Pandemics payment for mocking nature

The International Day for Biodiversity, being marked today, is aimed at increasing understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues.

This is the day in 1992 when the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted by the United Nations at a conference in Nairobi.

The day has been celebrated since 2001. This year’s theme is “Our solutions are in nature”, signifying the strong relationships humans have with the world.

Biodiversity — the different varieties of plants, animals and other organisms on our planet — has throughout human existence proven to provide key essential ecosystem goods and services.

They include regulation of climate and provision of food, medicine and other basic needs. But this has been interrupted mainly by anthropogenic (human) activity, which ends up affecting the health of ecosystems.

Harmful land use, for instance, results in deforestation, especially of tropical forests that are rich in biodiversity; agricultural expansion - leading to encroachment on natural habitats, wetland destruction, rapid urbanisation, and mining.

Today’s events, however, will not be held in the usual way but through online platforms due to the Covid-19 disruption.

Interestingly, there is a strong link between pandemics and the biodiversity crisis. The new coronavirus is linked to the eating of bats in China.

REDUCED HUMAN PRESSURE

Covid-19 is among the deadliest zoonotic diseases — like Ebola, believed to be a result of deforestation in West Africa that led to human-primate contact, avian flu and Nipah virus, which originated from poultry farming.

Covid-19 may be a result of loss of bat habitat, and hence human contact with the wild animal.

Biodiversity conservation will increase genetic diversity, boosting resistance to infection strains; hence, it will become less easy to transmit the viruses.

The lifestyle changes occasioned by government measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus have had an impact on biodiversity.

Restrictions on human movement have globally reduced visits to game parks, nature reserves and other areas with biodiversity.

This could be positive because of the reduced human pressure, but it has also undermined cash flow as a result of reduced tourist entry fees.

Shipping has also declined, which will eventually save most of the marine organisms because there is less pollution as a result of decreased oil spillage.

With education hugely interrupted globally, most universities have launched embarrassingly stuttering online teaching.

CONSERVATION

Inasmuch as this is the approach to embrace, it may affect teaching subjects like conservation biology and natural resource management that increase conservation knowledge and awareness.

Industries and factories have reduced or stopped operations, which has cut funding to conservation organisations. The focus of governments on the pandemic means conservation will not be a key priority in the development agenda.

Key meetings to address the environmental crisis, biodiversity loss and climate change have had to be postponed or moved to digital platforms. That means key decisions will be delayed.

A post-Covid-19 plan needs to be developed that will see biodiversity conserved for this and future generations.

Dr Agevi is a lecturer at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology; [email protected].