The Hill

May 4, 2020
As spring dawns across North America and COVID-19 rages through our country, we are facing numerous novel stressors, be they economic, psychological or physical. Confined to our homes, we can’t flock to the outdoor places we usually do as the weather warms. But it’s also during this time that such natural places, and their sights and sounds, can provide the greatest solace. 

The therapeutic nature of natural sounds is well recognized: Listening to natural sounds has been shown to increase mood, boost productivity, lower blood pressure and decrease stress — all of which promote a stronger immune system. The importance of natural sound immersion is particularly heightened in periods of increased stress and uncertainty, when it can serve to decrease the negative repercussions of that stress and provide a mindfulness "reset."

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World Economic Forum Blog

May 4, 2020
A group of biodiversity experts warned that future pandemics are on the horizon if mankind does not stop its rapid destruction of nature.

Writing an article published Monday by The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the authors put the responsibility for COVID-19 squarely on our shoulders.

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Scientific American

May 1, 2020
SARS, Ebola and now SARS-CoV-2: all three of these highly infectious viruses have caused global panic since 2002—and all three of them jumped to humans from wild animals that live in dense tropical forests.

Three quarters of the emerging pathogens that infect humans leaped from animals, many of them creatures in the forest habitats that we are slashing and burning to create land for crops, including biofuel plants, and for mining and housing. The more we clear, the more we come into contact with wildlife that carries microbes well suited to kill us—and the more we concentrate those animals in smaller areas where they can swap infectious microbes, raising the chances of novel strains. Clearing land also reduces biodiversity, and the species that survive are more likely to host illnesses that can be transferred to humans. All these factors will lead to more spillover of animal pathogens into people.

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Campaign for Nature

April 29, 2020
The Campaign for Nature welcomes the Chancellor's clear statement at the 11th Petersberg Climate Dialogue, in which she points out the close link between the biodiversity crisis and pandemics such as Covid-19.  According to scientists, 60 percent of all infectious diseases have been transmitted from animals to humans in recent decades. This is "particularly due to the increased use of previously undisturbed habitats and the resulting proximity to wild animals.” Merkel warns that progress must be made in the international protection of biodiversity and that a new framework for the protection of biodiversity is therefore necessary by next year's 15th UN Conference on the Implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

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Eco Watch

April 27, 2020
A group of biodiversity experts warned that future pandemics are on the horizon if mankind does not stop its rapid destruction of nature.

Writing an article published Monday by The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the authors put the responsibility for COVID-19 squarely on our shoulders.

"There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic – us. As with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity – particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones," the authors wrote on IPBES.

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The Hill

April 6, 2020
The United Nations's acting head of biodiversity is calling for a global prohibition of so-called wet markets where live and dead wild animals are kept in cages and sold for human consumption. 

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the acting executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, told The Guardian in an interview published Monday that “the message we are getting is if we don’t take care of nature, it will take care of us." 

The comments came as officials around the world ramp up their calls for countries such as China to crack down on wildlife markets that are believed to play a leading role in the spread of infectious diseases.

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African Arguments

April 6, 2020
The rapid rise of disease caused by a new coronavirus seems to have caught much of the world by surprise. It shouldn’t have. An upsurge in the emergence of new infectious diseases started at least 30 years before this virus appeared. Some of these diseases have been transmitted from wild animals to humans, and the spread of COVID-19 appears to have originated in a market selling dead and living wildlife, including some endangered species. Research also shows that many of the most serious outbreaks – including Ebola, and the Zika and Nipah viruses – have been linked to biodiversity loss, and to deforestation in particular.

Both of us governed nations in West Africa through the Ebola crisis of 2014-2016. We served at the helm of the governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia, two countries hit hardest by that crisis which sickened more than 28,600 people and killed more than 11,300. The epidemic also cost our region an estimated $53 billion. Our health systems and economies are still recovering.

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Mongabay

April 1, 2020

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) pandemic, believed to have been triggered by the transmission of the virus from animals to humans, has brought into sharp focus zoonotic diseases that are spread by animals forced to move out of their natural habitats that are increasingly being destroyed, say experts.

Destruction of forests for growing crops, urban expansion and building road networks and a parallel intensification of wildlife trade has resulted in ecological conditions and movement of wild animals, which are reservoirs of some viruses or bacteria, towards human settlements. This, in turn, results in the emergence of new pathogens, they say.

