When we think of deforestation, we often think of lost habitats, disappearing wildlife and declining biodiversity. For the pharmaceutical industry, a forest is a vast biological library. Plants, fungi, microbes and animals produce chemical compounds to survive, some of which can be useful in treating human disease. Scientists can use these natural compounds directly as medicines or as starting points for developing new drugs.

This makes biodiversity an important resource for pharmaceutical research, particularly in tropical forests. According to a new report by Zero Carbon Analytics, 56 of the 579 new drugs approved globally between 2014 and 2024 were natural products or close derivatives.

Yet scientists have explored only a fraction of nature’s chemical diversity. Around 99% of plant compounds are still estimated to be undiscovered, leaving tropical forests as a vast, largely untapped source of potential medicines.

Forests are a Natural Drug-Discovery Library

Plants produce chemical compounds to defend themselves against pests, disease and harsh environments. Some of these compounds can also have medicinal properties.

Vincristine, for example, comes from the Madagascar periwinkle and remains on the WHO List of Essential Medicines. It has been widely used to treat childhood leukaemia, with no full replacement yet available.

This means forests are valuable for the species scientists have yet to study. Every species could hold compounds that become important to future medicine.

What Happens When Forests Disappear?

When forests are cleared, scientists can lose access to plants and other organisms before their potential is ever studied. The chemical and genetic information they contain can disappear with their habitat. Researchers describe this as losing an “option value” — the opportunity to discover and develop medicines in the future. Once a forest is gone, that opportunity may disappear with it.

This does not mean every species lost would have produced a major drug. The study measures potential future discoveries, not guaranteed medicines. But that uncertainty is precisely the problem: scientists cannot know what they have lost if they never get the chance to study it. The new analysis estimates that tropical forests could contain around $714 billion in potential commercial pharmaceutical value from undiscovered drugs in flowering plants alone. Their broader social value could be around $7 trillion.

Deforestation is already reducing this potential. Since 2001, forest loss is estimated to have put about $86 billion in potential drug-discovery value at risk.

The Risk Extends to Future Medicines

The threat does not stop with what has already been lost. Around 13% of the world’s tropical forests have been affected by forest loss since 2001, according to satellite data cited in the study. If deforestation continues at current rates, another $88 billion in potential commercial pharmaceutical value could be put at risk by 2050. The cumulative value at risk since 2001 could reach $174 billion, with the upper estimate reaching $287 billion.

Halting deforestation could preserve much of this potential. If forest loss were stopped by 2030, the researchers estimate that $79 billion in commercial pharmaceutical value could be preserved by 2050 compared with business as usual.

The social stakes are even larger. Under business as usual, another $880 billion in social value from potential medicines could be lost by 2050.

Technology Cannot Replace a Forest

AI, genomics and digital sequence information are helping scientists search nature’s biological library faster. Genetic data can reveal promising biological pathways, while AI can help researchers analyse huge genomic and chemical databases. But these technologies still depend on biological information originating in nature.

Once a species is lost before its genetic information is recorded, technology cannot recover it. This also raises equity questions: tropical forests are in the Global South, while most pharmaceutical profits flow to companies in wealthier countries. Indigenous communities have long contributed knowledge of medicinal plants but receive little of the financial returns.

Protecting forests, therefore, is not only about conserving biodiversity. It could also mean protecting the biological foundation of future drug discovery.

India has largely beaten hunger, but food security now faces a new test. A new UN report finds that while fewer people are undernourished, the high cost of healthy diets continues to keep nutritious food out of reach for millions.

Every month, nearly 800 million Indians collect subsidized rice and wheat from ration shops through the Public Distribution System (PDS). For millions of families, these grains ensure that no one sleeps hungry and ensure food security. It is one of the country’s biggest social protection programs and a key reason why hunger has steadily declined over the years. But as India wins one battle on food security, another is becoming harder to ignore.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2026 report, released by the UN’s food and health agencies on 21 July, estimates that more than 520 million Indians cannot afford a healthy diet. More than one in every three people may have enough calories to get through the day but still struggle to regularly buy fruits, vegetables, pulses, milk, eggs and other nutrient-rich foods.

