Is there a link between climate change and the risk of pandemics? How the mere logic of profit once again shows its errors.

24/04/2020 sandra prandstaetter Climate Action, Good Health and Well-being, Life on Land, Partnerships for the Goals

By: Sara Lorenzini, Karolina Letniowska , Sandra Prandstätter Eleonora Ciscato, Catherina Molinelli

In the midst of the corona pandemic, many people voice that we cannot go back to normal, because normal was the problem. For many, this crisis is a wake-up call to act on the much bigger crisis that is still about to hit Europe and not only – the climate crisis. Yet, others suggest postponing the Green New Deal proposed by the European Commission and seek to go back to normal neo-liberalist markets, suspending environmental regulations, in order to boost the economy after the crisis. This capitalistic logic that prioritises profits is not only responsible for the climate crisis, which won’t be temporary but most likely also contributed to the current COVID-19 outbreak and spread. Going back to “business as usual” means being short-sighted, we demand instead that smarter regulations and policies are put into place, taking the entire complexity of ecological and social systems into consideration. Here is why and how.

Was COVID-19 just a one-time slip-up?

It was the end of 2019 in Hubei, China, when the virus COVID-19 started to slowly spread and became soon enough a threat to the world. In different places, and not so long ago, different societies faced similar perils:

in Guangdong, the transmission of SARS increased rapidly in 2002, causing the death of 774 people in 17 different countries, mostly in China;
in 2009 the so-called H1N1, well-known as Swine influenza, started its journey in Mexico and reached around 1 million people all over the world
in 2012 the dromedary seemed to play a key role in the transmission of MERS-Cov throughout the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, which recorded 85% of the cases worldwide;
in Guinea Ebola appeared in 2014, a deadly originating from bats, and was responsible for deaths all over the globe affecting the world economy severely;
in Brazil, Zika spread in 2015 through the bite of mosquitoes affecting pregnant women and their babies.

History seems to repeat itself periodically. What causes these diseases?

As a matter of fact, 70% of all viruses have a zoonotic origin and emerge where humans get into contact with mostly wild animals. The PNAS Journal recently published an opinion piece in which they create awareness about the understudied causes for emerging infectious diseases. Since data is scarce and research in this area has been broadly neglected, there is still no clear consensus among scientists, but the trend of recent research points towards a correlation between biodiversity loss and an increase in infectious diseases being transmitted from wild animals onto humans. As we will discuss in the policy section below, this knowledge gap can lead to policy designs that are either ineffective or, in the worst case, harmful for the cause they are supposed to serve. Let’s first see how environmental change could be linked to emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

Deforestation and biodiversity loss and its link to emerging infectious diseases

80% of the world’s biodiversity can be found in forests, which provide a home for millions of species, a lot of them still unknown. In these forests there are viruses, bacteria and many other organisms living in equilibrium with a variety of species. It is assumed that because there are so many species, the virus experiences greater barriers in spilling-over to humans. This theory, which gains increasing support and evidence, argues that some animals are more likely to transmit the virus than others. If those animals that are less likely to transmit the virus disappear, then the virus can spread more easily. In a rich biodiversity environment, in fact, the presence of different species creates a natural buffer zone, supporting equilibrated ecosystems and limiting the spread of viruses. A lack of such a buffer zone facilitates the spill-over of viruses on humans, especially in those areas where they live close to fragmented environments.

Let’s try to illustrate it with an example. Let’s assume in an ecological system there are mice and opossums. Mice transmit a virus very easily that could be dangerous for humans, whereas opossums don’t. Mice can live in areas with high biodiversity and in areas with low biodiversity, while opossums only live in areas with high biodiversity. In case of human-induced loss of diversity, opossums disappear and so does their ability to contain the virus. If, additionally, humans penetrate in these altered areas to settle or farm, they are exposed to high risks. The role of research is then crucial in studying the consequences of ecological habitat disruption.

Therefore, cut down or altered areas that were originally characterized by high biodiversity, such as tropical land, have now a higher risk of transmitting diseases. The higher this variety of organisms the more likely that among them will be viruses and bacteria harmful for humankind, therefore the areas still keep a high variety of organisms but they have lost the capacity to contain them.

How could diseases be prevented? With smarter policies!

As ecological systems are highly complex, it is difficult to trace the origins of particular diseases. Consequently, it is daunting understanding the causes early onwards when diseases emerge. However, given the enormous social costs in terms of lives beared, healths compromised and inequality risen, there should be a high incentive to study how these diseases emerge rather than relying on reactive approaches when it is already too late. This is especially true because many diseases lead to pandemics, despite the reactive efforts to stop them, like it happened with HIV, having already led to 32 million deaths or as it is happening right now with COVID-19.

