Post Reply - Climate

As the planet heats up, animals big and small, on land and in the sea, are headed to the poles to get out of the heat. That means animals are coming into contact with other animals they normally wouldn’t, and that creates an opportunity for pathogens to get into new hosts.

Many of the root causes of climate change also increase the risk of pandemics. Deforestation, which occurs mostly for agricultural purposes, is the largest cause of habitat loss worldwide. Loss of habitat forces animals to migrate and potentially contact other animals or people and share germs. Large livestock farms can also serve as a source for spillover of infections from animals to people. Less demand for animal meat and more sustainable animal husbandry could decrease emerging infectious disease risk and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

We have many reasons to take climate action to improve our health and reducing risks for infectious disease emergence is one of them.

A series of fires in Indonesia in 2015 to clear land for agriculture caused an estimated 100,000 premature deaths in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. That’s according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), in collaboration with colleagues from Columbia University.

According to an August 20, 2016 New York Times article, the fires were deliberately set in August 2015 to clear land for palm oil plantations and other agricultural uses. By the fall, smoke from the fires blanketed large portions of Southeast Asia, closing schools and businesses, grounding planes, and forcing tens of thousands of people to seek medical treatment for respiratory illness. The researchers say exposure to fine particle pollution from burning forests, in particular carbon-rich peatlands, is responsible for premature deaths across the region.