The contrast reveals a shift in India’s food security challenge. Hunger is no longer the country’s biggest concern. Nutrition is.

Food Security: India Solved the Problem of Empty Stomachs

India’s food security system was designed to tackle famine and chronic food shortages. The Green Revolution transformed cereal production, while government procurement and subsidised food distribution made rice and wheat accessible to poor households. During the Covid-19 pandemic, free food grain distribution further strengthened this safety net, protecting millions from falling into extreme hunger, ensured food security.

The strategy has worked. According to SOFI 2026, the prevalence of undernourishment in India has fallen from 21.1% in 2004-06 to 9.8% in 2023-25, a decline of roughly 101 million people, from 243.9 million to 142.5 million. Fewer Indians today are unable to consume the minimum calories required for a healthy life. For decades, this was the country’s biggest food security challenge.

Why Healthy Food Remains Out of Reach

Calories have become relatively affordable, while nutrition has become expensive. For many families, buying rice is rarely the problem. Buying milk every day, eggs for children or enough vegetables through the week often is. The imbalance is reflected not only in food prices but also in what Indians eat.

A study comparing Indian diets with the EAT-Lancet healthy diet found that among the poorest rural households, cereals provide around 70% of daily calories. By contrast, protein-rich foods contribute only 6-8% of total calories, far below the 29% recommended under the EAT-Lancet healthy diet. Even the richest Indian households consume fewer fruits, vegetables and non-cereal protein sources than recommended.

The affordability gap widens further when food prices rise. The share of Indians unable to afford a healthy diet has fallen sharply, from 59.8% in 2017 to 35.5% in 2025 — but SOFI 2026 puts the cost of that diet at US$4.11 per person per day (PPP) in 2025. Globally, the cost of a healthy diet has climbed from US$2.94 in 2017 to US$4.28 in 2025, an increase of roughly 45%.

Research published in the journal Food Policy paints a similar picture. It found that rural Indians typically spend only about US$1 per person per day on food, while a healthy diet costs between US$3 and US$5 per person per day. Much of that gap comes from the higher cost of fruits, dairy products and protein-rich foods.

Raj Patel, professor at the University of Texas at Austin and an expert with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), says this imbalance is rooted in the way food systems are organised.

“When 645 million people are hungry and one in three cannot afford a healthy diet, this is a failure of political choices. Healthy diets are becoming a luxury for billions, while farmers are paid less and consumers pay more. That isn’t an accident — it’s the result of a food system where a handful of powerful traders, processors and retailers set the prices and pocket the profits.”

His observation resonates in India, where cereals remain affordable through public support, while nutritious foods often become the first items families stop buying when household budgets tighten.

A Full Stomach Does Not Always Mean Good Nutrition

For decades, food security has largely been understood as having enough food on the plate.

According to neurologist Dr Arun Oommen, representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), that understanding needs to evolve.

“The biggest misconception in India is that people think if their stomach is full, there is no malnutrition. People eat what is cheaply available, but those foods often lack the proteins, vitamins and minerals needed by the body.”, he told EdPublica

He says the pattern is especially common among low-income households, where meals are built around rice, with only small portions of vegetables or protein-rich foods.

“Without adequate proteins, vitamins and minerals, the brain, muscles and other organs cannot develop properly. Many low-income families depend largely on carbohydrate-rich diets, with large portions of rice and very little protein or vegetables.”

The effects are often hidden. Children may get enough calories to avoid hunger but still miss out on the nutrients needed for healthy growth and brain development.

