Deforestation, loss of biodiversity, the industrial agriculture model, and human intervention in wildlife habitats are related to the spread of dangerous diseases such as Covid-19.

It is not an opinion. For decades, scientists have warned that humans will face new and more intense public health crises as the climate crisis continues, and human interactions cause imbalances in the functioning of Earth’s ecosystems.

And here we are: adapting to a novel virus, for which we do not have a treatment yet.

We cannot lose sight of the fact that over the past few decades, there has been a significant increase in diseases transmitted from animals to humans, such as Ebola, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Avian Influenza, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Rift Valley Fever and Zika.

To be more precise, 75% of all infectious diseases come from inappropriate wildlife infections, and it was confirmed by the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Inger Andersen, in an interview with The Guardian.

A recent study from Stanford University confirms that deforestation accelerates infectious diseases by increasing the likelihood of interaction between wildlife and humans. An in-depth report published in the newspaper Listín Diario assures that deforestation is linked to 31% of pandemics.

The most recent Covid-19 pandemic is a warning of how urgent it is to make conservation a priority and restore natural ecosystems’ balance. We need public policies to protect habitats and biodiversity. Likewise, we need a plan for restoring degraded natural areas and for the replacement of daily habits that negatively impact nature.

But, above all, we need a transformative dialogue so that the so-called “new normality” can develop a new way of living together and valuing nature.nature.