The war on trees and what it means for disease

Many people have worried that the Covid-19 pandemic meant the
harm of climate change was being ignored. But could the opposite
be true? Neal Razzell and Graihagh Jackson look at the links
between both emerging pandemics and deforestation. We’ll be on
the ground in Nigeria, with BBC reporter Nkechi Ogbonna showing
us the reality of farming and land use change in the tropics.
While in the bush, she meets an illegal logger to find out their
take on climate change and pandemics.


Professor Thomas Gillespie studies emerging infectious diseases,
the types we don’t even have a name for yet. His work has shown
the problems of land use change for mining and agriculture and
the emergence of diseases that jump from animals to humans, like
Covid-19. The more we cut down, the closer we get to diseases
we’d never encountered before. We also hear about global
solutions from World Service environment correspondent Navin
Singh Kadhka, and how we can help in the fight to save the
rainforests.