Biodiversity and Human Health

Francesca Grifo, Joshua Rosenthal, Francesca Grifo, Joshua Rosenthal

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781559635011, 9781559635004
• eBook ISBN: 9781610912532
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Environmental Science

The implications of biodiversity loss for the global environment have been widely discussed, but only recently has attention been paid to its direct and serious effects on human health. Biodiversity loss affects the spread of human diseases, causes a loss of medical models, diminishes the supplies of raw materials for drug discovery and biotechnology, and threatens food production and water quality.

Biodiversity and Human Health brings together leading thinkers on the global environment and biomedicine to explore the human health consequences of the loss of biological diversity. Based on a two-day conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution, the book opens a dialogue among experts from the fields of public health, biology, epidemiology, botany, ecology, demography, and pharmacology on this vital but often neglected concern.

Contributors discuss the uses and significance of biodiversity to the practice of medicine today, and develop strategies for conservation of these critical resources. Topics examined include:

• the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss
• emerging infectious diseases and the loss of biodiversity
• the significance and use of both prescription and herbal biodiversity-derived remedies
• indigenous and local peoples and their health care systems
• sustainable use of biodiversity for medicine
• an agenda for the future

In addition to the editors, contributors include Anthony Artuso, Byron Bailey, Jensa Bell, Bhaswati Bhattacharya, Michael Boyd, Mary S. Campbell, Eric Chivian, Paul Cox, Gordon Cragg, Andrew Dobson, Kate Duffy-Mazan, Robert Engelman, Paul Epstein, Alexandra S. Fairfield, John Grupenhoff, Daniel Janzen, Catherine A. Laughin, Katy Moran, Robert McCaleb, Thomas Mays, David Newman, Charles Peters, Walter Reid, and John Vandermeer.

The book provides a common framework for physicians and biomedical researchers who wish to learn more about environmental concerns, and for members of the environmental community who desire a greater understanding of biomedical issues.

PART I

Causes and Consequences of Biodiversity Loss for Human Health

The chapters in this section describe some of the most important causes of biodiversity loss and provide multiple examples of the diverse relationships between the loss of biodiversity and human health and well-being. In Chapter 1, Eric Chivian eloquently describes the linkages between environmental degradation, species extinction, and our resulting loss of medicines, medical models, and ecological protection from infectious disease. Robert Engelman (Chapter 2) explores the ways in which human population growth affects the capacity of the planet to support wild species and the production of healthy food for humans. Chapters 3 and 4 by Epstein et al. and Dobson et al., respectively, are important attempts to synthesize a great deal of ecological and epidemiological information regarding the possible relationships between biodiversity and infectious disease. Finally, John Vandermeer (Chapter 5) describes effects of increasing industrialization of agriculture on planned and associated biodiversity in agroecosystems.

In reading this section, we encourage the reader to recall two things. The first is that these chapters cover but a few of the many forces driving biodiversity loss and some of the medical and epidemiological consequences. For every useful and endangered species discussed here there are countless others on which that organism depends for survival, numerous genetically diverse relatives on which its continued usefulness depends, and many other organisms we have yet to discover. The second point is that the examples discussed here provide only a starting point from which much research is needed to understand the chemical, ecological, and epidemiological relationships described. The authors have outlined numerous important relationships and we hope their efforts will stimulate future collaborative work in this critical area.

CHAPTER 1

Global Environmental Degradation and Biodiversity Loss: Implications for Human Health

ERIC CHIVIAN

“The Planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet—or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”

—Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park (1990)

Introduction

There is abundant evidence that we are beginning to alter, for the first time in history, the chemistry and physics and physiology of the Earth. A basic understanding of biological systems and their dependence on the environment should alert people to the potential dangers these alterations pose for human beings. Yet, most people, including most policymakers, do not comprehend the human implications of global environmental change. Underlying this lack of comprehension is the widespread belief that human beings are separate from the environments in which they live, that they can change the atmosphere and oceans—and damage marine, aquatic, and terrestrial ecosystems in the process—without these changes affecting them.

