Migrations driven by global warming could lead to 1,500 virus exchanges between animals and humans in just 50 years
The advance of global warming, which little by little is raising thermometers around the world, will displace hundreds of thousands of species of animals from their ecosystems and will change the map of the planet’s biodiversity. In these migrations forced by the climate crisisbeyond their ecological impact, could also dramatically increase the risk of a new health crisis emerging global. According to the most comprehensive analysis to date, published this Thursday in the magazine ‘Nature’these climate shifts could cause at least 1,500 virus exchanges between animals and humans in just 50 years. And this, in turn, could become the perfect breeding ground for a new pandemic to break out.
The diagnosis, prepared by an international team of scientists, estimates that geographic changes in species distribution will be one of the main risk factors in the emergence of new infectious diseases. It is estimated that in the next five decades, between now and 2070, if global warming reaches the two degrees of average the world could live around 300 exchanges of parasites and pathogens between animals and humans per year. And just like the coronavirus responsible for covid-19, this exchange only needs to flourish once for it to infect patient zero, lead to a first outbreak, and then unleash a new global pandemic.
The next ’emerging virus’ can sprout anywhere in the worldbut according to experts there is two regions where the risk is especially high; equatorial Africa and Southeast Asia, especially in the case of India and southern China. In these territories, the analysis, the destruction of natural ecosystems push the animals towards areas with high population densities and it becomes the ideal setting for diseases to jump between species.
There is also concern that due to rising global temperatures, mammals especially prone a cause infectious diseases go further and further in search of climatic shelter. The paradoxical case, comments the study, is that of the bats (one of the main suspects of having ‘incubated’ the coronavirus responsible for the current health crisis). According to experts, in fact, already bat migrations have been detected originally from Brazil to places as far away like Appalachia, in North America. And this in itself also increases the risk that diseases carried by these animals expand far beyond the geographical confines in which they moved until now.
urgent solutions
After launching the umpteenth alarm signal about the consequences of the climate crisis, scientists call for measures both to stop the advance of global warming as for prevent the spread of new pathogens. “This study demonstrates once again how climate change poses a direct threat to human and animal health,” he recalls. Gregory Albery, a researcher in the Department of Biology at Georgetown University and one of the lead authors of the newly published analysis. “We are closer than ever to predicting and preventing the next pandemic. Now we have to look for solutions for this problem“, adds Colin Carlson, another of the authors of this analysis.
It is not the first time, nor surely the last, that the scientific community warns about the risk that the climate crisis poses to human health. A recent analysis of ‘Lancet Countdown’ concludes, for example, the global rise in temperatures has already increased the possibility of their arising tropical disease outbreaks such as dengue, chikungunya and zika in areas like Europe. Right now, in fact, it is estimated that there are 7% more tiger mosquitoes (Aedes albopictus) and 13% more dengue mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) than 70 years ago and that these insects are expanding more and more towards the north of the planet.
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Just a few months ago, without going any further, the World Health Organization (WHO) also released a manifesto supported by 45 million doctors and health workers around the world warning that “climate change is the greatest threat to health facing humanity”. “This crisis is altering the basic pillars of our lives, such as the food, water and air we consume,” he warned. Maria Neiradirector of the Department of Public Health and the Environment of the World Health Organization (WHO), in an interview with EL PERIÓDICO.
According to the latest analysis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the roadmap to stop the climate disaster is still within the reach of mankind. To fend off a global rise in temperatures, one of the big drivers of climate migration, the world must halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.