Food Security and Emerging Infectious Diseases: The Unsustainable Case of the Andes-Amazon Region, due to Large Scale Crop Production and Global Trade Policies

Abstract

ISEE-0704 Background and Objectives: Food security embraces, among other dimensions, food production and distribution, which are related to changes in land-use and cover and biodiversity, therefore in the epidemiology of infectious diseases. The ongoing infrastructure development policies for the region, allowing increasing international commerce (especially the exportation of Soya-bean from Brazil to Asia), include the paving of the 1,000 miles “Pacific Highway”, as well as the resulting 2,500 miles of hydro-ways from the building of hydroelectric dams. The vicious cycle (roads and dams building–LUCC through logging/forest fires–biodiversity loss) affect vectors’ ecology and bring people, vectors, and wild reservoirs into overlapping areas, fostering the (re)emergence of vector-borne diseases. This work was aimed at assessing these linkages and understanding this complex process to help breaking this vicious cycle. Methods: Case Study methodology enabled the investigation to retain the characteristics of real-life events and coped with the situation in which there were multiple variables of interest and sources of evidence – such as documentary sources, interviews, analysis of changes in land use and cover and in the region’s epidemiology – while assessing what can be learned to mitigate societal suffering and environmental loss when developmental policies are aimed at promoting food production and trade. Results: The (re)emergence of American Cutaneous Leishmaniasis and Bartonellosis (Carrion Disease) are two seminal examples of how infectious diseases in the Andes-Amazon Region can be linked to LUCC and to biodiversity loss from deforestation, road paving and dams building, fostered by distant food production and distribution. Conclusion: It is fundamental to make explicit the linkages between “development” policies, LUCC, forest and biodiversity losses, and, ultimately, food security, if we are to increase the awareness about ecosystem services to regulate the (re)emergence of infectious diseases.