2020-12-07
911
类人猿、生物多样性的丧失和新冠疫情——知识赛跑回头看
(English version below)
新冠病毒从2020年初开始席卷全球，当人们越来越担心和不安时，专家们也开始忧虑我们人类近亲的安全。2020年3月，国际自然及自然资源保护联盟和灵长类动物专家组发表联合声明，明确指出：没有实例证明类人猿对新冠病毒易感。但是，它们对一般的人类呼吸道病原体高度敏感，因此，新冠病毒对它们可能是致命的。从那时起，保护类人猿，尤其是野生类人猿的知识赛跑就拉开了序幕。
教科文组织发起了一系列关于生物多样性和人类与自然关系的线上讨论。民间社会、科学专家和决策者齐聚线上，从不同的角度探讨了卫生危机、其起源和后果。其中一场网络研讨会集中探讨了引发疫情的生物多样性危机，及其对类人猿构成的额外威胁。应邀发言的专家强调了3个主要因素，以了解危机的根源和克服危机的方法。
了解生物多样性的健康状况
这场疫情使人们认识到，我们与自然的关系是不健康的。偷猎和砍伐森林使原本并不会有交集的物种相遇，导致人类接触到动物源的病原体，而这些病原体在新出现的疾病中占70%。联合国环境规划署和国际家畜研究所最近的一份报告详细阐述了生物多样性丧失与人畜共患病之间的机制，如果我们继续保持现状，这些疾病将不断出现。然而，新冠危机一个意外的积极后果在于，人类现在意识到了保持生物多样性健康状况的重要性。将人类、动物和环境健康交织在一起的“一体化卫生”办法目前正通过模式的转变而获得动力。为了保持并利用这种新兴的动力以及这种共同的理解，关键是要关注那些受到最直接影响的社区，并与之合作。社区可以介绍保护生物多样性如何能够保证人类活动的可持续性，从而推动生物多样性的保护工作。
增进知识
对于全球的科学家来说，新冠疫情是一场与时间的赛跑。在本文发表之际，感染和死亡人数不断上升，但研究人员仍未发现疫苗或治疗方法。灵长类动物学家同样也参与了一场赛跑，目的是弄清楚这种新病毒如何影响类人猿，并制定安全措施，降低风险。当局为了赢得时间，仿效人类的禁足措施，禁止游客进入自然公园，公园管理员和科学家们也大多回到家中。因此，不仅要提高对类人猿健康的认识，还要提高对类人猿环境健康的认识，这样才能保护物种免于灭绝。联合国教科文组织与法国国家自然历史博物馆（MNHN）和乌干达塞比托利黑猩猩项目正在开发一个新项目，即利用无人机对非洲19个生物圈保护区内的类人猿及其栖息地进行调查和监测，这样可以减少保护区内的人类干扰，防止人畜共患病的传播风险。该项目将按照“一体化卫生”办法，尤其关注生物多样性的健康状况。
保护栖息地
新冠疫情一个令人意想不到的积极影响是污染的减少，这为紧张的氛围带来了些许放松。也正是野生动物在城市居民区中的出现让人们意识到，这些由人类主导的空间，仍然与野生动物共享。还有两点积极影响虽不太明显但同样重要，一是在野外发现的垃圾量有所减少，而这些垃圾正是将人畜共患病传染给野生动物的一种途径，或者至少在疫情禁足期间是这样；二是不再有类人猿因交通事故而死亡。然而，世界上某些地区由于缺乏肉类而面临饥荒风险，肉类价格随之上涨，因此偷猎和非法狩猎并没有停止。在众多可能会使我们最亲密的动物近亲灭绝的风险中，新冠疫情只是其中一个。以目前类人猿数量的减少速度来看，它们甚至有可能在我们的有生之年就在我们眼前灭绝。联合国教科文组织在非洲和亚洲23个国家指定了39个保护区域（世界遗产地和/或生物圈保护区），它们或是类人猿的栖居地，或位于类人猿的活动范围内，目前除了克罗斯河大猩猩这个亚种外，涵盖了所有类人猿。教科文组织正与喀麦隆和尼日利亚合作，将克罗斯河地区指定为跨界生物圈保护区。尼日利亚方面已为该地区提交了一份生物圈保护区提名材料。教科文组织在这些场地内与会员国合作，建设与环境和谐相处的繁荣社会。这包括与当地社区进行专门合作，支持他们自主进行保护和可持续发展工作。与类人猿栖息地的接近会增加人畜共患病的传播风险。为了在新冠疫情的背景下提高对这一问题的认识，教科文组织在乌干达塞比托利黑猩猩项目的支持下，为社区以及公园管理员和/或工作人员设计了一系列海报，详细介绍了防止人与人之间以及人与动物之间传播疾病的安全建议。
知识是一场持续的旅程，每一步都会遇到更多的信息和更多的问题。但它这并不是一场孤独的旅程。无论是定期的还是临时的知识社区，都能促进信息和良好实践的传播，就我们的网络研讨会而言，可以帮助实现重要的目标，如保护物种免于灭绝和争取时间。网络研讨会不仅聚集了科学家，还聚集了许多类人猿栖息地的管理者、决策者和民间社会的成员，他们都急于获得信息和建议。教科文组织作为思想的交流中心和实验室，将继续组织和维护交流平台，并传播其成果。
教科文组织对生物多样性的投入
https://zh.unesco.org/themes/biodiversity
Great apes, loss of biodiversity and COVID-19 - A throwback on the race for knowledge
In early 2020, as the world discovered with increasing concern and distress the tidal spread of COVID-19 infection, experts also turned to our closest cousins with worry. The joint statement issued in March 2020 by IUCN and the Primate Specialist Group was clear: there was no case proving that great apes are susceptible to COVID-19. However, they were highly susceptible to human respiratory pathogens in general and thus, COVID-19 could be fatal. Since then, it has been a race for knowledge to protect great apes, particularly in the wild.
