Posted29 avril 2022, 22:46
Because of climate change, researchers believe that wild animals will be forced to move their habitats to regions with a higher human concentration, which will increase the risk of contamination of new viruses on humans.
Climate change has a very strong impact on inter-species viral transmission. This is described by an international research team led by scientists from Georgetown University, published in the journal Nature. And their observation is eloquent: “We are closer than ever to the next pandemic.”
Indeed, wild animals, forced to leave their disturbed habitats by global warming, will move irretrievably to places with a high human concentration. This will create a greater risk of viral transmission from animal to human. Much of this process may already be happening, despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Covid-19, SARS, Ebola, same fight
Another important finding is the impact rising temperatures will have on bats, which represent the majority of virus carriers. Indeed, they can travel long distances and their good immune system allows them to carry many viruses without getting sick.
But overall, the study believes that climate change will indeed become “the greatest risk factor in the emergence of diseases”, thus surpassing more high-profile problems like deforestation, wildlife trade and l industrial agriculture. “The Covid-19 pandemic and the previous spread of SARS, Ebola and Zika show how a virus jumping from animals to humans can have massive effects,” says Sam Scheiner, program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF ), which funded the research.
‘An inevitable problem’
According to Colin Carlson of Georgetown, who is part of the IPCC team, one of the solutions to limit the damage of these predictions is to couple disease surveillance with real-time studies of environmental change: “It is It is more about focusing on ways to respond to an inevitable problem, by ensuring better monitoring of zoonoses (note: infectious disease that has passed from animals to humans) and strengthening our health systems.