The
lockdown made humans experience how “imprisonment” looks like. This situation
forced us to deal with the harshness of social distancing. Some of us have been
isolated from their families, while we have all experienced how terrible it is
to be distant from our beloved. Fortunately, for us, there is the assuring idea
that sooner or later this will come to an end. But what if it won’t? For some creatures, this is
the case. Zoos, aquariums, circus and other similar businesses expose animals
to long-term quarantines that, unlike the real one, do not last just 40 days.
If we go back to our childhood, probably our minds are able to recapture at
least that one time in which we went to see wild animals in a zoo. Most of us
must have found it amazing, but today we would probably immediately recognize a
discrepancy between wildness and zoo. By creating this kind of places, which
sometimes do not even allow animals to freely move within adequate spaces,
humans have irrevocably connected themselves to wild nature. This abnormal
interconnection, which goes against any natural law, made animals vulnerable and
dependent on us. As Bill Maher points out in a recent episode of his late night show, most of diseases are zoonotic, which
means that they start from animals and then expand to humans. But why would
they start from animals? To explain it in simple terms, because we expose
animals to amassment and confinement, that is exactly what experts are warning
us not to do in order to get rid of the virus.
Due
to Coronavirus emergency, another arguable aspect of zoo-business has been put
under the spotlight. Beyond the unethical and immoral characteristics of zoos,
COVID19 sheds light on the risky linkage between humans and captive animals.
Indeed, many zoos are now complaining about the fact that, because of social
distancing, zookeepers are unable to “take care” of the animals. The question
is the following, what is the real concern of zoos? Animals or profit? For
sure, zoos would not exist without animals, which are the money-maker actors.
As a German zoo director declared: “If it comes to it, I'll have to euthanize
animals, rather than let them starve, […] At the worst, we would have to feed
some of the animals to others”. To some of us, this might look like
a paradox. We are responsible of animals’ imprisonment and, at the same time,
we are going to become their executioners. Seals and penguins are destined to
this horrific fate since they need big quantities of fresh fish daily.
Certainly, if penguins were in the cold and ice of Antarctica the virus would
have not had an impact on them. We are witnessing a dramatic reversal of the
predator-prey cycle, in which, once again, humans had a hand in.
Why
should penguins be sacrificed for being in the wrong place? And why should be
humans to manage the predator-prey cycle? This global emergency would have been
limited to the human world, however, because of the zoo-business, it has spread
its effects to some animals.
Despite
the unhappy destiny of captive animals, the COVID19 crisis had outstanding
spillovers on wild nature. This is probably the best spring that animals are
living since human’s footprint expansion and invasion over their habitats. It
looks like animals are recovering from our occupation. Air is cleaner,
pollution has remarkably decreased, wild animals are free to move in their
environments without human interference. These are just a few of the
uncountable benefits that nature is starting to collect with humans locked at
home. As the Chief of Environmental Economist at the United Nations Environment
Programme said: “every crisis provides the opportunity to learn”. The
aforementioned step is crucial if we want to prevent our world from further
disasters before reaching the final environmental tipping point. We have already
crossed numerous tipping points, which marked irreversible variations such as
the extinction of many species; however, there is still hope. Businesses should
shift towards a greener reality, balancing profit with sustainability. Hence,
the trade-off between human and nature’s sovereignty must stop. Continuing to
prioritize human's interests over the environmental ones would be extremely
short-sighted if we consider a bigger perspective. In fact, we are the ones
depending on nature. Excluding distortions such as those occurring within zoos,
nature bargaining power is much higher than ours and if we want to continue carrying
out unsustainable lives we should also be aware that it will lead to a zero-sum
game. There is no way through which we can win against nature by exploiting it
to the full and expecting no backlashes. Zoonotic diseases (e.g. COVID19, Sars,
Madcow…) efficiently prove it. Hence, the only remaining chance is the one of
moving side-by-side with it, finding ways to fulfil both parties’ interests.
For instance, the implementation of renewable resources is an example of good
usage of natural resources. There is concrete evidence of Nations’ commitments
(e.g. EU’s objective to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050),
however, individual effort is also necessary. This crisis is giving us the
chance of reversing the situation, learning from prior errors and developing
new solutions. Re-thinking about the presence of business like zoos is
important as well as reinventing appropriate business standards, which, from
now on, should go hand in hand with sustainability.