Well-preserved Amazon rainforest can protect people from diseases: study

By MELINA WALLING, Associated Press

Every time humans cut into the Amazon rainforest or burn or destroy parts of it, they’re making people sick.

It’s an idea Indigenous people have lived by for thousands of years. Now a new study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment adds to the scientific evidence supporting it, by finding that instances of several diseases were lowered in areas where forest was set aside for Indigenous peoples who maintained it well.

With the United Nations climate summit set for Brazil in November, the study authors and outside experts said the work highlights the stakes for people around the world as negotiators try to address climate change. Belem, the city hosting the conference, is known as the gateway to the Amazon, and many who will be attending, from activists to delegates, think the role of Indigenous communities in climate action and conservation will be highlighted in a distinct way.

“The ‘forest man’ or ‘man forest,’ according to the Indigenous perspective, has always been linked to the reciprocity between human health and the natural environment where one lives,” said Francisco Hernández Cayetano, president of the Federation of Ticuna and Yagua Communities of the Lower Amazon, or FECOTYBA, in the Peruvian Amazon. “If each state does not guarantee the rights and territories of Indigenous peoples, we would inevitably be harming their health, their lives, and the ecosystem itself.”

That harm can look like respiratory diseases such as asthma caused by toxic air pollution after fires, or illnesses that spread from animals to humans such as malaria, said Paula Prist, a senior program coordinator for the Forest and Grasslands Unit at the International Union for Conservation of Nature and one of the study authors.

The researchers compiled and analyzed data on forest quality, legal recognition of Indigenous territory and disease incidence in the countries that border and include the Amazon.

Outside experts weigh in

The work was “impressive” to University of Washington health and climate scientist Kristie Ebi. She said it highlighted the complexity of factors that affect human health, and the importance of understanding the role Indigenous communities play in shaping it. “Using these methods, others could study other parts of the world,” she said.

The researchers found creative ways to account for other variables that can affect the spread of diseases, like access to health care in a given area, said Magdalena Hurtado, an anthropology and global health professor at Arizona State University and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences who was not involved with the study. But she expressed concern that the findings were presented with a precision that may not be warranted, given that they were based on correlation and use data on observations that can be difficult to measure.