largely been neglected in conservation efforts and remains underfunded compared to mitigation. A major constraint is the lack of reliable, spatially explicit information to guide efforts effectively. Given the increasing rate of new disease emergence, accelerated by climate change and biodiversity loss, identifying priority areas for mitigating the risk of disease transmission is more crucial than ever. We present new high-resolution (1 km) maps of priority areas for targeted ecological countermeasures aimed at reducing the likelihood of zoonotic spillover, along with a methodology adaptable to local contexts. Our study compiles data on well-documented risk factors, protection status, forest restoration potential, and opportunity cost of the land to map areas with high potential for cost-effective interventions. We identify low-cost priority areas across 50 countries, including 277,000 km2 where environmental restoration could mitigate the risk of zoonotic spillover and 198,000 km2 where preventing deforestation could do the same, 95% of which are not currently under protection. The resulting layers, covering tropical regions globally, are freely available alongside an interactive no-code platform that allows users to adjust parameters and identify priority areas at multiple scales. Ecological countermeasures can be a cost-effective strategy for reducing the emergence of new pathogens; however, our study highlights the extent to which current conservation efforts fall short of this goal.