In focusing on the human health dimensions of biodiversity loss, this volume helps people understand that human beings are an integral part of the environment, and that to protect their health and lives, and those of their children, people must learn to protect the environment.

This chapter will provide an overview about how environmental degradation leads to biodiversity loss, and what the implications of this loss are for human beings. This is an enormously complex topic, one that is in its infancy in terms of scientific understanding. Much of what can be said about it is uncertain and speculative. But the subject is also perhaps the most important one of all—namely the ways that global ecosystems support human health and make human life possible, and there is enough evidence available in the scientific and medical literature to justify looking at possible future scenarios, especially as they may serve as warnings.

Medicine brings a new perspective to discussions about global environmental change. It has a long tradition of acting decisively to prevent life threatening situations from occurring even when all the evidence is not in. The low threshold for performing appendectomies is a case in point (Gross 1956)—if surgeons waited until they were absolutely certain that their patients had appendicitis, it would often be too late to prevent serious illness and death. This is the situation we face today with global environmental degradation. If we wait until we have definite proof of its occurrence and of its consequences, it may be too late to avoid a medical catastrophe.

This chapter will cover the contributions to biodiversity loss from:

• global climate change,
• stratospheric ozone depletion,
• toxic substances in the environment, and
• habitat destruction;

and the possible effects on human health from this loss, including:

• the loss of medicines,
• the loss of medical models, and
• the emergence and spread of infectious diseases.

Central to these discussions will be two themes:

1. That the study of species and biodiversity may be the best means we have for recognizing future danger signals to human health from global environmental degradation, as some species may be so uniquely sensitive to specific assaults on the environment that they may serve as our “canaries,” or so-called “indicator species.”

2. That we must focus much greater attention on biodiversity loss, which looms as a slowly evolving, potential medical emergency of unprecedented proportions, still largely unappreciated by policymakers and the public.

When Homo sapiens evolved, some 100,000 years ago, the number of species on Earth was the largest ever, but current rates of species extinction resulting from human activities, at least 1000 times those that would have occurred naturally, rivalling the great geologic extinctions of the past, may be reducing these numbers to the lowest levels since the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, 65 million years ago (Wilson 1993). Paul Ehrlich and E.O. Wilson (1991) and others have predicted that one-quarter of all species now alive may become extinct during the next 50 years if these rates of extinction continue.

There are 100 times more people on Earth than any land animal of comparable size that ever lived, and we are the most voracious and destructive species that ever existed. We consume or destroy or co-opt, for example, as much as 40% of all the solar energy trapped by land plants (Ehrlich and Wilson 1991). Not only is this behavior morally indefensible, endangering in the process countless other species, it is fundamentally and ultimately self-destructive.

Several aspects of global environmental degradation have an impact on species populations and biodiversity. This chapter will briefly review some of the evidence.

Global Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations working group of 2500 of some of the world’s most eminent atmospheric, physical, and biological scientists, has stated that projected worldwide CO₂ (the main greenhouse gas) emissions will result in an increase in global mean surface temperatures of about 1.8 to 6.3°F by the year 2100 (IPCC 1995). The magnitude of these changes may not seem very large, but it must be remembered that the difference between the temperatures at present and those at the peak of the last ice age, 18,000 years ago, are only 50–9°F (Stevens 9/20/94), and that temperatures of 7°F higher than those of today have not been present since the Eemian interglacial period 130,000 years ago (Stevens 11/1/94), and perhaps not since the Eocene epoch, tens of millions of years ago (Webb 1992).

Even small changes in temperature can lead to enormous changes in global weather patterns and habitats. For example, during the years from about 1000 to 1350 A.D., known as the “Medieval Warm Period,” when global mean surface temperatures were only slightly more than 1°F warmer than they are now, there were vineyards in England, and Greenland supported hundreds of farms (Ponting 1991). By contrast, from 1430 to 1850, the period known as the “Little Ice Age,” when global mean surface temperatures were only slightly more than 1°F cooler than they are now, the Thames was often frozen in winter, and there were icebergs off the coast of Norway (Leggett 1990).

