The socioeconomic and environmental drivers of the COVID-19 pandemic: A review

Abstract

In recent decades, there has been an intensification of the socioeconomic and environmental drivers of pandemics, including ecosystem conversion, meat consumption, urbanization, and connectivity among cities and countries. This paper reviews how these four systemic drivers help explain the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic and other recent emerging infectious diseases, and the policies that can be adopted to mitigate their risks. Land-use change and meat consumption increase the likelihood of pathogen spillover from animals to people. The risk that such zoonotic outbreaks will then spread to become pandemics is magnified by growing urban populations and the networks of trade and travel within and among countries. Zoonotic spillover can be mitigated through habitat protection and restrictions on the wildlife trade. Containing infectious disease spread requires a high degree of coordination among institutions across geographic jurisdictions and economic sectors, all backed by international investment and cooperation.

Keywords: Biodiversity conservation; COVID-19; Emerging infectious diseases; Global health; Pandemics; Wildlife trade.

Fig. 1

Major zoonotic epidemics and pandemics with human-to-human transmissibility, 2000 to 2020. The locations where the first cases were detected are indicated by red points (note: these are not necessarily the locations of the first zoonotic spillover events). The buffer zones are scaled to relative outbreak magnitude as measured in human cases, with dotted a circumference meaning the epidemic/pandemic remains ongoing (data current as of December 20, 2020). Sources World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/); WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard (https://covid19.who.int/); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.cdc.gov/)

Fig. 2

The anatomy of a pandemic: from pathogen spillover at the wildlife–livestock–human nexus to human-to-human transmission within cities, between cities, and across countries

Fig. 3

Trends in selected socioeconomic and environmental risk factors of disease spillover for major emerging economies and the world, 2000–2018. Sources Global Forest Watch (https://data.globalforestwatch.org/); Food and Agriculture Organization (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/)

Fig. 4

Trends in selected socioeconomic and environmental risk factors of domestic and international disease spread for major emerging economies and the world, 2000–2018. Sources The World Bank (https://data.worldbank.org/); Food and Agriculture Organization (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/)