The Hidden Face of Malnutrition

The consequences are visible in India’s nutrition indicators. SOFI 2026 records that child stunting has fallen from 41.7% in 2012 to 32.9% in 2024 (from 53.3 million to 37.4 million children) — real progress, but still meaning more than one in three Indian children under five have low height for their age. Wasting stood at 18.7% (22.2 million children) in 2024, and anaemia among women aged 15-49 has risen from 50.1% in 2012 to 53.7% in 2023, now affecting 203.5 million women. These are signs not simply of inadequate food, but of diets that lack diversity.

This is where India’s food security story enters a new phase. Rice and wheat remain essential because they protect people from hunger. But they cannot, on their own, provide the balanced nutrition needed for healthy lives. As food inflation, climate change and disruptions to agricultural production continue to push up the prices of fruits, vegetables and pulses, nutritious diets become even harder to afford.

Jennifer Clapp, Canada Research Chair at the University of Waterloo and an IPES-Food expert, warns that global food systems face growing uncertainty.

“Global hunger remains stubbornly high. And the outlook for 2026 is deeply worrying. Geopolitics is increasingly shaping food security, with conflict, fertiliser disruptions, trade tensions, and El Niño-driven climate shocks threatening yet another surge in food prices.”

For India, another round of food price increases could widen the gap between escaping hunger and eating well.

The Next Step in India’s Food Security Journey

India has shown that large-scale public policy can reduce hunger. Few countries have built a food distribution system that reaches hundreds of millions of people every month. The next challenge is making healthy food just as accessible as cereals.

As Dr Oommen puts it: “Rice and wheat are important, but relying on them alone can create nutritional deficiencies. People need to include more vegetables, fruits and protein-rich foods in their diet.”

India’s food security story is no longer only about ensuring that people have enough to eat. It is about ensuring they can afford to eat well. The country’s next measure of success may not be how many empty stomachs it eliminates, but how many families can finally put a balanced, nutritious meal on the table.

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) could push nearly one million more people into poverty and wipe billions of dollars from Africa’s economy if it is not contained quickly, according to a new analysis by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

While the immediate focus remains on containing the virus, the UNDP says the outbreak is also threatening livelihoods, jobs and public services, particularly in countries with fragile health systems. It warns that the economic effects are likely to outlast the health emergency, with women expected to face the greatest impact.

The analysis estimates that the outbreak could push an additional 985,000 people below the poverty line across Africa. In the worst-case scenario, the continent could lose up to US$3.6 billion as trade slows, businesses are disrupted and governments divert resources to emergency response.

“The cost of Ebola is measured not only in lives lost, but also in livelihoods lost,” the report notes, arguing that outbreaks of infectious diseases can undo years of development progress in a matter of months.

Women Likely to Bear the Brunt

According to the report, women are likely to be affected disproportionately because they make up much of the informal workforce and are often the primary caregivers at home. Restrictions on movement and market closures can cut off income for women working in informal trade, while increased caregiving responsibilities further reduce their economic opportunities.

The report also warns that pressure on healthcare systems could interrupt routine maternal and child health services, creating additional health risks beyond Ebola itself.

Economic Disruption Extends Beyond Affected Countries

Even if the outbreak remains concentrated in the DRC and neighbouring countries, its economic effects are expected to spread more widely through reduced trade, lower investor confidence and disruptions to regional supply chains.

The UNDP estimates that the DRC alone could lose more than US$1 billion in economic output and tens of thousands of jobs. Across the continent, the losses could reach US$2.37 billion under a moderate scenario and as much as US$3.6 billion if the outbreak spreads further.

Ebola Outbreak: A call for a Broader Response

The agency says responding to Ebola requires more than medical interventions. Along with strengthening surveillance and healthcare systems, governments should protect livelihoods through social safety nets, maintain essential public services and ensure that border measures do not unnecessarily disrupt trade.

According to the report, addressing these wider social and economic impacts will be crucial to preventing the current Ebola outbreak from becoming a long-term development setback for the region.