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IPBES ties pandemic risks to nature crisis

Pandemics will become more frequent, faster-spreading and deadlier than COVID-19 if Earth’s natural life support systems are not restored, IPBES reported.

A heavily polluted portion of the Tietê River in São Paulo, Brazil
A heavily polluted portion of the Tietê River in São Paulo, Brazil (AN/Diego Torres Silvestre)

Pandemics will become more frequent, faster spreading and deadlier than COVID-19 if people do not restore Earth’s natural life support systems, the 132-nation IPBES organization reported on Thursday.

Experts convened by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES, warned that global health crises are strongly linked to the degradation of nature: though they originate in microbes carried by animals, pandemics emerge from human activities.

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