How deforestation can lead to more infectious diseases
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UNCCD Library
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The world's forests act as shields, keeping humans safe from coronaviruses and other diseases. Their destruction can unleash devastating consequences for global public health. Scientists have been repeating the warning for at least two decades: As humans encroach upon forests, their risk of contracting viruses circulating among wild animals increases.
That's why Ana Lucia Tourinho wasn't surprised when she heard about the novel coronavirus, which was first detected in China in December and has since spread around the world. An ecologist at the Federal University of Mato Grosso in Brazil, Tourinho studies how an environmental imbalance can cause forests and societies to become sick.
"When a virus that wasn't part of our evolutionary history leaves its natural host and enters our bodies, it's chaos. The new coronavirus is rubbing that in our faces," she said.
Deforestation destroys the equilibrium
Before it infected the first humans and spread through the world by living in travelers' bodies, the novel coronavirus, officially named SARS-CoV-2, inhabited other hosts in a wild environment — most likely bats.
When such viruses are isolated and in equilibrium in their habitat, for example a closed forest, they are not a threat to humans. The problem arises when this natural reservoir is cut down, destroyed and occupied.
Scientific studies published before the current pandemic had already showed a connection between deforestation, the proliferation of bats in the damaged areas and the family of coronaviruses, which includes the current lethal strain.
Aneta Afelt, a researcher at the University of Warsaw in Poland, conducted studies indicating that the next severe infectious disease would come from Asia due to the region's high levels of deforestation over the past 40 years.
To reach this conclusion, Afelt tracked previous pandemics caused by other coronaviruses. These include SARS, which spread in 2002 and 2003 and had a 10% fatality rate, and MERS, which spread in 2012 and had a 38% fatality rate.
"By being one of the regions of the world where population growth is the strongest, where sanitary conditions remain poor and where the deforestation rate is the highest, SEA [Southeast Asia] meets every condition to become the place of emergence or reemergence of infectious diseases," Afelt wrote in a 2018 article.
Read more: Living in the shadows of violence and development in Brazil's Amazon
Read the whole article from the source above
That's why Ana Lucia Tourinho wasn't surprised when she heard about the novel coronavirus, which was first detected in China in December and has since spread around the world. An ecologist at the Federal University of Mato Grosso in Brazil, Tourinho studies how an environmental imbalance can cause forests and societies to become sick.
"When a virus that wasn't part of our evolutionary history leaves its natural host and enters our bodies, it's chaos. The new coronavirus is rubbing that in our faces," she said.
Deforestation destroys the equilibrium
Before it infected the first humans and spread through the world by living in travelers' bodies, the novel coronavirus, officially named SARS-CoV-2, inhabited other hosts in a wild environment — most likely bats.
When such viruses are isolated and in equilibrium in their habitat, for example a closed forest, they are not a threat to humans. The problem arises when this natural reservoir is cut down, destroyed and occupied.
Scientific studies published before the current pandemic had already showed a connection between deforestation, the proliferation of bats in the damaged areas and the family of coronaviruses, which includes the current lethal strain.
Aneta Afelt, a researcher at the University of Warsaw in Poland, conducted studies indicating that the next severe infectious disease would come from Asia due to the region's high levels of deforestation over the past 40 years.
To reach this conclusion, Afelt tracked previous pandemics caused by other coronaviruses. These include SARS, which spread in 2002 and 2003 and had a 10% fatality rate, and MERS, which spread in 2012 and had a 38% fatality rate.
"By being one of the regions of the world where population growth is the strongest, where sanitary conditions remain poor and where the deforestation rate is the highest, SEA [Southeast Asia] meets every condition to become the place of emergence or reemergence of infectious diseases," Afelt wrote in a 2018 article.
Read more: Living in the shadows of violence and development in Brazil's Amazon
Read the whole article from the source above
Keywords
deforestation
environmental crisis
public health
human health impacts
zoonosis
social contract
green growth
forests
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