The COVID-19 pandemic “is likely a global effect of natural habitat destruction combined with the effects of globalisation,” says Maria Cristina Rulli, professor at the department of civil and environmental engineering at Politecnico di Milano, who has worked extensively on the links between Ebola virus disease outbreaks and forest destruction in Africa.

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New Strait Times - OpEd

March 25, 2020
As the global Covid-19 crisis dramatically underlines, the fate and wellbeing of people relies on the health of the planet. Planetary health is a term referring to human health “and the state of the natural systems on which it depends”.

The novel coronavirus looks increasingly like an expression of our failure to understand this link, as demonstrated by our disruption of ecosystems. It was in 1980 that non-governmental organisation (NGO) Friends of the Earth first articulated the need to enlarge the World Health Organisation’s definition of health, asserting that “personal health involves planetary health”. 

The next decade, the late Norwegian physician Per Fugelli warned: “The patient Earth is sick. Global environmental disruptions can have serious consequences on human health. It’s time for doctors to give a world diagnosis and advice on treatment.”

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The Independent

March 20, 2020
The novel coronavirus will not be the last pandemic to wreak havoc on humanity if we continue to ignore links between infectious diseases and destruction of the natural world, environmental experts have warned.

Dr Enric Sala, marine ecologist and part of National Geographic’s Campaign For Nature, told The Independent: “I’m absolutely sure that there are going to be more diseases like this in future if we continue with our practices of destroying the natural world, deforestation and capturing wild animals as pets or for food and medicine.”

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ZME Science

March 19, 2020
Farmlands can act as havens for wildlife species in a world where climate change is eroding their habitats, a new study explains. However, for that to happen, a shift needs to be made towards mixed cultures. Such a change would also make the farms themselves more resilient against climate changes, which would also benefit us and help solidify the global food supply against environmental shocks.

Although the study focused on bird species in Costa Rica, the team explains that birds can serve as a “natural guideline” for the health of other animal families throughout the world, as well.

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The Guardian

March 18, 2020
As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics.

Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150 or so people who live in the village, which sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe Forest in northern Gabon, are used to occasional bouts of diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and sleeping sickness. Mostly they shrug them off.

But in January 1996, Ebola, a deadly virus then barely known to humans, unexpectedly spilled out of the forest in a wave of small epidemics. The disease killed 21 of 37 villagers who were reported to have been infected, including a number who had carried, skinned, chopped or eaten a chimpanzee from the nearby forest.

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The Narwhal - OpEd

March 17, 2020
There are moments in life that are etched into our collective consciousness forever. When the planes struck the World Trade Center. When Princess Diana was killed in a car crash. When the world ground to a halt to help slow the spread of COVID-19. 

It’s during moments like these that we often shift how we think about the world — and about our place in it. 

It’s easy to feel invincible in a modern society in which we live longer than ever before, never have to see where our food comes from and can point a phone at the sky and have it tell us what constellation we’re looking at. 

And yet, despite all of the technological advancements of the last century, we are still rendered powerless to nature — to hurricanes, floods, fires, earthquakes and, yes, viruses. 

The story of COVID-19 is, at its core, a story of humanity’s ever-encroaching relationship with all other living things on this planet. 

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ensia

March 17, 2020
As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the novel coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics.

Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150 or so people who live in the village, which sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe forest in northern Gabon, are used to occasional bouts of diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and sleeping sickness. Mostly they shrug them off.

But in January 1996, Ebola, a deadly virus then barely known to humans, unexpectedly spilled out of the forest in a wave of small epidemics. The disease killed 21 of 37 villagers who were reported to have been infected, including a number who had carried, skinned, chopped or eaten a chimpanzee from the nearby forest.

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Forbes

March 16, 2020
[…] At the same time, the race is now on to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, ahead of any second wave of infections later this year.

[…]

Last week among the COVID-19 headlines, David Attenborough made a plea calling for Deep Ocean Seabed Mining to be banned.  One of the reasons he cited was the importance of deep water corals and microscopic microbes at the bottom of the ocean.

It turns out, these are extremely valuable for modern medicine, including addressing coronaviruses.

A protein from an ocean seabed algae found among coral reefs was revealed to show activity against another coronavirus known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS. 

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