Impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services and the Emergence of Infectious Diseases (EID): a “one health” approach on brazilian agriculture governance

Abstract

The ecosystem services are the benefits that people obtain of the ecosystems and biodiversity. They are currently “invisible” to the market and to the agricultural public policies in force in Brazil. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of these services in the containment of pandemics, and thus to include them in the decision-making processes of the Brazilian agricultural sector. The “one health” approach will allow us to evaluate the relevance of biodiversity and ecosystem services for agricultural governance and policies. Brazil has seven major biomes: Amazon, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Caatinga, Pantanal, Pampa and the coastal/marine biome. They harbour exuberant biodiversity but have been converted rapidly into agricultural and livestock production areas. In total, 500,000 km² of Brazilian ecosystems were lost between 2000 and 2018, an area the size of Spain. With the expansion of the agricultural frontier over ecosystems, important ecosystem services have been lost, and among those are health risk regulation services, in particular infectious disease regulation services. In addition to the losses in terms of Natural Capital, the degradation of ecosystems favors the emergence of infectious diseases (EID), including zoonoses with pandemic potential. Climate change, biodiversity loss and the collapse of ecosystem services, coupled with an increasingly vulnerable population are the primary drivers of EIDs. Amazon deforestation can therefore cause a “perfect storm” as it provides the link between the factors necessary for the emergence of infectious diseases that can threaten global health. It is urgent to include biodiversity and ecosystem services in the accounting of Brazilian agriculture governance in order to avoid new pandemics and losses in the Natural Capital.