Kaufman Co-Authors New Paper on Costs and Benefits of Pandemic Prevention in Science Advances

Les Kaufman, a Professor in the Department of Biology and a Faculty Associate at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, co-authored a major new paper exploring the costs and benefits of primary pandemic prevention actions. The authors of the paper, which was published in the journal Science Advances, included environmental and medical scientists, economists, and conservation practitioners.

The analysis explores three practical actions to minimize the impact of future pandemics: better surveillance of pathogen spillover, better management of wildlife trade, and a substantial reduction of global deforestation. The authors estimate that these primary pandemic prevention actions cost less than 1/20th the value of lives lost each year to emerging zoonotic diseases.

These actions “could save us innumerable human lives and trillions of dollars, but it also goes hand in hand with fighting climate change and preventing mass extinction,” says Prof. Kaufman.

The analysis follows a paper published in Science in July 2020, in which Prof. Kaufman and others estimated that governments might be able to prevent future pandemics by investing as little as $22 billion a year in programs to curb wildlife trafficking and stem the destruction of tropical forests.

At the Pardee Center, Prof. Kaufman leads the Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS) research program. The CHANS program investigates how governance, social, and economic systems are intricately connected to natural systems, how we can better explore those connections, and how to better understand the trade-offs that confront those making resource management decisions. The research encompasses four geographic areas: Cambodia (Tonle Sap and the Mekong Delta), East Africa (Lake Victoria), South Florida and Belize (the tropical west Atlantic and Caribbean Basin), and the Gulf of Maine.