Biodiversity provides essential contributions to humanity, including food, clean water, climate mitigation, and recreation. Yet, escalating human pressures are driving global biodiversity loss, with dramatic risks for our health and economy. For example, human incursions into high-biodiverse landscapes and increased wildlife trade were identified as the key drivers behind many recent emerging infectious diseases (EID), such as SARS, Ebola, and MERS. These are also the main scientific hypotheses behind the COVID-19 outbreak. Failure at reducing global biodiversity loss is driven by trade-offs with other societal priorities, such as food and energy production, and this ultimately determines increased risk for human health. These perceived trade-offs emerge from short-sighted decision making, which disregards the synergistic effect that environmental protection has for sustainable development and improved health. As the current pandemic demonstrates, the emergence of infectious diseases can cause large-scale mortality and morbidity with economic impacts which are orders of magnitude higher than any short-term gain from unsustainable use of natural resources.
While recent research has shown that opportunities exist to achieve multiple environmental objectives with the same investment, no study has comprehensively identified priority actions to fully exploit the links between biodiversity conservation and reduction of disease emergence. This project will explore these links under a new light, by estimating the avoided risk to humanity that derives from environmental protection in biodiversity-rich areas. The goal is to pinpoint under-explored synergies between biodiversity conservation and reduced risk of EID under the effects of climate, land-use, human population, and wildlife trade. Tackling the global-scale challenge of sustainable development requires building on the ability of natural systems to buffer against undesired effects of human pressure.
Goal 3 of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations General Assembly 2015) aims to "ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages". Reducing global infectious disease risk is part of this Goal (Target 3.3), alongside strengthening prevention strategies to identify early warning signals (Target 3.d). Actions taken to achieve many Sustainable Development Goals will have an impact (either positive or negative) on the achievement of Goal 3, via environmental change mechanisms. It is thus essential to exploit the links between environmental protection in biodiversity-rich areas and the reduction of disease emergence risk. Goal 15 of the UN Agenda aims to conserve the world's terrestrial ecosystems, with direct implications for disease emergence risk mitigation, given the prominent role that habitat loss plays in driving the outbreak of zoonotic pathogens. This project aims to untangle the links between Goal 3 and Goal 15 for the dual benefit of reducing environmental risk and human health risk. The project addresses risk in a multidisciplinary and innovative way, spanning environmental science and conservation biology on the one hand and policy and social science on the other hand. An improved understanding of how risk to the environment translates into a risk for human health, and how this is modified under global change scenarios, will shed light on the potential future effects of current socio-economic strategies.
Biodiversity loss has direct negative influence on human societies, for example environmental degradation in biodiversity-rich areas cause an increase in the risk of emergence of infectious diseases, as well as a loss of cultural and recreational values for local populations. The erosion of wilderness areas, which are rich in biodiversity, reduce the ability of natural ecosystems to regulate local climates, as well as maintain the natural dynamics of pathogens transmission. This project aims at quantifying the human risks associated with biodiversity loss, to identify and preserve areas where biodiversity loss would have the largest human externalities. This will contribute to mitigating the health risk deriving from zoonotic diseases, both in developing tropical countries where EID risk is higher and in developed countries that face high socio-economic consequences when disease emergence leads to pandemics. Preventing the emergence of zoonotic diseases is the most effective strategy to prevent the catastrophic consequences of pandemics, with implications for human societies worldwide.
This project proposes an ambitious and innovative alternative to existing global sustainability plans, where biodiversity will be central to the narrative, by highlighting some of the most important links between biodiversity and human health. By shifting the paradigm of biodiversity conservation towards societal utility, this project aims at promoting a conservation strategy that will deliver the highest contribution to sustainable development. Leveraging the societal risk of biodiversity loss might be the best strategy to prevent biodiversity decline. This project aims to add an important dimension to the global biodiversity debate, making biodiversity conservation effective, achievable, and desirable to the eyes of policy makers, by reducing the perceived trade-offs with development activities.