A global crisis

The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 awoke the world to what impact a pandemic can have on people worldwide. Beyond the death toll, confirmed at over 7 million, with many more people estimated to have died from causes indirectly linked to COVID, billions of people saw their severely lives disrupted. 

While the pandemic came as a shock to most people, scientists had predicted its arrival for a long time. Over the last decades, there has been a rapid increase in the number of zoonotic diseases (those that pass from animals to humans), and the probability of a pandemic with similar impact to COVID-19 is now estimated to be about 2% in any given year, and growing. At worst, the world could be on the brink of entering ‘an era of pandemics’, with raging pandemics disrupting life everywhere being the norm rather than the exception.

Linked to other crises

In a world out of balance, the occurrence of pandemics is only expected to worsen, due to factors that all increase the risk of zoonotic spillovers: climate change leading to forest fires and other habitat loss; wilful habitat destruction and the encroachment of people and human activities (such as mining, poaching and logging) into undisturbed nature areas; and the massive expansion of global meat production, including the associated trade and transport of live animals. These key factors result in ever-increasing interaction between humans and animals. This, exacerbated by dramatically increased human connectivity, facilitates the rapid spread of diseases once they occur, drastically increasing the risk of future pandemics.

Pandemics directly impact human rights, most importantly the right to good health and life itself. Once pandemics rage, it is the poor, and marginalised communities that are disproportionately affected, whether globally or in affluent societies. The death toll amongst poor segments of society has consistently been much higher than in more affluent parts. This is because of overall poor health levels, but also due to limited possibilities to escape the virus, because of cramped housing conditions, being forced to work during lockdowns, working in high-risk sectors such as factories with large assembly lines and slaughterhouses, and so on.

Role of banks

Banks may not seem a logical starting point for trying to prevent future pandemics. Yet, while they cannot directly stop a deadly virus or other pathogen from jumping from animals to humans, they can help reduce the risk of this occurring, this by raising ‘pandemic risk awareness’ with their clients, so they operate in a manner that reduces risk. 

Banks must also stop financing business activities that, because of their nature or geographical location, disturb high risk animal populations in the wild, create breeding grounds for new diseases, or lead to massive increases in human-animal interaction. Most importantly, banks must stop  financing the further destruction of, especially, tropical forests. These act as huge reservoirs of pathogens: while there are around 250 known zoonotic viruses, it is estimated that a staggering 1.67 million unknown viral species exist in animal reservoirs globally. As tropical forests contain by far the highest level of biodiversity and bio-abundance, this is also where the majority of viral species reside. Banks must therefore cease financing any business clients in sectors such as timber, palm oil, rubber, soy, sugar, pulp & paper, mining, and oil and gas exploration, where these activities lead to further encroachment of, or cause further destruction of remaining tropical forests.

The risk of outbreaks leading to future pandemics is especially acute in cattle farming in tropical areas, where cattle are held in close proximity to wild animals, and in every segment of the meat industry globally. Similar risks occur in other sectors where animals are kept for their fur, harvesting of bile or feathers, or for trade as pets. Each year, billions of animals fall prey to pandemics ravaging through livestock, from swine flu to bird flu to camel flu. Many such ‘animal diseases’ already impact humans and it is only a matter of time before a new deadly variety emerges from a farm somewhere. To reduce such risk, it is crucial that the further expansion of the global meat industry is brought to an immediate halt, including bank finance for expanding this industry, followed by a rapid phase out of industrial meat production in favour of plant based food production systems.

The accelerating climate crisis is also expected to increase the risk of future pandemics. Forest fires and other climate-related habitat destruction will set ever more animals on the move, leading to increased interaction between animals and humans, but also between animals that never interacted with one another before, physically bringing together viruses and potential new hosts. The thawing of vast areas of permafrost is also thought to carry an increased risk of unknown pathogens being released, with unpredictable consequences. The prospect of a warming planet also becoming a sicklier planet is therefore one more pressing reason for banks to immediately stop financing the fossil fuel industry.

What banks must do

At the moment, ‘pandemic risk prevention’ is not part of any bank’s vocabulary. For banks to effectively act on pandemic risk they must:

1. Publicly acknowledge their specific responsibility as a bank to help prevent future pandemics;

2. Integrate assessing ‘pandemic risk’ into their overall due diligence procedures for potential high risk transactions, and require from such clients that they operate so as to minimise the risk of triggering and spreading  new pandemics.

3. Conduct an assessment of their portfolio to identify all business activities that carry the greatest risk of triggering pandemics, be it through the nature of the activity, impact on ecosystems, geography etc;

4. Based on this assessment, exclude  business activities and sectors carrying high pandemic risk from finance altogether. This includes sectors leading to destruction  of tropical forests, industrial meat production, activities that are situated in hitherto untouched natural areas, and the fossil fuel industry that is fueling the climate crisis;

5. Adopt a general no-go policy safeguarding specific categories of ecosystems and Indigenous areas, as proposed by the banks and biodiversity coalition;

What BankTrack does

BankTrack embarked on this campaign in 2022. So far, we have investigated whether the investment policies of the world’s largest banks and those banks financing sectors with a high impact on tropical forests already contain elements of ‘pandemic risk awareness’ (answer: no). We have also engaged with selected individual banks and bank initiatives, seeking acknowledgement of their responsibility for pandemic risk prevention, and promoting the development of pandemic risk assessments and due diligence procedures, though so far with limited result. Meanwhile, as part of our nature campaign we are targeting bank finance for projects and companies with a high impact on forests and nature, such as the meat industry, biomass plants and wood chip providers, and finance for pulp and paper and palm oil companies. Our climate campaign targets bank finance for the fossil fuel industry fueling global heating, which exacerbates the risk of future pandemics. 

A lot of work remains to be done but we currently lack dedicated funding to do so. We continue to seek support  for this campaign, so that we can push banks on what should be a global priority for everyone: working to prevent a new pandemic outbreak in the years to come.