• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires May 29, 2023
Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax May 29, 2023
Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing May 29, 2023
UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety May 29, 2023
Community Wind Farm Earns Support, Generates Income in German Village May 29, 2023
Next
Prev

Brazilian Deforestation Plants the Seeds for Future Pandemics

April 19, 2020
Reading time: 3 minutes

Pedro Biondi/ABr via Wikimedia Commons

Pedro Biondi/ABr via Wikimedia Commons

44
SHARES
 

As Brazil’s current leader continues to champion the deforestation of the Amazon, experts are warning that such destruction is planting the seeds for the next uncontrolled disease outbreak, as wild animals and their attendant viral and bacterial hitchhikers increasingly cede territory to humans whose immune systems can be defenceless against such “novel” assailants.

“Scientists warn that the next emergent pandemic could originate in the Brazilian Amazon if [President Jair] Bolsonaro’s policies continue to drive Amazon deforestation rates ever higher,” writes Mongabay News. Researchers already know that areas of human encroachment—the “nexus between forest and agribusiness, mining, and other human development”—is where new diseases typically arise. 

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe

“Wild vertebrates, particularly rodents, bats, and primates, harbour pathogens that are novel to the human immune system and, if we clear their habitat and put ourselves in closer contact with them, we can increase the risk that a spillover event occurs, introducing a novel pathogen,” said Andy MacDonald, an ecologist with the Institute of Geosciences at the University of California.

Such spillover events are growing ever more commonplace. Mongabay cites a 2008 international and interdisciplinary research project, which determined that “at least 60% of the 335 new diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004 originated with non-human animals.” Habitat destruction has been the key driver behind this explosion in disease, with researchers around the world confirming direct causal links between broken ecosystems and spikes of disease in humans, including a major surge of yellow fever in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais following the collapse of an iron mining tailings dam in 2016.

That catastrophe had a particularly devastating effect on monkey populations in the area, biologist Márcia Chame told Mongabay. Distressed and malnourished after their homes and food sources were significantly damaged by the dam collapse, the weakened monkeys were more susceptible to yellow fever, and many fell ill. Mosquitoes, also displaced by deforestation, fed on the monkeys, eventually transferring the disease to humans. 

It was this complex combination of factors—the dam collapse, its effect on the monkeys, and other landscape modifications that left “forest fragments running in peri-urban areas”—that created sufficient interaction between monkey, mosquito, and human populations to produce an epidemic, Chame explained.

There is growing concern, as well, that deforestation produced by wildfire may be fast becoming a particular incubation point for zoonotic diseases. After an August 2019 meeting in Colombia to discuss the impacts of the devastating wildfires then ongoing in the Amazon, experts in such diseases issued a formal statement warning that, after a wildfire, the region—which they described as “endemic for many communicable or zoonotic diseases”—can “trigger a selection for survival, and with it change the habitat and behaviours of some animal species.” Those animals can then become “reservoirs of zoonotic bacteria, viruses, and parasites.”

More research is desperately needed to better understand the full effects of human incursion and zoonotic diseases. A 2019 study on development and its relationship with both environmental degradation and disease spread in the Amazon concluded that “too little attention has focused on the emergence and reemergence of vector-borne diseases that directly impact the local population, with spillover effects on other neighbouring areas,” Mongabay says.

Also desperately needed, and not likely to be in any way forthcoming under Brazil’s current regime: rainforest protection.

“In 2019, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached its highest level in 10 years (9,762 km2),” writes Mongabay. Deforestation in protected Indigenous reserves increased even more quickly, “expanding by 74% in 2019 under Bolsonaro as compared to 2018.” In 2020, Amazon deforestation escalated further, “doubling from August 2019 to March 2020, compared with the same period in 2018-19.”

Mongabay adds that the Brazilian congress is poised to permanently legalize the still technically illegal felling of trees on public land, while Bolsonaro himself continues to push through legislation that would “allow large-scale mining, oil and gas drilling, and industrial agribusiness within Brazil’s Indigenous reserves, largely without input from the people living there.”

Brazil’s Indigenous peoples are responding with passionate resistance rooted in a profound understanding of their traditional lands and ecosystems.

At a media conference on climate change communication, held in New York City a few short days before the current pandemic erupted, a group of Indigenous representatives stressed the need to protect the biodiversity of rainforests—both to prevent future pandemics, and to secure some hope of future cures (possibly even near-term future), Mongabay recalls.

Meanwhile, scientists continue “warning urgently that more pandemics lie ahead,” the publication adds. The coronavirus outbreak represents “the very tip of the iceberg” for the zoonotic pathogens awaiting our (unhappy) discovery, Emory University disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie recently told Scientific American.



in Biodiversity & Habitat, Brazil, Drought & Wildfires, First Peoples, Forests & Deforestation, Health & Safety, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Martin Davis/Facebook
Carbon Levels & Measurement

13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires

May 29, 2023
393
Neal Alderson/Twitter
Drought & Wildfires

Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax

May 29, 2023
2.2k
York Region/flickr
Heat & Temperature

Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing

May 29, 2023
280

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Neal Alderson/Twitter

Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax

May 29, 2023
2.2k
Crenaissanceman/wikimedia commons

Electric School Buses Boost School Attendance, Deliver Emergency Power

May 7, 2023
372
Martin Davis/Facebook

13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires

May 29, 2023
393
York Region/flickr

Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing

May 29, 2023
280

U.S. Megadrought Brings Private Water Brokers Into Focus

May 28, 2023
68
Sol y Playa condo, Rincón, Puerto Rico

Storms, Sea Level Rise Intensify Conflicts Over Public Beach Access

May 29, 2023
66

Recent Posts

Jörg Möller/Pixabay

UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety

May 29, 2023
71

Waste Heat from Quebec Data Centre to Grow 80,000 Tonnes of Veggies Per Year

May 29, 2023
104
kpgolfpro/Pixabay

Community Wind Farm Earns Support, Generates Income in German Village

May 29, 2023
61
Pexels/pixabay

Engineers Replace Sand in Concrete with Disposable Diapers

May 30, 2023
51
FMSC/Flickr

Waive Debt to Unlock Urgently Needed Adaptation Funds, Researchers Urge

May 27, 2023
33
Arctic Circle/flickr

‘Remarkable Rebuke’: 130 U.S, EU Legislators Ask UN to Ditch Fossil CEO as COP 28 Chair

May 23, 2023
413
Next Post
digifly840 / Pixabay

Canada Records 15-Megatonne Emissions Hike in 2018, Wiping Out 13 Years of Gains

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}