Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
3-2022
Abstract
Zoonotic viruses have sacrificed hundreds of millions of people throughout human history. There are currently 1.7 million unidentified viruses estimated to be circulating in mammal and bird populations. It is foreseeable that in the near future, another of these will transmit to people, heralding the start of the next pandemic—one potentially more deadly than COVID-19. At the core of this article is a call for pre-emptive protection of the natural environment and its regenerative systems as the first fundamental step in the prevention of future epidemics and pandemics. While zoonoses originate in nature, the predominant legal discipline, managing these crises, is international health law which is invoked reactively once an outbreak has been reported. In this paper, we identify the need for a legal shift in epidemic and pandemic responses. In particular, we call for the incorporation of international environmental agreements to prevent the initial viral spillover from animal to human populations. We propose a strategy of strengthening existing agreements and a coupling of legal disciplines, such as health and environmental law, emphasizing the need for synergies across legal disciplines to enhance the emergence and management of future pandemics and epidemics. We introduce Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS) Law to frame the required integration across legal instruments to regulate inextricably human-nature connections and advocate for the development of a Convention on Epidemics and Pandemics.
Keywords
International environmental agreements, Epidemics and pandemics, One-Health, COVID-19
Discipline
Law
Research Areas
Legal Theory, Ethics and Legal Education
Publication
International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics
Volume
22
Issue
3
First Page
577
Last Page
597
ISSN
1567-9764
Identifier
10.1007/s10784-022-09566-7
Publisher
Springer
Citation
DAVIES, Kirsten; LIM, Michelle Mei Ling; QIN, Tianbao; and RIORDAN, Philip.
CHANS-Law: Preventing the next pandemic through the integration of social and environmental law. (2022). International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics. 22, (3), 577-597.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/4081
Copyright Owner and License
Authors CC-BY
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-022-09566-7