Preventative approaches in synergy with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Several studies point towards the relationship between environmental change and emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19. The outcome of these studies should be taken seriously and followed up with further research supporting the prevention of pandemics. Di Marco et. al. suggest in their opinion piece that when forming policies to reach Sustainable Development Goals, these goals need to be considered jointly. For instance, when designing a policy to stop hunger (SDG 2), land is often eroded to harvest food or make room for live-stock. Yet, as we have seen, changing the environment (SDG 15, “life on land”) can pose greater health risks (SDG 3).

This is why Di Marco et. al. propose to integrate a risk assessment of emerging infectious diseases in a socioeconomic scenario analysis when designing policies to reach societal goals. This approach analyses the response of ecological systems as well as of socio-economic systems to human induced environmental changes and could therefore identify at an early stage possible health risks that could potentially expand to global threats.

It seems that the unsustainable levels of hunt, the loss of natural habitats, specifically of forests, as well as overproduction of livestock and breeding are elements influencing the risk of infectious contact between humankind and wild animals, which can eventually resonate in a world pandemic. According to Di Marco et. al.: “policies that promote sustainable land-use, reduced deforestation, and biodiversity protection, provide ancillary benefits by reducing the types of contact that can lead to disease emergence”.

Although the issue is known, the experts believe that there is a general lack of attention towards preventative policies even within the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, in which there are not enough approaches designed to prevent the emergence of infectious diseases. As suggested by Moreno Di Marco, Professor at the University Sapienza of Rome: “The interaction between climate change and emergence of pandemic diseases has not been addressed properly”. Instead, he affirms, it “should be a priority within the Agenda 2030 in order to prevent potentially deadly and catastrophic consequences for humankind, instead of reacting to it when it’s too late”. States all over the world generally treat pandemics as ‘emergencies’, focusing therefore on mobilizing resources after the outbreak instead of trying to elaborate cost-effective and holistic prevention measures.

Is the international community ready to react?

“Given the scope and magnitude of this sudden crisis, and the long shadow it will cast, can the world afford to pay attention to climate change and the broader sustainability agenda at this time?”. The question posed by D. Pinner, M. Rogers and H. Samandari, seems to have received contradictory answers at the moment.

The Cop26 climate summit, planned for next October in Glasgow, has been postponed to next year. In the USA the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has decided to relieve businesses from their environmental monitoring and reporting obligations if they can prove that the impossibility to comply with them comes from the COVID-19 outbreak. In Italy, the right-wing party Fratelli d’Italia asked the EU Commission to postpone the implementation of the Green New Deal until the current sanitary emergency (and economic crisis) is overcome. The deputies claimed indeed that keeping on “pursuing utopian recipes in the name of an ideological environmentalism would be insane and irresponsible”, and that “before being worried about entreprises’ environmental sustainability we should guarantee their survival and liquidity, without additional constraints and costs”.

On the other hand, on April 14th, a “green recovery alliance” was launched at the EU level, led by the initiative of the French MEP Pascal Canfin. “After the crisis, the time will come to rebuild. This moment of recovery will be an opportunity to rethink our society and develop a new model of prosperity”, the letter reads. Along with 79 MEPs, the appeal has been supported by various business leaders (including the CEOs of Ikea, Unilever, H&M and others), NGOs, think tanks and trade unions. The call is for “an economy built around Green principles” and “the establishment of Green Recovery Investment Packages acting as accelerators of the transition towards climate neutrality and healthy ecosystems”.

Good news also comes from Amsterdam, that announced the willingness to adopt the “SDG Wedding Cake” as a model to recover the economy in the aftermath of COVID-19. The model has been developed by Kate Raworth, researcher at Oxford University, and establishes that “a sustainable and inclusive economic development” (the middle ring) shall take place in between our basic social rights (the internal ring, representing the minimum social level) and the “planet boundaries” (the external ring, representing the environmental limit).

The debate seems to be therefore open: we might continue to adopt a dichotomous view with respect to the economic / environmental-social spheres, privileging the first over the latter. Following this path would mean passing deregulations and adapting laws to the needs of big corporations. As a consequence, the risk is that States, once again, affirm themselves at the side of private interests while compromising the needs of the most.

On the contrary, we might take this crisis as an opportunity to re-think the concept of Sustainable Development and the strategy to reach it. This means, first, to adopt an ecological and holistic approach in which environmental strategies are developed and implemented, allowing us to reconcile economic interests with social and environmental sustainability. Secondly, this second path requires correcting the asymmetry of power between the State and the Market on the one hand and most of the population on the other.

This second path is, in our opinion, the one to be endorsed. Crises like this show clearer than ever where the errors of our economic system are lying. People deserve regulations and policies that are responding to the complexity of modern life while being in line with socio-ecological needs.