The use of land for agriculture, closer to the humans, the wild animals whose habitat is disturbed, makes it more likely that the occurrence of pandemics.
This is a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. It concludes that the use of land for intensive agriculture, which brings humans the wild animals whose habitat is disturbed, makes it more likely that the occurrence of pandemics such as that of the Covid-19. According to this study, the diseases which are carriers of the wild animals were more likely to be transmitted to humans because of the evolution of the use of the land.
The UN estimates that three-quarters of the world’s land has been extensively degraded by human activities since the beginning of the industrial era. One third of the land and three-quarters of the fresh water are in particular used for agriculture.
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This use of the land for agriculture is increasing every year, often at the expense of ecosystems such as forests, which are home to wild animals themselves hosts of many pathogens potentially transmissible to humans.
The team from University College London (UCL) has reviewed the 6800 ecosystems on the planet and discovered that the animals that are known as carriers of pathogens (bats, rodents, birds) are more numerous in landscapes intensely modified by humans.
The need to change the way humanity operates the land
The results prove, according to them, the need to change the way humanity exploits the land, to reduce the risk of future pandemics. “The way humans are altering landscapes around the world, transforming forests into agricultural land, has impacts that are constant on the many species of wildlife, resulting in the decline of some and the persistence or the increase of others”, commented Rory Gibb, a researcher at the UCL. “Our results show that animals which persist in environments dominated by Man are those that are most likely to be carriers of infectious diseases that can make people sick,” he adds.
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The Covid-19, which has infected more than 18 million people in the world and more than 700 000 people, is probably passed from one animal to the Man before being transmitted from human to human. The coronavirus is one of the many deadly virus has made the leap between the animal and the Human, and given that the reservoirs that represents the wildlife are increasingly under pressure, the risk of leakage increases.
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“While the farmland and the cities will continue to expand, we should strengthen our disease surveillance and health regulations in areas where territories are severely disrupted,” said Kate Jones, who has also participated in the study. It argues that governments consider agriculture and the agri-food value chains as directly related to human health.
