Managing wildlife trade for sustainable development outcomes after COVID-19

The COVID‐19 pandemic has caused huge loss of life, and immense social and economic costs throughout the world. Policy responses must minimise the risk of future zoonotic pandemics while simultaneously securing livelihoods and protecting nature, all of which are fundamental to delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Wildlife trade has become the epicentre of debates on COVID-19 and potential policy responses, with calls from some conservation and animal welfare organisations for blanket bans on wildlife trade. Here we describe how wildlife trade influences people and nature in diverse ways (both positive and negative), with synergies and trade-offs within and between the SDGs. We also discuss why there is a need for a more holistic and evidence-based approach, which goes beyond the narrow focus of current discourse. We offer a simple integrated framework for assessing the public health risks of different forms of wildlife trade, and for evaluating them against other dimensions of the SDGs. We illustrate the flexibility of the framework by applying it to worked examples for different species and contexts. Our results demonstrate how the framework can guide evidence-based, participatory decision-making on wildlife trade, which minimises public health risks and secures other benefits to people and nature. We encourage decision-makers to adopt a holistic approach to inform national and local policy responses to pandemic risks posed by wildlife trade. Finally, we recommend that broader issues, such as land-use and climate change (and how wildlife trade regulations may alleviate or exacerbate these issues) are …