Sustainable development must account for pandemic risk

The United Nations (UN) launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to address an ongoing crisis: human pressure leading to unprecedented environmental degradation, climatic change, social inequality, and other negative planet-wide consequences. This crisis stems from a dramatic increase in human appropriation of natural resources to keep pace with rapid population growth, dietary shifts toward higher consumption of animal products, and higher demand for energy (1, 2). There is an increased recognition that Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are linked to one another (3, 4), and priorities such as food production, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation cannot be considered in isolation (5⇓⇓–8). Hence, understanding those dynamics is central to achieving the vision of the UN 2030 Agenda.