We're ‘finished’ if we don't change after coronavirus, warns naturalist Jane Goodall

“If we don't do things differently, we're finished,” warns leading naturalist, chimpanzee expert and conservation campaigner Dr Jane Goodall.

Dr Goodall believes intensive animal farming is connected to the coronavirus pandemic, and is calling on us all – from consumers to leaders and industry chiefs – to “change our ways” and move from industrially farmed products to more plant-based diets.

Dr Goodall is the latest prominent figure to call for a new approach to the world economy. Prince Charles and many others are backing the Forum's Great Reset, which highlights humanity's chance to build a more sustainable world in the wake of COVID-19.

An interconnected world

With a background in primatology, Jane Goodall became well known in the 1960s through films about her work studying chimpanzees in Tanzania. She famously gave the animals human names.

Her discovery that chimps in Tanzania and elsewhere were threatened by habitat destruction due to human activity informed her view about the interdependency of the natural world. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977, and it's now a leading voice for nature conservation.

Dr Goodall’s analysis of COVID-19 stays true to her beliefs. Speaking at an online event held by the group Compassion in World Farming, Goodall said our global food production system is in need of urgent reform.

“Our disrespect for wild animals and our disrespect for farmed animals has created this situation where disease can spill over to infect human beings. We have come to a turning point in our relationship with the natural world.”

Zoonotic diseases

For Goodall, there is a clear link between the mistreatment of animals and our health.

Many scientists believe that COVID-19 crossed from animals to humans – known as a “zoonotic” infection. The World Health Organization says “all available evidence for COVID-19 suggests that SARS-CoV-2 has a zoonotic source”.

Around 75% of all emerging infectious diseases in humans are believed to be zoonotic. Illegally trafficked animals such as pangolins have been found to carry viruses which have similar properties to COVID-19.

In our hands

The solution, according to Goodall, lies with us: we should “eat less meat, or no meat, and turn to plant-based diets,” she says.

She also believes that changes must be holistic, such as lifting people out of poverty, and rethinking our needs as consumers – examining whether we need all the “stuff that we accumulate.”

Certainly at present rates, our consumption patterns are less than sustainable. According to the United Nations, it would take 1.6 Earths to meet the demands that humans make of nature every year.

There are grounds for optimism, with techniques such as micro-irrigation and agroforestry expanding and now practised on more than a quarter of farms worldwide.

And despite the current crisis, Dr Goodall sees positive signs: “We have moved forward a lot. More and more people are getting aware, but not enough yet.”