{"id":39096,"date":"2020-03-16T12:20:04","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T11:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/?p=39096"},"modified":"2020-03-16T12:24:18","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T11:24:18","slug":"the-corona-connection-forest-loss-drives-viruses-as-well-as-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/news\/2020\/03\/the-corona-connection-forest-loss-drives-viruses-as-well-as-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"The Corona Connection: Forest loss drives viruses as well as climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The
Mina Setra, Dinaman Tux\u00e1 & Levi Sucre. Photos by Joel Redman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The same forest destruction that accelerates climate change can also encourage the emergence of diseases such as the coronavirus, Indigenous Peoples\u2019 leaders said today in New York, as they criticized Cargill and other multinational companies for replacing forests with soy, palm and cattle plantations.

\u201cThe coronavirus is now telling the world what we have been saying for thousands of years\u2014that if we do not help protect biodiversity and nature, then we will face this and worse future threats,\u201d said Levi Sucre Romero, a BriBri indigenous person from Costa Rica who is the Coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests.

The loss of habitat has brought wild animals into closer contact with humans and domesticated animals, research has found<\/a>, enabling diseases such as the coronavirus to jump the animal-human barrier and spread through human-to-human contact.  

“It is likely that an animal [is responsible for a virus that] has infected tens of thousands of people worldwide with coronavirus and placed a strain on the global economy,\u201d said Mina Setra, a Dayak Pompakng indigenous person from Indonesia who is the deputy secretary-general of the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), which represents 17 million Indigenous Peoples across Indonesia.  \u201cIf only the world [had] worked to strengthen the rights of Indigenous Peoples–who have learned to live in nature with biodiversity and protect animal and plant species–we would see fewer epidemics such as the one that we are currently facing.”

Brazil in particular has experienced a growing assault on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, at some of the highest levels of government, according to Dinamam Tux\u00e1, the coordinator and legal advisor to the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, where  \u201cOur people are being criminalized and murdered.\u201d

\u201cOne of the main companies that has been financing genocide and destruction of indigenous lands<\/a> is Cargill,\u201d Tux\u00e1 said. “What we are asking<\/a> from the multinationals is that they not buy commodities that cause deforestation and conflict and that are produced on indigenous lands.  We are also demanding that bilateral trade agreements \u2026 demand respect for Indigenous rights and ensure there are no products linked to deforestation coming into their countries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent peer-reviewed science<\/a> has concluded that protecting the land and human rights<\/a> of Indigenous Peoples who occupy much of the earth\u2019s forested areas is the best way to keep forests standing, which in turn reduces global warming and biodiversity loss. 

\u201cCommunities living in and around forest areas can play a vital role in successful conservation and restoration but are too often excluded from decision-making about forest policy in part because of unclear and contested land tenure,\u201d wrote some of the world\u2019s top forestry experts in a recent blog<\/a>. \u201cThe absence of secure legal rights leaves communities and their forests vulnerable.\u201d

\u201cFor us, climate change is not abstract,\u201d said Sucre Romero.  \u201cJust in my small community\u2026we are [now] struggling to produce certain foods because of the changing climate. All of the Caribbean coast of Central America is confronting rising sea levels, and that is having an impact on the economy.\u201d

In 2019, the UN\u2019s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called protection of land and human rights for Indigenous Peoples \u201cvital\u201d to tackling the climate crisis.  Indigenous lands experience a rate of tree cover loss less than half of what other lands experience, according to the World Resources Institute\u2019s Global Forest Watch<\/a> monitoring program; where indigenous rights are recognized, the difference is even greater<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indigenous territories are increasingly under siege. A recent study<\/a> in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences<\/em> of the situation in the Amazon concluded that, \u201cThe trend toward weakening of environmental protections, indigenous land rights, and the rule of law\u2026poses an existential threat to [ndigenous Peoples, local communities] and their territories. Reversing this trend is critical for the future of climate-buffering Amazon forests and the success of the Paris Agreement.\u201d

Protecting indigenous rights and forests can also help the world find medicines to treat the coronavirus and potential future pandemics, the indigenous leaders said.  But too often, global companies enter indigenous lands and take their products and traditional knowledge without compensation.

\u201cWe know that 25 percent<\/a> of the medicines [the world] uses come out of the forests and that by losing the forests we put in danger future solutions,\u201d said Sucre Romero.

\u201cThe cure for the next pandemic might be in our lands, and what\u2019s important is that our traditional knowledge is adequately recognized,\u201d said Tux\u00e1.  Instead, he added, \u201cthese large pharmaceutical companies come into our communities, extract our traditional knowledge and plants without recognizing our rights \u2026 and take them to the cities and say they\u2019re their own discoveries.\u201d

B-roll, transcripts of the interview and further information can also be found here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The same forest destruction that accelerates climate change can also encourage the emergence of diseases such as the coronavirus, Indigenous Peoples\u2019 leaders said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1871,139,130,534],"tags":[206],"yoast_head":"\nThe Corona Connection: Forest loss drives viruses as well as climate change<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The same forest destruction that accelerates climate change can also encourage the emergence of diseases such as the coronavirus, Indigenous Peoples\u2019 leaders said\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/travindy.com\/news\/2020\/03\/the-corona-connection-forest-loss-drives-viruses-as-well-as-climate-change\/\" \/>\n<meta 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