CRICOS #00212K1Dian Fossey (1932-1985) and young mountain gorilla

Prof Colin D Butler

Health and biodiversity

ASEAN Conference on Biodiversity for Sustainable Development 2016

February 15, 2016 Bangkok Thailand

CRICOS #00212K

Biodiversity:

good for health

(intuitive if you are

biophilic?)

but .. complex

2

Key message 1http://www.wilderdom.com/evolution/BiophiliaHypothesis.html

CRICOS #00212K

Biodiversity“variability among living organisms .. including ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.”

Handbook of the Convention on Biological Diversity Including its Cartagana Protocol on Biosafety. 3rd ed

The software of living systems?

redundancy (overlap)dynamic evolutionary capacity (self-healing)

but .. not infinite3

CRICOS #00212K

1. Charismatic and keystone (elephant)

2. Keystone and less charismatic (bees, seastar)

3. Underpinning (supporting) (soil bacteria, earthworms, gut bacteria, microbiome)

Redundancy at each level but probably greatest at the third

All three plausibly subject to threshold events

Charismatic & keystone ecosystems

Rainforest / corals / mangroves4

CRICOS #00212K

Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment

5

CRICOS #00212K

individual species, and ecosystems they make up, help provide:

food, fuel, unique medicinal compounds

air, water and soil purification services

natural regulation of infectious disease

to name a few (services), (biodiversity) is critical to our health and survival.

“biodiversity matters profoundly to human health in almost every conceivable way”

- sometimes

http://www.chgeharvard.org/category/biodiversity-and-human-health 6

Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment

- BUT

CRICOS #00212K

- BUTWhy?

Because .. biodiversity declining .. human population numbers, and average life expectancy increasing

Key message 27

(biodiversity) is critical to our health and survival

CRICOS #00212K

http://tiki.oneworld.org/sustain/home.html8

CRICOS #00212K9

CRICOS #00212K10

CRICOS #00212K11

CRICOS #00212K

World Population: 0-2011

12

12

http://tiki.oneworld.org/sustain/home.html

CRICOS #00212K

CRICOS #00212K14

CRICOS #00212K

“The advancement of mammoth hunting probably allowed people to survive and spread widely across northernmost Arctic Siberia”

The advancement of mammoth hunting probably allowed people to survive and spread widely across northernmost Arctic Siberia. Pitulko et al. 2016. Science, 351, 260-3.

15

CRICOS #00212K

Aristotle (died 322 BCE): “lions more numerous in Libya, and in that district of Europe that lies between the Achelous and the Nessus; the leopard is more abundant in Asia Minor, and is not found in Europe at all.”

16

CRICOS #00212K

Lion of Al-Lat (1900 years old) Palmyra (Syria)destroyed 2015 by ISIS

17

CRICOS #00212K

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/05/09/genocide-other-means-us-army-slaughtered-buffalo-plains-indian-wars-30798

Crow Chief Plenty Coups (1848-1932): “[When] the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground.…There

was little singing anywhere.”

18

CRICOS #00212K

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/american-bison-extinction-1800s

19

CRICOS #00212K

Long term human health outcome:

Mourning, grief, starvation, forced displacement (for some)

Prosperity, satisfaction, triumph and (probably) gloating (for some)

Remorse, sorrow, regret (for a few) .. Including President Theodore Roosevelt who helps save the bison

20

Similarly for the mammoth and European lion

CRICOS #00212K

Old magazine illustration of hunters shooting Passenger Pigeons. Note the density of the flight. (From copy in Schorger, 1955.)

https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Passenger_Pigeon.html21

CRICOS #00212K

“Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons; trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.”—Aldo Leopold, “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” 1947

22

CRICOS #00212K

Long term human health outcome by changing the forest “milieu” with more Lyme disease?

Protein source (eg via pigs) – less competition eg for cherrys

Blockstein (1998): less pigeons, more acorns, more deer, mice & ticks)

LoGiudice et al (2003): dilution hypothesis

“eco-reprogramming”?

human behaviour: “tree-changers” – seeking more contact with nature

23

CRICOS #00212K24

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) milieu and microbe

CRICOS #00212K25

Low pathogenicity avian influenza

Highly pathogenic avian influenza

CRICOS #00212K

Forest milieu: bats, pigs, people, viruses

26

CRICOS #00212K

Pteropus, Tioman Islands, Malaysia

Nipah outbreak Malaysia, Singapore (1999) and its putative

link to the 1997-98 El Niño

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2013/04/30/climatic-ori-nipah-virus/#.Vr7ewubGC9g 27

CRICOS #00212K

http://greenglobaltravel.com/2015/11/08/fires-in-indonesia-palm-oil-killing-orangutans/

Did smoke haze and habitat loss in SE Asia not only dislocate bats but add to Nipah viral “spillover” (in 1998)?

Smoke and smog, 1997Earth Probe Total Ozone Mapping

Spectrometer (TOMS) satellite

28

CRICOS #00212K29

CRICOS #00212KCRICOS #00212K30

NiV

intensive pig farming

human, not via pigsbat (human) survey

EbrV

Flying fox associated viruses, sometimes with pigs and humans in South East and South Asia

Sources: Sendow et al, Breed et al, Drexler et al

human mortality

NiV

TiV

CRICOS #00212K

EBOLA “recipe” (milieu) West Africa – 3 stages

Social, economic, demographic as well as ecological factors for all three stages

1: increased viral load in the reservoir?

2: increased human – virus contact

3. viral “takeoff” in human population

31

CRICOS #00212K

EbV

EbV

TiV

NiV

TiV

NiV

32

Rousettusaegyptiacus:distribution in Africa

Marburg outbreaks

CRICOS #00212K

Hansen et al, 2013

33

CRICOS #00212K

Eric Gweah, 25, grieves as he watches a Red Cross burial team remove the body of his father, Ofori Gweah, 62, a suspected

Ebola victim (photograph Daniel Berehulak) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141005-ebola-quammen-west-africa-dallas-gates-foundation/ 34

CRICOS #00212K

Palm oil plantations in South America: good habitat for kissing bugs (vector for Chagas Disease)

35

CRICOS #00212K

What’s wrong with this picture?

New York, December, 201536

CRICOS #00212K

Key message 3

There are thresholds of biodiversity loss – as part a wider syndrome of natural capital loss – which humanity should not risk

37

CRICOS #00212K

solutions

38

CRICOS #00212K

CRICOS #00212K40

CRICOS #00212K

Some ivory stockpiles have been destroyed in an attempt to halt the trade 41

CRICOS #00212K

Traditional medicine from rhinos: not only cruel – is there any evidence?

42

CRICOS #00212K

Strengthen coalitions43

CRICOS #00212K

Global Biodiversity Outlook 3 (2010)

“Other global issues intersect with global sustainable development agenda .. include .. human rights, population and development, women, and social development. Programmes of action and commitments emerging from these highly relevant for sustainable development, & objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity p 246

44

CRICOS #00212K

Planetary BoundariesA safe operating space

for humanity

Steffen et al, 2015

45

CRICOS #00212KNature, 2003

Health in