{"id":3479,"date":"2020-04-27T18:37:26","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T18:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/?p=3479"},"modified":"2024-03-13T04:05:40","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T04:05:40","slug":"%e4%b8%ad%e6%96%87-halt-destruction-of-nature-or-suffer-even-worse-pandemics-say-world-s-top-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/%e4%b8%ad%e6%96%87-halt-destruction-of-nature-or-suffer-even-worse-pandemics-say-world-s-top-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world ‘s top scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

A poultry butcher at a wet market in Kuala Lumpur. Photograph: Vincent Thian\/AP<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be followed by even more deadly and destructive disease outbreaks unless their root cause \u2013 the rampant destruction of the natural world \u2013 is rapidly halted, the world\u2019s leading biodiversity experts have warned.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a single species responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic \u2013 us,\u201d they said. \u201cRecent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity, particularly our global financial and economic systems that prize economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Professors Josef Settele, Sandra D\u00edaz and Eduardo Brondizio led the\u00a0most comprehensive planetary health check<\/a>\u00a0ever undertaken, which was published in 2019 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). It concluded that human society was in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the Earth\u2019s natural life-support systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an\u00a0article published on Monday<\/a>, with Dr Peter Daszak, who is preparing the\u00a0next IPBES assessment<\/a>, they write: \u201cRampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development, as well as the exploitation of wild species have created a \u2018perfect storm\u2019 for the spillover of diseases.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

These activities cause pandemics by bringing more people into contact and conflict with animals, from which 70% of emerging human diseases originate, they said. Combined with urbanisation and the explosive growth of global air travel, this enabled a harmless virus in Asian bats to bring \u201cuntold human suffering and halt economies and societies around the world. This is the human hand in pandemic emergence. Yet [Covid-19] may be only the beginning.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFuture pandemics are likely to happen more frequently, spread more rapidly, have greater economic impact and kill more people if we are not extremely careful about the possible impacts of the choices we make today,\u201d they said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The scientists said the multitrillion-dollar economic recovery packages being rolled out by governments must be used to strengthen and enforce environmental protection: \u201cIt may be politically expedient to relax environmental standards and to prop up industries such as\u00a0intensive agriculture, airlines, and fossil-fuel-dependent energy sectors<\/a>, but doing so without requiring urgent and fundamental change essentially subsidises the emergence of future pandemics.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u985e\u578b: \u6587\u7ae0
\n\u4f5c\u8005: Damian Carrington
\n\u51fa\u8655: The Guardian
\n\u9023\u7d50: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/apr\/27\/halt-destruction-nature-worse-pandemics-top-scientists<\/a>
\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be followed by even more deadly and destructive disease outbreaks unless their root cause \u2013 the rampant destruction of the natural world \u2013 is rapidly halted, the world\u2019s leading biodiversity experts have warned……<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3480,"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions\/3480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drknowhk.org\/mo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}