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The Color of Climate
Researchers Say the Next Pandemic Is Likely to Come From the Global South
Deforestation at the hands of richer, whiter nations is to blame
This is The Color of Climate, a weekly column from Future Human exploring how climate change and other environmental issues uniquely impact the future of communities of color.
The Upper Guinean Forest was once a lush tropical ecosystem that spanned 103 million acres along the southern border of six West African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo. Over the past 40 years, more than 80% of the forest’s original canopy has been chopped down to make space for agriculture and a rapidly growing population.
Deforestation makes pandemics more likely, say researchers. The types of animals that survive such habitat loss — like bats or rats — are likely vectors for zoonotic diseases like Covid-19 or Ebola. (Bats were considered the most likely vector for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, leading to calls to shut down wet markets in Asian countries.) In countries where there is a lot of deforestation due to the expansion of agriculture and resource extraction, people are forced to interface with livestock and wildlife because animals have fewer places to live.
