Gaurab Basu and Samir Chaudhuri write:

There are many ways in which the impacts of COVID-19 will make previously existing climate-related health threats in India worse.

For instance, COVID-19 compounds the grave threat climate change poses to global food security. In India, 38 percent of children already show signs of chronic malnutrition. The World Food Programme has just reported that the pandemic will nearly double the number of people facing food insecurity worldwide, from 135 million to 265 million.

Likewise, initial findings from a recent study in the United States suggest that exposure to air pollution can increase mortality rates among those infected with coronavirus. And India is home to twenty-one of the thirty most polluted cities in the world. It appears that the polluting effects of burning fossil fuels could increase the number of people who die from COVID-19. As physicians with backgrounds in human rights, we have dedicated our work to fighting the structures that perpetuate injustice. Along the way, we’ve experienced a profound awakening: we cannot heal people without healing our planet.

The intersections of ecological health, pandemics, climate change, and human health force us to think big—on a planetary scale. Our unprecedented threats to health are interconnected, but so are the solutions. COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease, believed to have originated in bats before spilling over into the human population. To lessen the risk of the next pandemic we must end wildlife trade, deforestation, rampant agricultural growth and encroachment into natural habitats.

Many of these interventions will also slow global warming. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that we must zero out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Doing so will mitigate the risk of severe natural disasters like cyclones, wildfires, flood, and drought. [Continue reading…]