As the planet warms, many species of animals will be forced to move to new areas to find suitable conditions. They will carry with them their parasites and pathogens, causing them to spread among species that have not interacted before. This will increase the risk of what is called “zoonotic diffusion”, where viruses are transmitted from animals to humans, potentially triggering another Covid-19-sized pandemic. “As the world changes, the face of the disease will change as well,” said Gregory Albury, a disease ecologist at Georgetown University and co-author of the paper, published in Nature. “This project provides more conclusive evidence that the coming decades will not only be hotter, but also sicker. “We have demonstrated a new and potentially catastrophic mechanism for the emergence of diseases that could threaten animal health in the future and will likely have consequences for us as well.” Alberi said climate change is “shaking ecosystems to the core” and causing interactions between species that are already likely to transmit viruses. He said even drastic action to tackle global warming now would not be enough to stop the risk of events spreading. “This is happening, climate change scenarios cannot be avoided even at best, and we must take steps to build health infrastructure to protect animal and human populations,” he said. The research paper states that at least 10,000 types of viruses that can infect humans are circulating “silently” in wildlife populations. Until relatively recently, such cross-infections were uncommon, but as more habitats were destroyed for agriculture and urban sprawl, more people came in contact with infected animals. Climate change is exacerbating this problem by helping to spread disease among species that have not been encountered before. The study predicted the displacement of 3,139 mammal species due to climate change and land use change by 2070 and found that even under a relatively low level of global warming there would be at least 15,000 transmission events between species of one or more viruses during of this period. year. Bats are responsible for most of the spread of this disease due to their ability to travel long distances. An infected bat in Wuhan, China, is a suspected cause of the onset of the Covid pandemic, and previous research has estimated that there are about 3,200 strains of coronavirus already circulating among bat populations. The risk of disease caused by the climate is not future, warns new research. “Surprisingly, we find that this ecological transition may already be underway and keeping temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius within a century will not reduce future virus sharing,” the paper said. Much of the disease risk is set to focus on high-altitude areas in Africa and Asia, although a lack of monitoring will make it difficult to monitor the progress of some viruses. “There is this monumental and mostly unnoticed change that is happening in ecosystems,” said Colin Carlson, another co-author of the study. “We do not monitor them and the pandemic risk makes it a problem for everyone. Climate change is creating countless hotspots for life-threatening hazards right in our backyard. “We have to build health systems that are ready for that.” Experts who did not take part in the study said the study stressed the urgent need to improve procedures designed to prevent future pandemics, as well as to phase out fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis. “The findings underscore the need to prevent the spread of pathogens,” said Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. “Vaccines, drugs and tests are necessary, but without much investment in primary pandemic prevention, namely habitat conservation, strict regulation of wildlife trade and improved animal biosafety, for example, we will find ourselves in a world where only the rich will ever be able to withstand more likely epidemics of infectious diseases. “ Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization working to prevent pandemics, said that while human intervention in landscapes has been perceived as a disease risk for some time, the new research represents a “critical step forward”. »Understanding how climate change will fuel the spread of viruses. “What is even more worrying is that we may already be in this process – something I did not expect and a real public health awakening,” he said. “In fact, if you think about the potential impact of climate change, if pandemics are one of them, we’re talking about trillions of dollars of potential impact. “This hidden cost of climate change is finally being illuminated and the vision this document shows us is a very bad future for wildlife and humans.”
