The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly demonstrated the interconnected nature of human, animal and environmental health. The wide-ranging effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have shown how zoonotic spillover events can have profound impacts on economies, social orders and global public health.
The project has a field component and looks at the direct contact between humans and wildlife, often connected to activities such as consumption of wild meat, as they often act as key drivers for disease emergence. Even if these activities happen on a local scale, on today’s interconnected planet, effects can quickly spread and have global impact. The project will feed information from human and wildlife health monitoring into the formulation of best practice guidelines and explore options to include health indicators in development planning.
This session will focus on the policy side and discuss how traditionally environmental and social impact assessments only look at the more proximate risks such as oil spills, toxic waste, pollution, but not at more complex and interconnected issues such as the links between environmental, economic and social transformation – often associated with large scale development projects – and disease.