 Good afternoon. Good morning, everyone, depending on where you are. A very warm welcome and thank you for joining this second discussion in the Land Dialogue webinar series, organized in partnership with the Ford Foundation, the Land Portal Foundation, the Tenure Facility and the Thompson Reuters Foundation. This initiative promotes the importance of recognizing legal ownership of indigenous peoples and local communities' land rights as a prerequisite for achieving national and international goals for forest governance, food security, climate mitigation, economic development and human rights. This Land Dialogue series will run once a month until October with each webinar tackling a different topic. I'm Jonathan Watts. Hello. I'm Global Environment Editor at The Guardian and I'm delighted to be your host today. We have a fantastic panel who I will introduce you to shortly, but first some housekeeping. This webinar will take place mainly in English and will be simultaneously interpreted to Spanish, French and Portuguese. To access the interpretation, please see the channels located at the bottom of your screen. You'll see a little globe with interpretation. Click on that and choose the language of your choice. We'll have an introduction and a discussion for about an hour and then finally we'll take questions from the audience, which should take us to about 90 minutes in total. If you have questions, you can start thinking of them and posting them right now using the Q&A button, which is also at the bottom of your screen. Please choose that rather than the chat box on the right hand side and then those questions will be fielded to the panelists in the last 30 minutes. Feel free to tweet about this event using hashtag biodiversity day and hashtag land dialogues and you can follow live tweeting from LAN portal and tenure facility Twitter accounts as well. I should add that today's session is being recorded and you will receive the link afterwards. To begin with, I'd like to get to know a little bit more about you in the audience. We've had a fantastic response. 800 people have signed up for this webinar and that shows just how many people are interested in the topic, which is how can Indigenous people help prevent future pandemics? Sadly, we cannot see and talk to each other, but let's find out a bit more about everyone who's out there with a few very short polls. So please join in. On the right hand side of your screen, you should see a place that says poll. Can you see that? On my screen, I, yes, it should have come up there. There you go. It's come up on the screen. First question, please choose one of the following. We want to find out where you're from. What region are you joining us from? So choose from one of these five boxes. Just click on five, six boxes. Click on the one that is appropriate for you. Which region are you joining us from? I'll just give you a few more seconds to choose that one. And then we'll just close that. Has everyone got that? I hope everyone's got that. Please choose which region. And okay, we'll close that poll. And now let's see the results. They should appear on the screen very shortly. I don't see them right now. Hopefully they'll come up any second or someone will point them out to me. Yes, there we go. Okay, so good. We've got quite a strong international spread. Sadly, not many in Africa or Oceania, but half the people from Europe, 29% from North America, 14% from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 14 from Asia. So very international, which is great. Now, next question, there'll be three of these questions. So just to know who you are. What sector question, the next poll question, what sector do you work in? What sector do you work in? Let's see which of those there should be a choice coming up of government, NGO, and so forth should appear on your screen very shortly. Here we go. Oh, no, that's the first. That's the first webinar poll back up with us. Sorry for the slight technical hitches here. Can we go to the second question, please? We still have that first question there. Let's see. No, it's still the first question. Let's see what is happening. No, it seems like we're having a few technical hitches there. Well, let's not get bogged down with that. What I will suggest is that we move on, and I'll just assume we'll stick with knowledge about where you're all from for now. This pandemic has shown us very clearly how the imbalance in ecosystems is driven by human activities. We've learned from studies and grim experience that outbreaks of infectious disease are more likely in areas of deforestation and monoculture plantations. We've learned that biodiversity is the best buffer against the spread of zoonotic pathogens. To put today's discussion in context, I'd just like to look at some numbers. Some people argue against land rights and environmental protection on economic grounds. They're saying that it will hurt livelihoods, that it will hurt GDP if we protect indigenous land and areas of rich biodiversity. Well, let's turn that around. Let's look at the cost of not protecting communities and nature. Let's look at the cost of this pandemic, for example. However you calculate it, COVID-19 has taken a horrific tally. We have 3.4 million dead so far, many more hospitalized suffering long COVID. The economic cost is enormous. The International Monetary Fund has warned that the final bill for the pandemic could total $28 trillion. The IMF has also estimated that 95 million people may have entered extreme poverty and 80 million more people are undernourished compared to pre-pandemic levels. So people can always ask, can we really afford to do this? But that is the wrong question. What we need to be asking is can we afford not to do this? Especially when you look on the other side of the equation, the equation. What might be the cheapest and most effective remedy? Countless studies have shown that support for indigenous and traditional community land rights is the most cost-effective way to protect forests, store carbon, and maintain biodiversity. To this, can we now add that it's one of the most cost-effective ways to prevent or reduce the risk of future disease outbreaks and pandemics? That's one of the questions we're asking today. What is the role of indigenous people in this crisis and local communities in this crisis? How can protection of their land rights help to protect all of us? How can they move to the forefront of decision-making? To kick things off, we will now have an introductory video from Dr. David Navarro. Dr. Navarro is a special envoy on COVID-19 for the World Health Organization. He's made his career in the International Civil Service, working for one time the Secretary General of the United Nations, also the Director General of the World Health Organization. Since February 2020, he has helped the WHO, WHO, deal with the pandemic. This video by him, video introduction by him, should now appear on your screens. How do you do? I'm really pleased to have an opportunity to link up with you today to talk about One Health