I have just completed and submitted my thesis for the Masters of Science in Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security entitled “Zoonoses as a Planetary Boundary to Safeguard Global Health.“ It was a summer full of online research and literature reviews completed remotely and entirely online. I had envisioned traveling to a faraway place to do my thesis research when I first started this course. Covid made that impossible and had other plans for me. Though I found it particularly difficult being behind a computer as I am used to hands-on lab and field research, my thesis topic is particularly relevant to many of the subjects we discussed this year and is what is currently being covered daily in the media.
This piece of writing introduces zoonotic diseases as a possible new planetary boundary of interest. It includes how viruses jump from animals to humans putting us at risk for contracting new and emerging infectious diseases, how agriculture and land-use change broadly impacts the spillover of viruses to humans, and the mitigation opportunities for avoiding the acquisition and transmission of zoonotic disease.
This paper aims to be published in The Lancet Planetary Health, a journal covering sustainable development and environmental change. The introduction of zoonotic disease as a planetary boundary opens up a novel approach to researching the threat of zoonotic viruses on ecological and human health. Though this approach is new, infectious zoonotic diseases are already impacted by some planetary boundaries including land-use change, loss in biodiversity, and climate change. Zoonosis affects these boundaries as well.
Thank you to Professor Charles Spillane and Dr. Peter McKeown for their support and guidance during this process. I am very appreciative of their efforts despite this unusual year of learning. I am sorry I have not been able to meet them in person. I also am sorry to have not met my classmates as I am sure potential friendships were lurking. I have learned a great deal this year, not only about the subject of my thesis but also about research in general. It has been a challenging but rewarding process.
