HUMANS VS NATURE

Diseases passed from animals to humans are on the rise, as the world continues to see unprecedented destruction of wild habitats by human activity. Scientists suggest that degraded habitats may encourage more rapid evolutionary processes and diversification of diseases, as pathogens spread easily to livestock and humans.

The World Health Organization reports that an animal is the likely source of the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19), which has infected tens of thousands of people worldwide and placed a strain on the global economy.

According to the World Health Organization, bats are the most probable carrier of the COVID-19 but added that it is possible that the virus was transmitted to humans from another intermediate host, either a domestic or a wild animal. Meaning they are transmitted between animals and people. Previous investigations found that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome was transmitted from civet cats to humans, while the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome passed from dromedary camels to humans.

“Therefore, as a general rule, the consumption of raw or undercooked animal products should be avoided,” said the World Health Organization in a statement. “Raw meat, raw milk or raw animal organs should be handled with care to avoid cross-contamination with uncooked foods.”

The statement came a few days before China’s legislature took action to curb the trade of wildlife and consumption of all wild animals. The ban was imposed in late January as cases of COVID-19 surged in Wuhan, where the now global pandemic was suspected to have originated in the wildlife trade or from animals trafficked into the country from abroad.

The ban was imposed in late January as cases of COVID-19 surged in Wuhan, where the now global pandemic was suspected to have originated in the wildlife trade or from animals trafficked into the country from abroad.

In the first month of the ban, e-commerce platforms aided in the removal, deletion or blocking of information relating to 140,000 wildlife products from bush meat to animal parts used in traditional Chinese medicine, and closed down about 17,000 accounts associated with the trade, an official from China’s State Council said in late February.

The country’s Ministry of Transport has also now ordered express delivery companies to be the first line of defence in stopping transport of live animals and other wildlife products, requiring them to take extra care to inspect packages before they are shipped.

IFAW, along with Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and wildlife monitoring group TRAFFIC, joined companies including Alibaba and Tencent in 2017 to form the Coalition for Wildlife Trafficking Online which aims to reduce online wildlife trafficking by 80 percent by the end of 2020.

At the same time, however, conservation groups are calling on China to fully overhaul the way it governs the country’s lucrative business in order to give firms more clarity over what to target when they discover any potentially illegal activity.

Key will be changing China’s licensing system, which until the recent ban had allowed 54 species of wildlife and the meat and animals parts to be legally raised, sold and traded.

Those legal licences allow some leeway for loopholes that are often at odds with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which China is a signatory.

Reforms are necessary to help online platforms know exactly what is legal or prohibited.

Humans and nature are part of one connected system, and nature provides the food, medicine, water, clean air and many other benefits that have allowed people to thrive.

Yet like all systems, we need to understand how it works so that we don’t push things too far and face increasingly negative consequences.

UNEP’s Frontiers 2016 Report on Emerging Issues of Environment Concern shows zoonoses threaten economic development, animal and human well-being, and ecosystem integrity. In the past few years, several emerging zoonotic diseases made world headlines as they caused, or threatened to cause, major pandemics. These include Ebola, bird flu, Rift Valley fever, West Nile virus and Zika virus disease.

According to the report, in the last two decades, emerging diseases have had direct costs of more than US$100 billion, with that figure jumping to several trillion dollars if the outbreaks had become human pandemics.

Mother nature is a force to be reckoned with the wildlife trade being humans undoing. Now we are forced to seat in our homes as nature hits back on us and gives itself some breathing space. Italy being an example.

From crystal clear waters in the canals of Venice to dramatic falls in pollution levels in major cities, the coronavirus pandemic has had a number of positive effects on the environment as millions across the world are placed under lockdown.

The crowds of tourists who normally swarm the Venice canals are gone and the number of motorboats vastly reduced.

As a consequence, the normally polluted waters of the canals are clearer than at any time many locals can remember.

The canal is definitely clearer, you just have to look at the canal when water is very calm. There are no boats, there is no traffic. The city is cleaner. (Watch the video below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv0DLTVfwIc

This is just one of the possibly beneficial effects on the environment of the coronavirus pandemic.

In cities across the world, the streets have emptied of people and vehicles, factories have shut down and flights have been grounded.

In China, satellite images from NASA and the European Space Agency have shown a significant decrease in nitrogen dioxide pollution in the early months of this year after much of the country went into lockdown.

A similar effect has been seen in northern Italy. While in New York, scientists at Columbia University reported a 5-10 percent drop in CO2 emissions this week as traffic levels fell 35 percent.

From the point of view of the environmental community, it is important to address the multiple and often interacting threats to ecosystems and wildlife to prevent zoonoses from emerging, including habitat loss and fragmentation, illegal trade, pollution, invasive species and, increasingly, climate change.

Nature has decided to show us who is boss and it is indeed a force to be reckoned with. Everything has a price and human race is paying it.