Development, environmental degradation, and disease spread in the Brazilian Amazon.
Marcia C Castro, Andres Baeza, Cláudia Torres Codeço, Zulma M Cucunubá, Ana Paula Dal'Asta, Giulio A De Leo, Andrew P Dobson, Gabriel Carrasco-Escobar, Raquel Martins Lana, Rachel Lowe, Antonio Miguel Vieira Monteiro, Mercedes Pascual, Mauricio Santos-Vega
Author Information
Marcia C Castro: Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America. ORCID
Andres Baeza: Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science (GDCS), Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America.
Cláudia Torres Codeço: Programa de Computação Científica, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ORCID
Zulma M Cucunubá: MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis (MRC GIDA), Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom. ORCID
Ana Paula Dal'Asta: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil.
Giulio A De Leo: Woods Institute for the Environment and Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, Pacific Grove, California, United States of America. ORCID
Andrew P Dobson: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America. ORCID
Gabriel Carrasco-Escobar: Institute of Tropical Medicine "Alexander von Humboldt," Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru. ORCID
Raquel Martins Lana: Programa de Computação Científica, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ORCID
Rachel Lowe: Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health & Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom. ORCID
Antonio Miguel Vieira Monteiro: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil. ORCID
Mercedes Pascual: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. ORCID
Mauricio Santos-Vega: Departamento de Ingeniería Biomédica, Grupo de Investigación en Biología Matemática y Computacional BIOMAC, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. ORCID
The Amazon is Brazil's greatest natural resource and invaluable to the rest of the world as a buffer against climate change. The recent election of Brazil's president brought disputes over development plans for the region back into the spotlight. Historically, the development model for the Amazon has focused on exploitation of natural resources, resulting in environmental degradation, particularly deforestation. Although considerable attention has focused on the long-term global cost of "losing the Amazon," too little attention has focused on the emergence and reemergence of vector-borne diseases that directly impact the local population, with spillover effects to other neighboring areas. We discuss the impact of Amazon development models on human health, with a focus on vector-borne disease risk. We outline policy actions that could mitigate these negative impacts while creating opportunities for environmentally sensitive economic activities.
