Coronavirus: 'Nature is sending us a message’,
says UN environment chief
Coronavirus
outbreak
Exclusive: Destruction of wildlife and the climate
crisis is hurting humanity, with Covid-19 a ‘clear warning shot’, say experts
Damian
Carrington
Damian
Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington
Wed 25 Mar
2020 07.00 GMTLast modified on Wed 25 Mar 2020 07.02 GMT
Nature is sending us a message with the coronavirus
pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis, according to the UN’s environment
chief, Inger Andersen.
Andersen
said humanity was placing too many pressures on the natural world with damaging
consequences, and warned that failing to take care of the planet meant not
taking care of ourselves.
Leading
scientists also said the Covid-19 outbreak was a “clear warning shot”, given
that far more deadly diseases existed in wildlife, and that today’s
civilisation was “playing with fire”. They said it was almost always human
behaviour that caused diseases to spill over into humans.
To prevent
further outbreaks, the experts said, both global heating and the destruction of
the natural world for farming, mining and housing have to end, as both drive
wildlife into contact with people.
They also
urged authorities to put an end to live animal markets – which they called an
“ideal mixing bowl” for disease – and the illegal global animal trade.
Andersen,
executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said the immediate priority
was to protect people from the coronavirus and prevent its spread. “But our
long-term response must tackle habitat and biodiversity loss,” she added.
“Never
before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and
domestic animals to people,” she told the Guardian, explaining that 75% of all
emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife.
“Our continued erosion of wild spaces has
brought us uncomfortably close to animals and plants that harbour diseases that
can jump to humans.”
She also
noted other environmental impacts, such as the Australian bushfires, broken
heat records and the worst locust invasion in Kenya for 70 years. “At the end
of the day, [with] all of these events, nature is sending us a message,”
Anderson said.
“There are
too many pressures at the same time on our natural systems and something has to
give,” she added. “We are intimately interconnected with nature, whether we
like it or not. If we don’t take care of nature, we can’t take care of
ourselves. And as we hurtle towards a population of 10 billion people on this
planet, we need to go into this future armed with nature as our strongest
ally.”
Human
infectious disease outbreaks are rising and in recent years there have been
Ebola, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), Rift Valley fever,
sudden acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), West Nile virus and Zika virus all
cross from animals to humans.
“The
emergence and spread of Covid-19 was not only predictable, it was predicted [in
the sense that] there would be another viral emergence from wildlife that would
be a public health threat,” said Prof Andrew Cunningham, of the Zoological
Society of London. A 2007 study of the 2002-03 Sars outbreak concluded: “The
presence of a large reservoir of Sars-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats,
together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a
timebomb.”
Cunningham
said other diseases from wildlife had much higher fatality rates in people,
such as 50% for Ebola and 60%-75% for Nipah virus, transmitted from bats in
south Asia. “Although, you might not think it at the moment, we’ve probably got
a bit lucky with [Covid-19],” he said. “So I think we should be taking this as
a clear warning shot. It’s a throw of the dice.”
“It’s almost
always a human behaviour that causes it and there will be more in the future
unless we change,” said Cunningham. Markets butchering live wild animals from
far and wide are the most obvious example, he said. A market in China is
believed to have been the source of Covid-19.
“The animals have been transported
over large distances and are crammed together into cages. They are stressed and
immunosuppressed and excreting whatever pathogens they have in them,” he said.
“With people in large numbers in the market and in intimate contact with the
body fluids of these animals, you have an ideal mixing bowl for [disease]
emergence. If you wanted a scenario to maximise the chances of [transmission],
I couldn’t think of a much better way of doing it.”
China has
banned such markets, and Cunningham said this must be permanent. “However, this
needs to be done globally. There are wet markets throughout much of sub-Saharan
Africa and a lot of other Asian countries too.” The ease of travel in the
modern world exacerbates the dangers, he said, adding: “These days, you can be
in a central African rainforest one day and in central London the next.”
Aaron
Bernstein, at the Harvard School of Public Health in the US, said the
destruction of natural places drives wildlife to live close to people and that
climate change was also forcing animals to move: “That creates an opportunity
for pathogens to get into new hosts.”
“We’ve had Sars, Mers, Covid-19, HIV.
