2 minute read
HAVE TREES BEEN SECRETLY SAVING US FROM PANDEMICS?
Amy King (OHS)
Hand sanitiser, soap, face masks. They are all obvious methods to stop the spread of a pandemic. But perhaps trees are the unseen heroes and by destroying them, we are putting ourselves at risk of future pandemics.
The baobab trees are part of this anti-pandemic campaign. One by one, however, the oldest baobabs are worryingly dying.
According to an article in Nature Plants in June 2018, “these mythical baobabs are dying by the thousands due, in part, to the drought between 1970 and 1990, which ravaged the Sahara.”
In 2017, the world lost 40 football fields worth of trees every single minute. This mass destruction, known as deforestation, is largely thought to have been the reason for an unprecedented rise in droughts from Sao Paolo to the Sahara.
Models showed that savannahs faced 30% less evaporation than forests and similar reductions of rainfalls. This reduced water storage resulted in longer dry spells that led to drought and consequently, the death of the trees. However, forests with their higher evaporation rates have prevented complete aridity by storing their moisture to aid in cloud formation.
Laurent Vidal, a representative of the IRD in Mali fears that “in destroying much of the natural Sahel habitat and by causing its people to move, heatwaves and deforestation pose the risk of letting new diseases emerge”.
In a country such as Senegal, scientists fear that the black rat, having lost its forest habitat, could be forced to eat cultures to survive at the risk of becoming a vector for pathogens to humans.
Elsewhere, it’s the extension of the zones where the harmattan blows which has already widened the spread of the meningitis epidemic, notably in the Ivory Coast.
It turns out that trees have been saving us from the spread of viruses for longer than expected, perhaps since day one.
Infectious diseases, including the Nipah and Lassa viruses, transfer from wildlife into people in deforestation areas as the wildlife can no longer find easy food sources without the trees. The first emergence of Nipah virus in people was in 1997, killing 105 people by 1999 and it has since caused outbreaks across Southeast Asia. An initiative has been attempting to fertilise the Sahara region to combat the increasing deforestation. This continuing project was launched in 2007: a green Great Wall from Dakar to Djibouti.
As for the future, major international donors are financing a climate investment plan for the Sahara region (2020 -2025). In the meantime, however, Africa is still fighting its daily battle for every last pandemic fighting tree.
Bibliography
Maillard, Mateo (2020). Making the Sahel Green Again. Paris: Le Monde
McDonnell, Tim (2018). Why Are Some Of Africa’s Biggest Baobab Trees Dying Off? Washington, D.C: NPR
Seymour, F. (2018) Deforestation is Accelerating. Washington, D.C: Global Forest Watch
Vidal, L via Le Monde (2020). Paris: IRD Zimmer, K. (2019). Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans. New York: National Geographic.
