[Biodiversity and pandemic risk : rethinking emerging zoonoses at the human-animal-ecosystem interface].

Abstract

Pandemics do not emerge at random. They emerge in landscapes transformed by human activities, where contacts between humans, domestic animals, wildlife, and infectious agents are being reshaped. Deforestation, urbanization, agricultural intensification, land-use change, and climate change increase opportunities for spillover and redraw high-risk interfaces. Biodiversity is neither a systematic shield nor an intrinsic threat : its role depends on the structure of host communities, the species favored by disturbed environments, and the concrete conditions of exposure. Social inequalities and socio-economic vulnerability also weigh on these dynamics by limiting prevention capacities. Preventing emerging zoonoses therefore requires shifting the focus away from the pathogen alone toward the socio-ecological systems that make their emergence possible.