Optimising forest benefits whilst minimising impacts of emerging zoonotic diseases: co-developing an interdisciplinary tool for forests in India

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Vast numbers of poor people in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) depend on healthy ecosystems for their livelihoods and food security. In India, around 300 million people depend on forests that are badly degraded by human settlement, agricultural expansion, and over-grazing. When they access food, fuel, fodder and other products from degraded forests, these people risk exposure to harmful pathogens that circulate naturally in wildlife. The ecological balance between diverse wildlife and arthropod vector communities can be altered by forest degradation, but these ecological changes interact with the priorities and behaviour of people in the landscape to determine when and where exposure occurs. Upsurges in human cases of zoonotic diseases (diseases that circulate between animals and humans) in LMICs, like malaria and Leishmaniases, have been linked to deforestation, reforestation or particular forest activities. Knowledge gaps on the role of ecology and sociology in underpinning these changes prevents development of intelligent disease control strategies that allow people to benefit from forests but minimise exposure to disease. Such strategies require cooperation of policy-makers and forest users from across the animal health, human health and forestry sectors, from national and international decision-makers down to village communities, that all interact with the disease system.By bringing such stakeholders together in a network, along with experts in public and animal health, ecology, epidemiology and social science, this project aims to develop a new inter-disciplinary framework and decision-support tool to reduce health, welfare and livelihood impacts of zoonotic diseases on people that depend on forests in LMICs. It will be developed initially for Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD), a fatal haemorrhagic disease of forest populations in India that cycles naturally amongst ticks, rodents and primates. The research underpinning the tool will include:1. Mapping of key stakeholders in each sector, their knowledge, needs for decision-support tools and how they are impacted by or impact upon the disease system.2. Intensive field observation of (i) how the priorities, behaviour and perceptions of disease risk of different forest groups, like traditional hunter-gatherer tribes and farmers, change; (ii) how the numbers and species of wildlife hosts and tick vectors, and the consequent hazard of KFD changes along forest landscape gradients from closed through fragmented to open forest.3. Matching of historical geographical patterns in human cases of KFD with environmental patterns within models to disentangle social, climate and forest landscape drivers across the affected region in India. A geographical decision support tool, integrating this knowledge, will map how disease risk varies across forest landscapes, from which activities and by which forest user groups, with other constraints on disease management, availability and access to health care and medicines. The project will reduce impacts of KFD on health, welfare and livelihoods by increasing awareness of disease risk in forest users, especially tribal groups that harvest non-timber forest products and farmers that graze livestock. These groups will further benefit from specific guidance on (i) the key forest locations and habitats, seasons and activities, and (ii) why and how to access medicine and other protective measures. The decision-support tool will help disease managers to better target vaccination and risk communication efforts towards the forest communities that are most at risk and will inform planning of land use in forests. The project platform and approach of co-developing research and decision support tools on zoonotic diseases with stakeholders across sectors, accounting for their needs and underlying ecological and social processes, will build significant capacity in science, policy and practitioners to respond to emerging global threats.