We need to see what nature is trying to tell us here. We need to recognise that
we’re playing with fire,” he said.
“The separation of health and
environmental policy is a dangerous delusion. Our health entirely depends on
the climate and the other organisms we share the planet with.”
The
billion-dollar illegal wildlife trade is another part of the problem, said John
Scanlon, the former secretary general of the Convention on International Trade
of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Thousands
of frozen pangolins lie in a pit before being burnt in Indonesia, after a
pangolin bust conducted by the police.
“Importing
countries should create a new legal obligation, supported by criminal sanctions,
for an importer of wildlife to prove that it was legally obtained under the
source country’s national laws,” he said. “If we can blend taking a hard line
against transnational organised wildlife criminals, while also opening up new
opportunities for local communities, then we will see biodiversity, ecosystems
and communities thrive.”
The
Covid-19 crisis may provide an opportunity for change, but Cunningham is not
convinced it will be taken: “I thought things would have changed after Sars,
which was a massive wake up call – the biggest economic impact of any emerging
disease to that date,” he said.
“Everybody was up in arms about it.
But it went away, because of our control measures. Then there was a huge sigh
of relief and it was back to business as usual. We cannot go back to
business as usual.”
OPINIÃO
CORONAVÍRUS
Coronavírus, o dia seguinte
A actual catástrofe na perspectiva Humana que representa
o surto de coronavírus traz óptimas notícias para o Planeta na perspectiva
ecológica.
António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho
16 de Março de
2020, 20:07
No passado dia 1
de Março, a NASA publicou uma comparação de imagens, verdadeiramente
impressionantes, entre os níveis de poluição de dióxido de azoto (N02) entre
2019 e 2020 no mesmo período na China central. Este período em 2020 corresponde
ao período de abrandamento da economia e da produção industrial motivados pela
quarentena do coronavírus. A diferença é abismal e provavelmente este último
período corresponde a uma das raras ocasiões nas três últimas décadas de
crescimento acelerado, onde a China se transformou na “fábrica do mundo”, em
que os seus habitantes viram o céu e se lembraram que habitam, como hóspedes, o
Planeta Terra.
Esse mesmo
Planeta que, segundo a NASA, teria que se quadruplicar, ou mesmo de se repetir
cinco vezes, para ter capacidade de absorver os níveis de consumo actuais da
sociedade americana.
A actual
catástrofe na perspectiva Humana que representa o surto de coronavírus traz
óptimas notícias para o Planeta na perspectiva ecológica. Com a paralisação da
espiral produtiva, a alteração dos níveis de consumo e a interrupção do modelo
(totalmente insustentável) do crescimento infinito e ilimitado, e também da orgia
global de consumo, o Planeta pode afrouxar um pouco a máscara que é obrigado a
utilizar devido ao vírus humano, e finalmente ter um pouco a ilusão de poder
respirar.
Vamos,
finalmente, aprender alguma coisa, parar para reflectir, durante esta pausa a que
fomos obrigados por este ‘factor externo’, microscópica mensagem emitida pelo
macro organismo onde estamos inseridos?
Na última crise,
a de 2008, não aprendemos absolutamente nada, pois a pegada de carbono não
parou de aumentar, apesar de nos restarem apenas dez anos para minimizar um
cataclismo sem retorno, de proporções bíblicas, através das alterações do
clima.
Se o nosso
‘episódio’ corona representa no tempo humano um importante e dramático
acontecimento, no tempo planetário ele é um insignificante ponto,
super-milimétrico e Uber-microscópico. Embora os efeitos da actividade humana
sejam evidentemente nocivos para o organismo planetário, a actual crise
ecológica e climática constitui um episódio na história da Terra.
O que está
ameaçada é a civilização humana e o ciclo de vida neste período planetário. O
planeta continuará, depois deste período de tosse convulsa, a ser provocado
pelo vírus humano. Cabe-nos, portanto, a nós decidir e escolher no curtíssimo
tempo que nos resta.
Uma última
ilustração da fragilidade e insustentabilidade do sistema e do modelo: no caos
e império do medo que reina no sistema das teias financeiras e económicas, os
únicos oráculos e ‘experts’ para onde os líderes mundiais se podem virar são os
virologistas.
Historiador de Arquitectura
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