Event Details

Human- induced environmental changes are increasing the risk of pandemics. In this seminar, Dr Woolaston will outline the gaps in the international environmental regime and the transformative changes needed to improve the human relationship with biodiversity and reduce future pandemic potential.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted people’s lives nationally and globally but is one of a long line of high impact diseases that are linked to biodiversity, and the human relationship with nature. Like Hendra/Nipah Virus, Zika, Ebola, AIDS, SARS, MERS and influenza, COVID-19 appears to have its originated from wildlife. The rate of zoonoses (diseases of animal origin) is increasing. The increasing prevalence of zoonoses with pandemic potential are driven by environmental changes that threaten biodiversity on a global scale, such as land-use change, deforestation, encroachment into wildlife habitat, the legal and illegal trade of wildlife, climate change, urbanisation, and other such anthropogenic processes.

The global strategy to deal with pandemics is dependent on fast and effective response, via rapid and early containment, hospitalisation of cases, travel restrictions, implementation of quarantine protocols, and rapid development of medical science around diagnosis, treatment medicines and vaccines. The international realm is not focused on pandemic prevention by addressing the root causes of this pandemic and other zoonosis spill-over events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has identified this gap and in its 2020 report on Biodiversity and Pandemics, has called for deep, transformative policy changes to prevent the next pandemic, rather than responding to them as they arise (IPBES October 2020). As one of the expert authors of this report, Dr Katie Woolaston will outline the gaps in the international environmental regime with respect to pandemic prevention and analyse the transformative changes recommended by IPBES, with a specific focus on wildlife trade and monitoring of biodiversity.

Speaker Dr Katie Woolaston (Twitter: @WildlifeLawIntl) is a Lecturer at the School of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Australia (QUT), Member of the Centre for the Environment, QUT and Associate Member of Law Futures Centre, Griffith University, Australia. She consults with IPBES and was one of the co-authors of the IPBES Report on Biodiversity and Pandemics.

Our chair for the session is Dr Jacob Phelps (Twitter: @_JPhelps). Jacob is an environmental social scientist dedicated to identifying strategies to protect tropical biodiversity. He leads the Conservation Governance Lab at Lancaster Environment Centre, which explores institutional, policy and legal responses to leading environmental challenges, such as illegal wildlife trade and wildfire. He draws on a wide range of methods and approaches, and is active in the science-policy interface, including through CITES and IUCN.

Joining the seminar

This seminar was recorded with a live online audience Wed 21 April 2021.

It is now available to view on our YouTube channel: 'LEC Seminar 2021-04-21 Dr Katie Woolaston'.

Format

• 09:15 (BST) Welcome and introduction
• 20 minute presentation from our speaker
• Speaker takes questions from our live virtual audience submitted through the text 'Chat' function
• Seminars will be recorded and videos will be uploaded in due course onto Lancaster Environment Centre's YouTube channel

You can also join the conversation on Twitter: #LECSeminar.

Full LEC Seminar series

Follow the full programme at https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/about-us/events/