Project dates: 2012-2015 

Context

The project is localized in Southeast Asia, a hotspot of infectious emerging diseases of potential global pandemics and, also, a hotspot of biodiversity particularly at threat due to land use and climate changes. Southeast Asia attracts the attention of international organizations, developmental agencies and non‐governmental conservationist organizations for its global concerns in terms of biodiversity and health. Southeast Asia is a model to investigate locally the perception and effects of global changes and global governance on the interaction between biodiversity and health.

Rodents are used as models for investigation biodiversity changes and for their important roles as reservoirs of zoonotic diseases (leptospirosis, scrub typhus). Southeast Asia is a diversification centre for murid rodents; which appear to be good indicators of habitat changes, carriers and reservoirs of numerous diseases, agricultural pests. Rodents are the subject of traditional hunting and for some of wildlife transnational trades. Rodents are particularly suitable for studying the relationships between humans and their environment, while assessing health due to diseases transmitted by rodents.

BiodivHealthSEA follows the project CERoPath funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR).

Objectives

The objectives of BiodivHealthSEA are to analyze:

1. The local impacts of global changes on rodent‐borne diseases in relation to biodiversity modification and environmental changes
2. The local perceptions of global environmental and biodiversity changes in connection with the “global governance architecture” and national public policies and actions of NGOs in the fields of Health, Environment, Conservation and Development (i.e. the “One Health” approach)

Activities and Results

We will analyze (or re‐analyze) and cross correlate various data at the regional and national levels to determine the socio‐environmental determinants of endemics and epidemic infectious diseases (climate change, biodiversity loss, changes in forest cover). The investigation of international initiatives and national policies in the domains of health, climate regulation, and biodiversity conservation will give a third originality by assessing the roles of institutional actors and the coordination (or the lack of) between sectors.

Analyses of three local situations by a multi‐disciplinary team (social scientists, environmental scientists, ecologists and epidemiologists) will provide original data on biodiversity, rodent‐borne diseases, land uses, local practices, health surveillance and perception of Biodiversity-Health-Environment interdependence.

Integration and dissemination of the results will be done in the frame of a companion modeling approach in local and regional workshops attended by various stakeholders: ONGs, International organizations, National institutions, local communities and scientists.

Team

• Cirad, Agricultural Research for Development
• CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research

Partners

• CNRS- ISE-M, the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences - Montpellier University, France
• Inra, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA-CBP)
• IRD,  the French Research Institute for Development
• UMR BIOEMCO, France