Powerful financial giants may play a critical role in preventing the next pandemic

Researchers identified public and private companies operating in economic sectors associated with increased risks of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in a new study published in the scientific journal Lancet Planetary Health. The researchers examined financial entities with equity ownership in 99 publicly traded companies where data was available.

They discovered that a small number of primarily US-based financial institutions, including Vanguard, State Street, BlackRock, and T Rowe Price, have significant investments in these companies.

But even public investors such as the state of California, Norway through its Sovereign Wealth Fund, and Sweden through its pension funds, hold shares in companies that operate in known regional hotspots for emerging infectious diseases.

Powerful financial giants may play a critical role in preventing the next pandemic. (Illustrative image).

The researchers list a number of policies and practices that investors could advocate for, such as ecological restoration measures, pathogen surveillance systems, and improvements in the health and economic security of communities living in geographical hotspots of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.

"Corporate policies that focus only on deforestation and land-use change are not enough to mitigate the risk of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. They fail to consider how agricultural expansion and deforestation increase the risk of pathogen spillover from reservoir to hosts. There is a need for policies to reduce the edge effect, create pathogen surveillance systems and improve the health care systems of communities living in areas that are emerging infectious hotspots," explains Paula A. Sánchez, researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and co-author of the study.

The study also identifies countries that invest or host the headquarters of companies that invest in emerging infectious disease hotspots.

According to the study's authors, these countries, which include France, the United States, Portugal, Norway, and Sweden, could collaborate to use financial influence to address the risks of outbreaks and pandemics.

"Among many other devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has shown what enormous economic costs infectious diseases can have. Investing in sectors that could lead to new outbreaks therefore also carries significant financial risks that investors and governments need to proactively address," explains Victor Galaz.

He continues: "Such efforts have to go beyond current environmental, social, and governance metrics which have proven to be insufficient to show real-world ecological effects."

The availability of data remains a constraint in identifying potential alliances among investors and corporate actors.

"As emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases present a global risk to the economic and financial systems, there is a need to ensure standardized reporting of corporate and investment activities in infectious hotspots to reduce the risk of outbreaks at a global scale," says Paula A. Sánchez, a researcher at the

Another co-author associated with the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Peter Sgaard Jrgensen, adds: "Climate change will increase the risks of new zoonotic outbreaks. Financial actors should make sure that their investments help to mitigate and adapt to those risks."

Reference: Stockholm Resilience Centre. "Powerful financial giants could play vital role in preventing the next pandemic." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 December 2023.