Biodiversity loss equals future pandemics!
Often, we write a blog to summarise, in one place, what is available in the media on a topic of interest. This blog is just that case. We hear about Covid-19 being a result, directly or indirectly, of biodiversity loss. The encroachment of mankind into and onto natural wilderness. What does that mean to humanity and where are we at today? One thing is obvious, pandemics do not happen often but when they do, they are very bad news and have huge consequences. Covid-19 is such an event!
Let’s summarise what we know:
1. Zoonotic diseases are caused by viruses that spread between animals and humans to humans. The experts believe Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease.
2. Zoonotic diseases number in excess of 200 diseases and include Eloba, Marburg, Avian Flu, MERS, Nipah, H1N1, H5N1, Rabies, Anthrax, Tularemia, West Nile virus.1 [Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London]
3. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, (“MERS”) is one such Zoonotic disease. It was 1st noted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in late 2013. The 1st case involved breading camels indoors in a confined closed space. The fatality rate was 50% and (thankfully), transition human to human was difficult (low). Accordingly, how we farm livestock should be considered very important.
4. Other examples of zoonotic viruses being passed to humans from farmed livestock include Nipah (flying foxes to pigs to humans) and H1N1 (pigs to humans) and H5N1 (poultry to humans).
5. Lyme disease is getting notoriety as being a disease caught by the bite of a tick having the Lyme pathogen. This is also a zoonotic disease.
6. Poor sanitation and polluted water spreads disease from animals to humans. Waterborne zoonotic pathogens cause both gastrointestinal diseases like diarrhea and other illnesses like leptospirosis and hepatitis.
7. Salmonella, smallpox and measles are all thought to have originated with domesticated animals.
8. All research believe that the majority of zoonotic pathogens are still to be discovered.
9. A pandemic always starts with one person being infected. “It only take one”!
10. When diseases do occur, they will travel faster and further now, in our current globalised world.
11. On pandemics, there is only one certainty … that the next pandemic will certainly come.
Degraded landscapes are one reason for the increased risk of zoonotic diseases and come from our insatiable appetite for food, energy and raw materials. We must repurpose and reuse what we already have. We must turn existing supply chains into sustainable supply chains that embrace a circular economy.
Loss of biodiversity
All scientific minds seem to agree that the spread of many infectious diseases from humans to animals can be traced to destruction of forests around the world and the encroachment of mankind onto wilderness areas in promotion of domesticated farming practices. “It seems that degraded habitats carry more viruses”.
Raina Plowright, a bat specialist at the Bozeman disease ecology lab at Montana State University believes:
“Where there is high biodiversity, as in rainforests and tropical forest areas, you have more potential pathogens. This is the habitat that wild animals need to survive most in. They need big areas to find a constant source of food. What we are doing, though, is destroying the natural world, constantly chipping away at wildlife habitats, bringing animals into situations where they have to interfere with humans via road and building or the wild meat trade. We suspect that when you put animals in situations where they have to eke out resources in a human situation you get diseases. The trouble is, we don’t know what else is out there and [have] no idea what is going on in many parts of the world.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believe that 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals. They say nearly all are triggered or made worse by human interference with natural environments.
Factory Farming
If you look at the long list of Zoonotic diseases, Ebola, SARS, swine flu, bird flu, H1N1 and MERS, very few are associated with wildlife and wildlife markets and much more to do with factory farming, be it fruit bats in Thailand which are depositing their dropping (faeces) into the food chain of farmed pigs and producing diseases or farming camels in Saudi Arabia. Concentration of livestock in close proximity of populated areas is problematic at best and potential disastrous at worst, particularly if transmission is via airborne particulates, which all corona viruses are. Not enough is being done nor is there any discussions on how to guarantee safety in farming livestock and wildlife at sustainable levels necessary for growing populations. This isn’t an easily solved issue.
Wet Markets
A wet market is defined as an area where live animals are kept, slaughtered and sold. A wildlife market is where exotic animals are kept and slaughtered. The infamous Wuhan seafood market, suspected to be a primary source for the contamination, transition and spreading Covid-19, had a wild animal section where live and slaughtered species were for sale, including snakes, beavers, badgers, civet cats, foxes, peacocks and porcupines among other animals.
In Wet markets containing populations of animals within close confines of humans will also propose a risk of infection from animal to human (a spill-over event).
“Wet markets make a perfect storm for cross-species transmission of pathogens. Whenever you have novel interactions with a range of species in one place, whether that is in a natural environment like a forest or a wet market, you can have a spill-over event.”2 2. Thomas Gillespie, Associate Professor, Emory University - Department of Environmental Sciences
Areas, be it in nature or urban, where man meets bush is a concern in respect of virus spill-over between animal and human. Arguably, wet markets are the perfect storm, vector and interface for ongoing occurrences of virus transition from nature to mankind. To us at E4C, this is a sleeping timebomb.
Closing remarks
If Covid-19 has shown us anything, “low probability, high consequence” events do happen. When they do happen, the conversation is around the virus, which is understandable. However, we also need to have a conversation around what got us there. What role does livestock, wildlife, and the nexus between the two, play in food security and culture? The reality is that millions of people around the world rely on wet markets as an affordable access point and source of food. A note to Media outlets is not to get side tracked on wet markets as they have existed for the entire length of history, nor to demonise those that rely on them for their livelihoods, but rather focus on lifting the importance of the discussion around human behaviours, biodiversity loss and the wider implications on humanity of that. Pandemics are one cost, but there will be other consequences of biodiversity loss.
Where is the discussion around building safe food systems throughout the world? What does that look like? We are losing too many species, too many natural landscapes. We are intensifying livestock farming in ways that are inhumane and unsustainable. When we disrupt ecosystems and encroach, we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. We are often it.
Will new zoonotic diseases be the hidden cost of human economic development going forward?
