PlanetHealth · From human to planetary health: Global land-use impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-10-01 → 2024-09-30
- EU contribution
- €264,669
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
From human to planetary health: Global land-use impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, stemming from a natural disease, represents an unprecedented global crisis, amplifying discussions on sustainability and planetary health. Land-use changes and forest loss exacerbate biodiversity loss, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and soil degradation, with far-reaching health implications. The increasing human-nature interaction at forest margins heightens the risk of new pandemics. Protecting the world’s remaining natural forests thus becomes increasingly valuable as a strategy to safeguard human well-being and health. To inform conservation strategies, PlanetHealth investigated the links between health, global shocks, and forest loss. Amid the pandemic, measures to curb the virus have mixed effects on agriculture, altering incentives for deforestation through illness-related productivity shocks (epidemiological channel), economic uncertainties driving forest expansion, and global demand shocks for agricultural products (economic channel). Additionally, the crisis may encourage anti-environmental policies and illegal logging (government-induced channel). PlanetHealth’s primary goal was to quantify and spatialize the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic on forest losses from a global to a local scale. This project encompassed six interconnected research objectives aligned with corresponding Work Packages (WPs) and their associated deliverables. It sought to establish a comprehensive methodology for evaluating various socio-economic and political channels affected by the COVID-19 crisis, employing advanced econometric shift-share designs. These objectives aligned with the following WPs: Depict the global forest dynamics (WP1), develop spatially disaggregated ex-ante susceptibility maps (WP2), create COVID-19-related exposure matrices (WP3), estimate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on forest dynamics (WP4), spatialize the COVID-19 impacts across forest landscapes (WP5), analyze the labor-market channels of the COVID-19 effects on deforestation (WP6). Overall, the project presented strong evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic increased tropical deforestation rates. These effects are primarily driven by labor-market shifts from industry to agriculture. Furthermore, the project showed how economic and political shocks caused deforestation and forest fragmentation depending on the underlying local agricultural incentives. Strategies to mitigate the Global shocks can include public-private partnerships to reduce farmers' vulnerability, but should be accompanied by credible enforcement mechanisms.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The COVID-19 pandemic is likely the most quickly and widely spreading global crisis of our times. Caused by a nature-borne disease, this crisis is introducing a new level of urgency to the global discussion on sustainability and planetary health as illness and death, economic uncertainty and governmental shut-downs reshape agricultural incentives at the global forest margins. PlanetHealth investigates the effects and mechanisms of the COVID-19 crisis on forest dynamics at the global and local level. It combines a global grid-based dataset (5-by-5 km) of high-frequency spatial data on forest outcomes (losses, fires, fragmentation) with spatialized ex-ante COVID-19 exposure measures. Changes in economic incentives across space are measured with global crop suitability maps, global crop price fluctuations, and geocoded survey data to analyze the labor market mechanisms at play. Their effects on natural habitats are expected to be spatially diverse, depending on bio-physical, economic, and political conditions. A channel analysis highlights the transmission effects along industry types (e.g., tourism, services) and household characteristics (e.g., education, female labor participation). PlanetHealth advances the environmental economics sciences by combining geographical and ecological methodologies with quasi-experimental econometric approaches. Relying on modern shift-share designs will allow for a causal quantification and spatialization of COVID-19 impacts on deforestation. Protecting the worlds’ natural forests becomes increasingly valuable as a strategy to safeguard human well-being and health. PlanetHealth will inform such conservation strategies by investigating the dynamic relationship between health, global shocks, and forest losses. Understanding the heterogeneous pathways will generate valuable information for stakeholders who aim to mitigate the environmental effects of the current pandemic and to identify the strategies for tackling future crises.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- GEORG-AUGUST-UNIVERSITAT GOTTINGEN STIFTUNG OFFENTLICHEN RECHTS · GottingenCoordinatorGermany
- THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SYSTEM · AustinUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union