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The Amazon jungle. Image: AFP / Evaristo Sa through AFP Relaxnews
The next pandemic could come from the Amazon rainforest, warns Brazilian ecologist David Lapola, who says the human invasion into animal habitats, a likely culprit in the coronavirus outbreak, is skyrocketing there due to rampant deforestation.
Researchers say urbanization of once wild areas contributes to the emergence of zoonotic diseases, those that pass from animals to humans.
That includes the new coronavirus, which scientists believe originated from bats before passing to humans in Hubei province, which is rapidly urbanizing in China, likely through a third species.
Lapola, 38, who studies how human activity will reform future ecosystems of tropical forests, says the same processes are at play in the Amazon.
“The Amazon is a great reservoir of viruses,” he told AFP in an interview. “We better not try our luck.”
The world’s largest rain forest is disappearing at an alarming rate.
Last year, in the first year in office of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased 85 percent to more than 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 square miles), an area nearly the size of Lebanon. .
The trend continues this year. From January to April, 1,202 square kilometers were eliminated, setting a new record for the first four months of the year, according to data based on satellite images from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) of Brazil.
That’s bad news, not just for the planet but for human health, said Lapola, who has a doctorate in earth system modeling from the Max Planck Institutes in Germany and works at the University of Campinas in Brazil.
“When you create an ecological imbalance … it’s when a virus can jump” from animals to humans, he said.
HIV, Ebola, Dengue
Similar patterns can be seen with HIV, Ebola and dengue fever: “all viruses that arose or spread on a large scale due to ecological imbalances,” he said.
So far, most of these outbreaks have been concentrated in South Asia and Africa, often linked to certain species of bats.
But the Amazon’s immense biodiversity could make the region “the largest group of coronaviruses in the world,” he said, referring to coronaviruses in general, not the one behind the current pandemic.
“That is one more reason not to use Amazon irrationally, as we are doing now,” he said.
And added that one more reason to be alarmed by the increase in deforestation by illegal farmers, miners and loggers.
Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic who wants to open protected indigenous lands to mining and agriculture, deployed the army to the Amazon this week to fight deforestation, in a rare protective move.
But Lapola said he would prefer to see the government strengthen the existing environmental agency, IBAMA, which has faced budget and personnel cuts under Bolsonaro.
“I hope that under the next administration we will pay more attention to protecting what may be the greatest biological treasure on the planet,” said Lapola.
“We need to reinvent the relationship between our society and the jungle.”
Otherwise, the world faces more outbreaks: “a very complex process that is difficult to predict,” he said. “We better play it safe.” IB
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