SIMPEL – Addressing wildlife risk knowledge gaps at the environment-health nexus
Land use change can result in social and ecological impacts. This project investigates the emergence and transmission of pathogens in Colombia and Bolivia at the interfaces of land use change, the effects on wildlife and domestic hosts and the risk to and impact on indigenous and local communities of zoonotic diseases. Understanding these interfaces will allow to better detect, predict and prevent future disease emergence and pandemics.
| Full project title: | SIMPEL – Addressing wildlife risk knowledge gaps at the environment-health nexus of the Andes-Amazon-Orinoco: Socio-ecological impacts and mechanisms of pathogen emergence in changing landscapes |
| Duration: | 09/2023 - 02/2028 |
| Third-party funded: | yes |
| Involved department(s): | Dept Wildlife Diseases |
| Leibniz-IZW project leader(s): | Alex Greenwood (Dept Wildlife Diseases) |
| Leibniz-IZW project team: | Gábor Czirják, Gabriela Guadalupe Aliaga Samanez, Katja Pohle (all: Dept Wildlife Diseases) |
| Consortium partner(s): | WCS Health Program, WCS Bolivia, WCS Colombia |
| Current funding organisation: | VolkswagenStiftung |
| Research foci: | Understanding traits and evolutionary adaptations |
| Understanding wildlife health and disturbed homeostasis |
This VolkwagenStiftung funded project aims at improving our understanding of human-nature relations. The team investigates the mechanisms and the impact of the emergence of pathogens on the health of wild and domestic animals as well as on humans in increasingly human-altered landscapes in a highly biodiverse region. Evidence is growing that rapid, human-induced environmental changes are fuelling the emergence of zoonotic pathogens. However, our current understanding of these linkages is limited, primarily correlative, and inconsistent across spatial and temporal scales, pathogens, transmission routes, and ecological contexts.
This project will apply inter- and transdisciplinary studies to shed light on the ecological and social impacts of transitions from one land-use type to another. This will include effects on wild and domestic hosts, their pathogens, and human-nature relations. The study region is highly biodiverse and rapidly changing landscape of the Andes-Amazon-Orinoco in Colombia and Bolivia. A major focus of the project will be how the Indigenous and local communities reliant on these landscapes cope with environmental change and newly arising health risks. The team will define the links between potential pathogen emergence and environmental transformation to better detect, predict and prevent future pandemic emergence associated with land use change. This will strengthen the evidence base for integrating health into environmental conservation, development policies and Indigenous territorial management plans.