Over the next 50 years, there will be at least 15,000 instances of viruses jumping between species, with the climate crisis helping fuel the spread of disease that will endanger animals and people.
As the planet warms, many animal species will have to move into new areas. They will bring their parasites with them, which will cause them to spread between different species. This will increase the risk of azoonotic spillover, where a viruses can transfer from animals to people, potentially triggering a large-scale outbreak of Covid-19.
Gregory Albery, an expert in disease ecology at Georgetown University and co-author of the paper, said that the face of disease will change as the world changes.
We have demonstrated a novel and potentially devastating mechanism for disease emergence that could threaten the health of animals in the future and will likely have ramifications for us as well.
Albery said that climate change is shaking ecosystems to their core and causing interactions between species that are already likely to be spreading viruses. He said that even drastic action to address global heating won't be enough to stop the risk of spillover events.
It is not preventable even in the best case climate change scenarios and we need to put measures in place to protect animal and human populations.
According to the research paper, at least 10,000 types of virus capable of infecting humans are circulating in wild animal populations. As more habitat has been destroyed for agriculture and urban expansion, more people have come into contact with animals that have been contaminated.
Climate change is making this problem worse by helping spread disease between different species. There will be at least 15,000 cross-species transmission events of one or more viruses during this time, even under a relatively low level of global heating, according to a study.
The majority of the disease will be spread by bats. There are about 3,200 strains of coronaviruses already moving among bat populations, and it is thought that the start of the Covid pandemic was caused by an infectious bat in China.
The risk of climate-driven disease is not a future one, according to the new research.
There is a lack of monitoring that will make it difficult to track the progress of certain viruses.
We aren't keeping an eye on them and that makes them a problem. Climate change is creating a lot of zoonotic risk in our backyard. We need to build health systems that are ready for that.
According to experts not involved in the research, the study highlighted the need to improve processes designed to prevent future Pandemics and to phase out the use of fossil fuels.
The center for climate, health, and the global environment at Harvard University has an interim director.
Vaccines, drugs and tests are essential but without major investments in primary prevention, we will find ourselves in a world where only the rich are able to survive infectious diseases.
Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works on pandemic prevention, said that the new research represents a critical step forward in the understanding of human interference in the landscape.
I didn't expect that we would already be in this process, and a real wake-up call for public health.
This paper shows us that the cost of climate change is hidden and that it is a very ugly future for people and wildlife.
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