First to warn the world: ACTAsia and the Pandemic

We’re marking 20 years of ACTAsia’s work with 20 Years, 20 Wins – a series of stories about the accomplishments that trace how a small organisation came to shape conversations on a global stage. Win #15 is a clear example of that. It looks at how ACTAsia acted during a global health crisis, pushing a warning we’d been raising for years onto a much bigger stage, which brought the world’s biggest newsrooms to us for answers. #15 of 20

When the world was finally ready to listen

In early 2020, as COVID-19 spread from China and lockdowns tightened around the world, most organisations did what would be a typical response to a crisis: they paused. Offices closed, travel stopped, and non-profit work across the sector slowed or stalled altogether.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, ACTAsia’s message became even more urgent. The state of the world was scary and unprecedented, and the link between human, animal and environmental health was suddenly impossible to ignore. ACTAsia intensified our advocacy – on wildlife trade, on animal welfare, and on the risks of captive breeding – at precisely the moment the world was ready to (and needed to) hear it. When journalists and lawmakers started looking for answers, ACTAsia already had them.

A gap in the law and the push to close it

China’s early pandemic response included a ban on the consumption of wildlife. This was a headline-grabbing move that, on the surface, could have been perceived as a sign that the problem was being addressed and solved. Through our research and expertise ACTAsia knew otherwise, and we were the first NGO to say so publicly.

The ban stopped people eating wild animals. What it did not stop was the breeding, trading, or commercial exploitation of those same animals for other purposes – fur, traditional medicine, exhibition. On paper, the risk looked contained. In practice, the underlying system that had allowed a pandemic to emerge in the first place was still largely intact. We laid this out in detail at the time, asking a question that is crucial to notions of global health and animal justice alike: when is wildlife not “wildlife” at all, at least not on paper?

That gap between what a law says and what it actually does is a thread that runs through much of ACTAsia’s work, and COVID-19 made the stakes of ignoring it impossible to miss.

ACTAsia joined 200 other organisations in petitioning lawmakers at China’s National People’s Congress for a permanent ban on using wildlife for any commercial purpose – not just food, but fur and everything else the original ban had left untouched. Close to 50,000 people signed it, a clear sign of public appetite for a real fix rather than the partial one they had been handed.

Sought out by the BBC and New York Times

Being the first to flag the loophole and organising action around it meant that ACTAsia was put on the radar of international media at a critical time. BBC News and the New York Times both came to ACTAsia for the facts on China’s wildlife ban. Much of the coverage that year took the ban at face value– a new rule had been announced, so the problem was assumed to be handled. ACTAsia understood the insidiousness of the situation: the ban covered eating wild animals, but many other practices carried on much as before, and those were the same practices that had let the virus jump from animals to people in the first place.

To be sought out by outlets the size of BBC and the New York times is testimony to ACTAsia’s legitimacy and expertise in the field. We were trusted enough to shape how millions of people understood an important story about global health and policy in relation to China’s wildlife laws. 

The One Health approach 

ACTAsia had been working from a framework called One Health for years before the pandemic made it familiar: the idea that the health of animals, people, and the environment are inseparable from one another. Protecting wildlife properly means a reduction in the conditions that enable diseases to jump from animals to humans in the first place. On the inverse, the COVID-19 pandemic was a case in point example of how ignoring that connection plays out. 

Looking back, and forward

Five years on, the loophole ACTAsia flagged in 2020 is still part of the conversation we are having about captive wildlife breeding today This is a thread that runs through to some of the wins later in this series. It is a reminder that being first to name a problem does not mean the problem is solved. Rather, it means the work of closing the gap has properly begun.

20 Years, 20 Wins 

Want to understand more about how ACTAsia connects animal welfare to human and planetary health? Explore our One Health work or see the full list of press ACTAsia has been featured in over the years.

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