The tropical rainforests situated across the global South could represent a lucrative, trillion-dollar opportunity for pharma, as concerns around deforestation and its impact on carbon capture and biodiversity loss continue to mount.
According to an analysis conducted by climate research group Zero Carbon Analytics, protecting tropical forests could offer between $382bn and $1.2tn in value for the pharmaceutical industry – equating to nearly five times the global spend on vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic – as the molecules held in plants continue to be a source of inspiration for therapeutics.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Researchers highlight the high dependence of the industry on tropical plants, fungi and microbes for natural products and digital sequence information (DSI), particularly in low-income countries where the majority of the world’s biodiversity is found.
Despite the rainforest’s role in housing one of the most diverse ranges of plant and insect species seen in any ecosystem, analysis reveals that only two of the top 15 global pharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk’s non-profit humanitarian arm, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, have publicly pledged any funds to targeting biodiversity.
Currently, researchers estimate that between $46bn and $142bn in potential commercial value to the pharmaceutical industry has been lost since 2001 due to deforestation. This is because chemical information held within certain plants is no longer available to the market as certain species are now extinct, or nearing extinction.
Even larger is the impact on social health, referring to the potential benefit of therapies once they come off patent, which they predict has seen erosion of $860bn since the same time period.
However, if pharma companies choose to act now to halt forest loss by 2030, they forecast that this would cap additional commercial losses at between $5bn and $15bn, while preserving between $42bn and $130bn in private commercial value.
According to Peter Elwin, director of engagement and research at the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation, nature remains “fundamental” to pharmaceutical innovation, and the biodiversity found in global ecosystems can provide the genetic resources that could underpin the next generation of medicines.
“[Biodiversity] loss driven by deforestation and ecosystem degradation is increasing business risks across the sector,” Elwin warns. “Investors benefit when companies mitigate these risks, and investing in nature helps protect future innovation, strengthens supply chain resilience and creates long-term shareholder value.”
Finding inspiration from nature
Since the dawn of humanity, civilisations have turned to global biodiversity for medicinal properties, with evidence pointing to the use of ingredients like willow bark for its pain relief and anti-inflammatory properties dating back over 3,500 years.
Now, in the modern world, plants continue to provide a key reference point for drug developers, which – in some cases – have blockbuster potential.
This is evidenced by solid tumour therapies like Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca’s Enhertu (trastuzumab deruxtecan), which was built on the structure of a compound produced by the Chinese happy tree, or Camptotheca acuminata, which grows in the subtropics of southern China, Tibet and Northern Vietnam. In the first half of 2026, Enhertu pulled in $2.9bn in sales for the two companies, and GlobalData forecasts that the therapy will reach mega-blockbuster status in 2030.
GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology.
The structure of another widely used cancer therapy and fellow antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), Kadcyla (trastuzumab emtansine), is also derived from nature – stemming from a compound found in the East African shrub, Maytenus serrata, which is native to the desert and dry shrubland regions. In H1, Kadcyla brought in SFr 916m ($1.1bn) for Roche.
Though Zero Carbon Analytics’ study focuses only on tropical forests, the organisation acknowledges that plants from this ecosystem represent only a subset of the Earth’s diversity, and that compounds from marine, freshwater and other terrestrial ecosystems remain unquantified and potentially highly fruitful – as evidenced by Kadcyla’s journey to market.
