The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly demonstrated the interconnected nature of human, animal and environmental health. The wide-ranging effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have shown how zoonotic spillover events can have profound impacts on economies, social orders and global public health. 
This project looked at the direct contact points between humans and wildlife, often connected to activities such as consumption of wild meat, since they often act as key drivers for disease emergence. Although these activities usually happen on a local scale, on today’s interconnected planet, diseases can quickly spread and have a global impact. Changing the spillover cascade needs more than new knowledge. It needs investment, capacity and political will to disrupt the cascade. UNEP partnered with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in the Republic of the Congo to monitor wildlife and human health, established baselines in areas which are gazetted for future development and assessed spillover risks.  Additionally, the project fed information from human and wildlife health monitoring into the formulation of best practice guidelines and explored options to include health indicators in development planning. This policy component was led by the Avoid, Reduce, Restore and Conserve (ARRC) Task force under the IUCN Primate Specialist Group and Sections on Great Apes and Smaller Apes. The ARRC task force is administered by Re:Wild. 

The overall objective of the field component under the lead of WCS was to extend the scale of surveillance for zoonotic diseases by implementing next-generation sequencing (NGS) and developing more robust capabilities for the detection of known and unknown pathogens from a range of biological samples by building on existing activities, infrastructure and capabilities. Samples were also taken from an area which has been pristine so far but has been gazetted for future development to first: establish baseline information, and second: be able to monitor during the development process. This goes beyond this project but is an important step in being able to identify the drivers of spill over events. 

Main Outcome: 

The results indicate that bat populations in these regions are carriers of zoonotic viruses, with a considerable risk of virus spillover to humans. The variation in virus prevalence between the two regions investigated highlights the need for localized surveillance and targeted public health interventions. The roll out of new technologies and capacity building at local and national level was an important step in increasing capacity in human and wildlife health monitoring and to respond to this need.

The inclusion of health risks for great apes in International Finance Corporation (IFC) biodiversity standards was leveraged to shape development planning for lending banks and the private sector, assess IFC’s performance standards related to health, and initiate discussions on revising existing health indicators. The IFC Performance Standards are used by over 150 organisations, including Equator Principles signatories, export credit agencies, and Development Finance organisations. 

Our recommendations for a better inclusion of the biodiversity and health nexus in the performance standards of the International Finance Corporation will  be fed into the consultation process on the IFC safeguards framework later in 2026  

 Products:  

• Gilardi, K.V., Düx, A., Gillespie, T.R., Kalema-Zikusoka, G., Leendertz, F., Nze-Nkogue, C., Patrono, L.V., Raphael, J, Sulistyo, F., Kambale Syaluha & Whittier, C. (Eds. Sunderland-Groves, J.L., Williamson, E.A. & Macfie, E.J.). An update on great ape population health, disease control and outbreak response. Supplement to the Best practice guidelines for health monitoring and disease control in great ape populations. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. 
• Best Practice Guidelines for Mitigating the Impacts of Large-Scale Development Projects on Apes 
• Infographic on ape disease mitigation in the context of industrial development projects 

Find more information and the overall learnings of the Alliance financed projects in the report “Learning to make Change Happen.- Global Lessons from 18 projects”