Unhealthy Landscapes: Policy Recommendations on Land Use Change and Infectious Disease Emergence

Abstract

Anthropogenic land use changes drive a range of infectious disease outbreaks and emergence events and modify the transmission of endemic infections. These drivers include agricultural encroachment, deforestation, road construction, dam building, irrigation, wetland modification, mining, the concentration or expansion of urban environments, coastal zone degradation, and other activities. These changes in turn cause a cascade of factors that exacerbate infectious disease emergence, such as forest fragmentation, disease introduction, pollution, poverty, and human migration. The Working Group on Land Use Change and Disease Emergence grew out of a special colloquium that convened international experts in infectious diseases, ecology, and environmental health to assess the current state of knowledge and to develop recommendations for addressing these environmental health challenges. The group established a systems model approach and priority lists of infectious diseases affected by ecologic degradation. Policy-relevant levels of the model include specific health risk factors, landscape or habitat change, and institutional (economic and behavioral) levels. The group recommended creating Centers of Excellence in Ecology and Health Research and Training, based at regional universities and/or research institutes with close links to the surrounding communities. The centers’ objectives would be 3-fold: a) to provide information to local communities about the links between environmental change and public health; b) to facilitate fully interdisciplinary research from a variety of natural, social, and health sciences and train professionals who can conduct interdisciplinary research; and c) to engage in science-based communication and assessment for policy making toward sustainable health and ecosystems.

Bayesian spatial modelling and the significance of agricultural land use to scrub typhus infection in Taiwan

“…It is well recognised that the occurrence of many vector-borne diseases is typically associated with specific land cover or land use types (Patz et al, 2004;Lambin et al, 2010). This is hardly surprising given that disease vectors are primarily arthropods, with optimal development, survival and reproduction requiring particular physical environmental characteristics that determine specific land cover or land use types.…”

“…As an example, density and infection prevalence of nymphs of the Ixodes scapularis tick, the primary vector for Lyme disease in northeast of the United States of America (USA), were higher in fragmented than continuous forests, which could be caused by the higher density of the white-footed mouse Peromyscus leucopus (the reservoir host) in smaller forest fragments (Allan et al, 2003). Identifying associations between land cover and risk of vector-borne diseases provides insight into the underlying processes of disease occurrence and could have profound significance for land use policy (Patz et al, 2004;Arinaminpathy et al, 2009;Lambin et al, 2010). For instance, infective rates of West Nile virus in competent Culex mosquitoes are lower in urban wetlands than adjacent residential areas; this is related to the wetlands harbouring lower proportions of competent avian and mosquito species and suggests that preserving urban wetlands may lower the human risk to West Nile virus infection (Johnson et al 2012).…”

“…Similarly, the higher risk to Lyme disease in forest fragments than in continuous forests in northeast USA (Allan et al, 2003) calls for a re-consideration of low-density residential land use, which not only furthers the severance of forests but also bring humans into close contact with infected ticks when dispersed houses are surrounded with fragmented forests (Jackson et al, 2006). However, detailed investigations for many vector-borne diseases remain unavailable (Patz et al, 2004). Studies are particularly urgently needed in Asia where rapid economic growth has dramatically transformed the land cover (Zhao et al, 2006).…”

Diversity of sand flies in domiciliary environment of Santarém, state of Pará, Brazil: species composition and abundance patterns in rural and urban areas

“…Nevertheless, studies of Amazonian sand fly species generally are restrict to some few descriptive studies related to epidemiological surveys or vertical and horizontal stratification. In Latin America, leishmaniasis represents a great threat to human health, since this disease has been pointed out as an emergent disease due to environmental changes mainly caused by road construction and timber extraction (Patz et al 2004). In Brazil populations exposed to leishmaniasis are not only inhabitants of rural areas but also miners, hunters, and some periurban populations of some cities (Barrett 1993).…”

Habitat fragmentation and haemoparasites in the common fruit bat,Artibeus jamaicensis(Phyllostomidae) in a tropical lowland forest in Panamá

“…Habitat fragmentation and degradation result in drastic changes to the biological and physical environment, which in turn impact species richness as well as ecosystem functioning and services (Sih et al 2000 ;Diamond, 2001 ;Allan et al 2003 ;McCallum and Dobson, 2002 ;Fahrig, 2003 ;Patz et al 2004 ;Tabarelli et al 2004). This is particularly true for tropical regions (Laurance et al 2002 ;Wade et al 2003).…”