We are nothing without nature is a known fact, yet mankind destroys the environment and the creatures living within at an alarming rate – at our own peril. From elevating the threat of disease to unsetting global food chain, the loss of biodiversity crosses the globe is aggravating the very substance of our future and welfare of everyone, everything, everywhere.
The shocking effects of climate change on human health are already on display: famines generated by once-in-a- century droughts or flooding; death and suffering wrought by some of the heat waves and strongest hurricanes in modern history.
However, what is less well known is how biodiversity loss is harming our health and threatening the basic ecological cycles that keeps us alive.
One reporter called biodiversity loss a mounting under-the -radar crisis, and disturbing signs are appearing all over the world, from beaches awash in sargassum seaweed to massive fish die-offs in contaminated waterways. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, biodiversity is decreasing faster than at any other time in human history. Presently more than 1 million species are facing extinction.
There are few places on the planet where the threat of biodiversity loss is more evident than the Amazon, which is being decimated by record levels of deforestation despite being home to one-third of the planet’s species- the highest concentration of biodiversity on earth.
Since habitat destruction brings human and wildlife into closer contact, it increases our risk of exposure to “zoonotic spillover”, which happens when pathogens- bacteria or viruses that cause disease- jump from animals to humans. More than 75% of emerging infectious diseases in humans are caused by pathogens that initially circulated in animals, leading to millions of deaths each year. Some estimates indicate that 1.6 million viruses are contained within mammals and birds across the world, which some could be deadly if or when they become transmissible to humans.
Dr, Alessandra Nava, a veterinary scientist based in the Brazilian city of Manaus, has made the rainforest her laboratory. She has devoted her career to collect samples from small mammals for the Fiocruz Amazonia Biobank, a research collection she helps to supervise as a part of a growing effort to track the spread of zoonotic pathogens and perhaps finally help to predict or even prevent another pandemic.
By disrupting the delicate ecological balance which regulates our planet’s oxygen, water and nutrient cycles, we risk unraveling the total food chain by harming the many different species- large, small and microscopic alike- which works together to nourish, pollinate and eventually sustain all of the plants and animals we consume.
Nature also provides significant and often underestimated mental health benefits for individuals. Dr, Maria Neira, Director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health for the World Health Organization, witnessed this firsthand while working in refugee camps in Central America. She helped launch a project to grow traditional medicinal herbs that helped displaced families cultivate a sense of purpose, beauty and community in a desperate situation.
Dr. Neira says, we depend on nature if we want to survive: which gives food, water and trees that will protect the quality of the air we breathe and it’s important to protect, what protects you, if we don’t then we are the losers, not the planet.
