Sahir Doshi and Nicole Gentile write:

The COVID-19 pandemic has brutally and tragically exposed the extent to which the health and well-being of every family in America depends on the health and well-being of nature—both here at home and around the world. Nature is connected to human health, from the inherent mechanisms through which ecosystems regulate the emergence of new pathogens to the health benefits of spending time outdoors. But in our destruction of earth’s natural resources, we are losing these free services and reducing our resilience to new diseases.

The current focus should remain on the immediate medical and socioeconomic needs in the United States. However, the COVID-19 outbreak has laid bare the need for a more proactive and integrated approach to fight infectious disease epidemics, which are becoming more common in many regions around the world. Specifically, alongside investments in epidemiological research and healthcare, we need to address the problem at its root: the destruction of nature.

COVID-19 is a zoonose, or an infectious disease that spreads to humans from nonhuman animals. Almost two-thirds of all emerging diseases are zoonoses, and 71 percent of those originated in wildlife. These include some of the deadliest recent pandemics, including HIV-AIDS, Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and, now, COVID-19.

It is not a coincidence that the rise in wildlife-borne diseases has occurred alongside increasing human encroachment on nature and a rapidly changing climate. Three-quarters of the earth’s land area is now heavily altered by human use, and species extinctions is occurring at almost 1,000 times the natural rate. In the U.S. alone, we lose a football field worth of open space every 30 seconds, and 1 in 5 native species is at risk of extinction. Habitat loss and overexploitation of wildlife—compounded by climate change—are driving factors in the disease boom, and they endanger human health in three ways: [Continue reading…]