Today we’re announcing the launch of Nature.Health.Global., Inc. a nonprofit that conducts scientific research and designs on-the-ground solutions for conservation and global health.
First, some sad news:
After more than 50 years of operations in the USA and around the world, EcoHealth Alliance (formerly Wildlife Trust, and before that Wildlife Preservation Trust International) is closing its doors. As I write this EcoHealth Alliance’s headquarter offices in New York are already closed, and only a handful of staff members remain to finalize the official dissolution of the organization. This is a sad indictment of our politics here in the USA and globally and it reflects a growing anti-science movement that was amplified and weaponized during the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure of EcoHealth Alliance follows 5 years of harassment that began early in the pandemic and involved an unprecedented series of efforts to politically target and ultimately defund a leading research organization. To some of us, the closure of EcoHealth Alliance represents the ultimate irony of the pandemic: An organization whose President predicted a coronavirus pandemic on CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2004, and whose staff warned repeatedly of the risk of bat origin zoonotic coronaviruses, was driven to close its doors because these predictions were uncomfortably accurate.
All is not lost, however.
In January 2025, a group of us – former EcoHealth Alliance staff and collaborators – decided that we weren’t going to let the important mission of this organization end. Over the last few months, we’ve been hard at work incorporating a new nonprofit, setting up our programs, and building the framework for the mission to continue. Now, five years since EcoHealth Alliance was first targeted politically, we are announcing the launch of Nature.Health.Global., Inc. a nonprofit that conducts scientific research and designs on-the-ground solutions for conservation and global health.
Nature.Health.Global.’s vision is a future that is resilient to emerging disease threats, supports healthy ecosystems and our own communities, and one in which we make decisions based on science. Our mission is to build a sustainable future for people, wildlife, and our planet by promoting resilience against emerging disease threats and supporting healthy ecosystems. We will do this by mapping, predicting, preparing for, and helping to prevent future pandemics; by analyzing the human-driven environmental changes that cause them, and by designing and conducting conservation and sustainability programs to reduce those impacts. These goals build on 25+ years of research led by Nature.Health.Global.’s President Dr. Peter Daszak on the drivers and causes of emerging diseases, the links between nature and health, the global collaborations that are needed to build resilience, and to help protect science and scientists against misinformation and political attacks. Nature.Health.Global. pledges to work equitably, transparently, and collaboratively in support of scientists who provide solutions for our future sustainable life on planet Earth.
Nature.Health.Global. Program Focus
Scientific research over the last few decades has shown that human-driven environmental changes are leading to dramatic changes to our landscape, our ecosystems, and our oceans. Climate change, deforestation, agricultural intensification, unsustainable wildlife trade, and overexploitation of natural resources are driving biodiversity loss, undermining our own welfare, and driving a rise in emerging diseases. These changes have real consequences for all of us. In biodiversity hotspots in Southeast Asia, deforestation and intensive palm oil production has led driven cycles of forest fires, haze, coral die-offs, and respiratory disease outbreaks. Around the world, the rise of industrial scale wildlife hunting, farming and trading for food and products has driven repeated outbreaks of lethal human diseases like Ebola, SARS and COVID. It has also driven species to the verge of extinction. In our oceans, the runoff from intensive agriculture has led to dead zones along our coasts, and the global spread of H5N1 avian flu has caused die-offs in already-threatened marine mammals and seabirds. The cost of these human-driven events is staggering: tens of billions of dollars in health impacts annually from emerging diseases; trillions of dollars impact from the global pandemic of COVID-19; billions of dollars damage annually caused by the loss of critical ecosystem services that wildlife provide; in addition to the cost on our own welfare, health and survival.
We have formed Nature.Health.Global. to better account for the impact of our global footprint, and find ways to reduce it, while balancing welfare and livelihoods of communities on the frontline. Our work follows a logical flow from analyzing the underlying issues, co-designing solutions, to working on the ground to begin shifting the balance. Our strategy is to analyze the science behind how global environmental changes are affecting planetary health, and work on a small number of critical issues to find solutions to turn the tide.
- Unsustainable trade in wildlife and their products. We will analyze trends in the trade in wildlife and their products, and the impact this will likely have on emerging diseases of importance to conservation, agriculture and public health.
- Impact of emerging diseases on the health of our oceans. Using a database of marine emerging disease events, we will assess their likely underlying causes (e.g. agricultural runoff, climate change, pollution) and map potential future trends to identify marine EID hotspots.
- Agricultural intensification. We will publish a series of white papers on the role of agricultural intensification in driving threats to wildlife health and human health.
- Deforestation and land use change. Following our recent scientific analyses of the underlying true cost of deforestation that incorporates human health impacts, we will publish opinion pieces to drive public awareness and help identify solutions.
- Mapping, predicting, preparing for and preventing future pandemics. Previous global maps of ‘emerging disease hotspots’ have been used to set priorities for surveillance, control, laboratory capacity and prevention. Nature.Health.Global. will work to identify collaborative solutions to preventing pandemics at the point where diseases first spillover and spread.
- Supporting science: There has been a rise in disinformation around scientific research, including attacks on climate change scientists, anti-vaccine efforts, misinformation about GMOs, and COVID-19 conspiracies. Through key partnerships, Nature.Health.Global. is working to promote transparency in journalism, to identify and counter politically motivated disinformation, and to support scientists under attack.
These are lofty goals to tackle major challenges for our planet. Finding solutions that work will be tough and require long-term work. Nature.Health.Global. is committed to using our best scientific understanding of the world around us, in collaboration with communities globally, to taking the first steps on this pathway. Please join us in this mission – read our website, sign up for our updates, and don’t forget to donate now!
Thank you for your support!
Dr. Peter Daszak, President
Nature.Health.Global.