UNESCO has launched a series of online discussions on biodiversity and our relationship with nature. These discussions, gathering civil society, scientific experts and decision-makers, tackled each a different point of view of the sanitary crisis, its origins and consequences. One webinar in particular shed a specific light on the crisis of biodiversity that led to the pandemic and the additional threat it meant for great apes. The experts invited to speak highlighted 3 main factors to understand the roots of the crisis and how to get past it.
Understanding the health of biodiversity
The pandemic drove home the fact that our collective relationship with nature was diseased. Poaching and deforestation bring together species that do not naturally meet and expose humans to pathogens of zoonotic origins, which constitute 70% of emerging diseases. A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Livestock Research Institute details the mechanisms between loss of biodiversity and zoonotic diseases and how they will keep emerging if we continue as is. However, an unforeseen positive consequence of the covid-19 crisis is that humanity is now aware of the importance of maintaining a healthy biodiversity. The One Health approach, which interweaves human, animal and environmental health is now gaining momentum in a paradigm shift. To maintain and capitalise on this new dynamic, this collective understanding, it is crucial to look at, and work with, the communities that are most directly impacted. Communities can become an engine for conservation of biodiversity by presenting how conservation guarantees the sustainability of activities.
Improving knowledge
COVID-19, for scientists around the globe, became a race against time. As this article is published, vaccines or treatments are still eluding researchers even while the number of casualties is rising. Similarly, primatologists have engaged in such a race to find out how this new virus could affect great apes and to devise safety measures and mitigate risks. To gain time, just as humans confined themselves, authorities forbade access to natural parks to visitors and rangers and scientists were, mostly, sent home. It is thus vital to improve knowledge on great apes’ health but also their environmental health to preserve the species from extinction. UNESCO, with the French National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) and Sebitoli Chimpanzee Project in Uganda is developing a project to survey and monitor great apes and their habitats in 19 African biosphere reserves with UAVs, which reduces human disturbance in protected areas and prevents any risk of transmission of zoonotic diseases. The project will focus specifically on biodiversity health, following the One Health approach.
Protecting habitats
One unexpected, positive effect of COVID-19 that was largely commented was the decrease in pollution, a literal breath of fresh in an otherwise tense moment. It was also the appearance of wild animals in urban settlements, which led to the realisation that those spaces, dominated by humans, are still shared with the wild. Less visible but just as important were the decrease of refuse found in the wild, factor of transmission of zoonotic diseases to wild animals or, during confinement at least, the stopping of great apes killed by traffic accidents. However, with the high risk of famine due to the lack of meat available in some parts of the world and consequent rise of prices, poaching and illegal hunting have not stopped. COVID-19 is just one risk in a long list that could bring the extinction of our closest cousins in the animal kingdom. With the current rate of decline, it is even possible that this extinction be witnessed in our lifetime. With its 39 designated sites (World Heritage sites and/or Biosphere Reserves) in 23 countries in Africa and in Asia that are home or within the range of great apes, UNESCO currently covers all but one sub-specie of great apes, the Cross-River Gorilla. UNESCO is working with Cameroon and Nigeria to designate the Cross-River area as a transboundary biosphere reserve. For its part, Nigeria has submitted a biosphere reserve nomination dossier for this area. UNESCO works with its Member States within these sites to build thriving societies in harmony with its environment. This includes working specifically with local communities to support their ownership of the conservation, protection and sustainable development efforts. Proximity with great apes habitats, for instance, increase the risks of transmission of zoonotic diseases. To raise awareness on this issue in the context of COVID-19, UNESCO, with the support of the Sebitoli Chimpanzee Project in Uganda, designed a series of posters for communities, but also park rangers and/or employees detailing safety recommendations to prevent transmission between humans but also between humans and animals.
Knowledge is a constant journey and each step is filled with more information, and more questions. However, it is not a journey that should be undertaken alone. Knowledge communities, regular or ad hoc, further the dissemination of information and good practices, and, in the case of our webinars, can help achieve important goals such as protecting species from extinction and against time. The webinars gather scientists but also many managers of sites that are home to great apes, decision makers and members of civil society that were all anxious for information and advice. UNESCO, as a clearing house and laboratory of ideas, will keep organising and maintaining platforms of exchanges and disseminate its results.
