De-urbanization and Zoonotic Disease Risk

Excerpt

In recent decades, human populations worldwide have undergone a fundamental shift from predominately rural to urban living. Today, more than half of all people live in urban areas, and this figure will swell to roughly two-thirds by 2050 (United Nations 2014). These sweeping demographic changes demand the attention of disease ecologists because anthropogenic activities are global drivers of emerging infectious diseases affecting both wildlife and humans (Murray and Daszak 2013; Gottdenker et al. 2014). For example, human population density within a species’ range is positively related to zoonotic pathogen richness in mammals, which in turn influences disease emergence (Olival et al. 2017). Urbanized, human-dominated landscapes in particular have strong influences on disease patterns in wildlife, domestic animal, and human populations (Hassell et al. 2017). While the effects of urbanization on infectious disease systems are important and increasingly recognized as an emerging research priority, we argue here that it is also essential for disease ecologists and One Health practitioners to consider the opposite, but surprisingly common, process: de-urbanization. …