Since the late 19th century, global mean surface temperatures have already warmed on average approximately 1°F (Stevens 1995), consistent with the increases in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations during the past century, from preindustrial revolution levels of 280 ppm to current levels of 350 ppm (Maskell et al. 1993). And 1995 was the warmest year since 1856, when mean global temperatures were first systematically recorded (Stevens 1996).

There is growing evidence that the seas are undergoing a similar warming, from measurements off the coast of California (Barry et al. 1995) and deep in the Atlantic Ocean (Parrilla et al. 1994), and that sea levels worldwide have risen about 10–20 cm over the last century (Warwick and Oerlemans 1990). The IPCC predicts that with greenhouse warming, sea levels will increase an additional 15-95 cm by the year 2100 (IPCC 1995).

These predicted changes in climate and sea levels will pose enormous and unprecedented threats to plant, microbial, and animal species, including human beings.

Many paleontologists believe that climate change, both global warming and cooling, was the dominant factor in the great extinctions of the past (Eldredge 1991), both directly, because of shifts in temperature outside the ranges to which species could adapt, and indirectly because of changes in habitats, for example, the formation of glaciers or changes in sea levels (Stanley 1987). Fossil records indicate that many species have been able to adapt to climate changes by shifting their ranges—during warming periods, for example, species colonized new habitats nearer the poles or at higher altitudes, while during cooling periods they retreated back toward the equator (Peters and Darling 1985). During several Pleistocene interglacial periods, when mean surface temperatures in North America were 3–5°F higher than they are at present, Cape Cod had forests like those found in present day North Carolina, manatees swam off the coast of New Jersey, and osage oranges grew near Toronto, several hundred kilometers north of their present ranges (Peters and Darling 1985). But many other species could not adapt and were lost, either because their rates of migration were too slow, or because geographical barriers like oceans, mountains, or unsuitable habitat conditions prevented their advance (Peters and Darling 1985).

By contrast to the past major changes in climate, however, when temperatures warmed or cooled over thousands of years, the changes predicted over the next century will be an order of magnitude or more faster, and it is not at all clear, even if there were no barriers to migration, whether species can migrate fast enough to avoid extinction. But there are barriers everywhere people live—cities, roads, agricultural lands, and other human constructions would further complicate species migration. It is calculated, for example, that for each 1°C rise in temperature, land plants would have to shift their ranges toward the poles by 100-150 km (Roberts 1989). The warming predicted by 2100, for example, would mean shifts of a few hundred kilometers. Some species, propagated by spores or dust seeds, might be able to achieve these rates (Perring 1965); most others would not (Peters and Darling 1985). Some spruce tree species, for example, even though they have light, wind-carried seeds, disperse them no farther than 200 m from the parent tree, corresponding to a potential maximum migration rate of only 20 km per century (Seddon 1971).

Animals, while more mobile, would be limited by the distributions of the plants they eat or otherwise depend on, by their ability to adapt behaviors to climate-altered habitats, or by changes in the populations of their predators or competitors, even if they could adapt physiologically (Peters and Darling 1985).

We may already be seeing evidence of species migrations and potential losses, paralleling the increases in recorded temperatures—in large reductions in red spruce trees in New Hampshire over the last 200 years (Hamburg and Cogbill 1988), in the upward climb of several vascular plant species in the Austrian alps over the past 70–90 years (Grabherr et al. 1994), in the shift to the north of Edith’s checkerspot butterfly...

Table of contents

• ABOUT ISLAND PRESS
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I - Causes and Consequences of Biodiversity Loss for Human Health
• PART II - Drug Discovery from Biological Diversity
• PART III - Biodiversity and Traditional Health Systems
• PART IV - An Agenda for the Future: Conserving Biodiversity and Human Health
• AFTERWORD - A Proposal for a National Council on Biodiversity and Human Health
• Contributors
• Index
• ISLAND PRESS BOARD OF DIRECTORS