Land Rights and Pandemics. My name is David Navarro and I've been working in this area since 2002, really, and I wanted to share with you really three thoughts. The first one is about equity. The pandemic caused by COVID-19, it really is hitting poor people much harder than anybody else. This is partly due to the direct impact of the virus because poorer people are much less easily able to protect themselves from infection. But it's also to do with the consequences of essential containment measures. These tend to hit poor people the worst. And unless there's a great deal of care to try to ensure that the interests of poor people are properly protected, then they will suffer and that suffering may not be reduced through response measures. So I'm saying we should do everything possible to encourage equity because this in turn reduces the threat associated with the current pandemic and pandemics to come. And I actually think that we really need to recognize that land rights are key to improving the position of poorer people and that if we really are going to respond to their needs, we have to also be advocating for land rights as well. The second point, I want to focus on biodiversity. Pandemics are commonly caused by newly emerging pathogens, that's new viruses or bacteria. And in 75% of cases, they spill over from the animal kingdom. And land rights for Indigenous people and local communities, they protect biodiversity and they reduce the risk of zoonoses. So that means that by encouraging land rights, we are both promoting biodiversity and also protecting health. My third point is to actually encourage you to really commit to one health. This is something I've been working on since 2005 when I first was brought into the effort to tackle bird flu. When we're trying to reduce the risk of disease, particularly diseases that spill over from animals to humans, we need to be able to focus on the interfaces between animal health, human health, plant health and environmental health. And we will only focus on the interfaces if we have a unified health discipline and that's what one health is. We need to be sure that we follow the one health approach to the full when we're preventing and then responding to disease outbreaks. And indeed, I would like to encourage the application of one health much more widely because in the end that is key to empowering everybody in response to pandemics. So in summary, land rights, particularly for poorer people, are absolutely key both to dealing with the inequities associated with pandemics and also reducing the risk of zoonotic disease. And the one health approach is the approach that I would commend to you all. So thank you again for giving me the chance to connect. I wish you well with the event. Great. How wonderful to have such an influential voice to get things started. David Navarro there with very important advocacy of this one health, one world idea. Now, we will now move in to meet our panel. We have a superb lineup of experts in their fields and areas. I'll briefly introduce them and then we'll get into the discussion. First up, we have Georgie Carino, who has been an active campaigner, an advocate over the past 35 years on Indigenous people's human rights at a community, national and international level. She's the senior policy advisor and former director of the Forest Peoples Program. She's an environment and development educator and researcher with expertise on Indigenous knowledge and traditional occupations, cultural and biological diversity, international standards on forest water and energy, extractive industries and corporate accountability. Hi, Georgie. Next up, Carlos, hi Carlos, Carlos Zambrana, Torrelio, apologies, is the associated vice president for conservation and health at the EcoHealth Alliance. Dr. Zambrana Torrelio works on the intersection between animal and human health. He is particularly interested in how biological diversity from viruses to ecosystems respond to anthropogenic gradients. In other words, the transition from city to forest and how the risk levels increase between the two. Carlos combines quantitative methods from different fields, including biodiversity, economics and spatial analysis in his research. Next up, we have Eric, Eric Fevri, hi Eric, who is a joint appointee at the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya and a professor of veterinary infectious diseases at the Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences at the University of Liverpool. He's an epidemiologist specialized in the area of zoonotic diseases. That is, diseases that can transmit between animals and people and how they emerge spread and cause ill health in humans and animals. His team's work is very interdisciplinary involving biology, medicine, veterinary medicine, but also ecology and anthropology, urban planning and socio-economics. Then we have very happy to welcome Francisco Piaco, hi Francisco, who is the leader of the Asheninga people. Francisco was advisor and secretary of the state government for indigenous peoples between 2003 and 2010. He then advised the presidency of the National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, in the administration of Marcio Meira during a moment of rapprochement between the federal government and indigenous peoples. In 2018, he was a candidate for federal deputy for Polo of Acre. After that, the Asheninga leader began to act with the indigenous movement and organization of his people outside of the government sphere. Last but not the least, very welcome to Gladys Kalima Zikusoka, who is a Ugandan veterinarian and founder of Conservation through Public Health, an organization dedicated to the coexistence of endangered mountain gorillas, other wildlife humans and livestock in Africa. She was Uganda's first wildlife veterinary officer and the star of the BBC documentary Gladys the African Vet. In 2009, she won the Whitley Gold Award for her conservation work. A lot of expertise there over a wide area. Let's get into the discussion. Remember, later we'll have Q&A, so please submit questions via the box below. But let's get into the deep knowledge from our panelists. I'd like to start with Eric. Eric, maybe you could build on what we heard from David Navarro and tell us what is the One Health approach and what... Oh, my apologies. Eric, could you first of all give us examples of diseases jumping from animals to humans that have not necessarily made the news until now? Yes. Good afternoon. Good morning. Hello, everybody. So absolutely, so-called zoonotic diseases which move between humans and other animals are actually a big group of pathogens and there are many that listeners today might not have heard of. I have a little list here. I'll just read them. Rift valley fever, cystococcus, brucellosis, echinococcus, rabies, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, Lyme disease, E. coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter, bovine tuberculosis, hantavirus, Q fever, Congo hemorrhagic fever, chiosinura, forest disease, sleeping sickness, plague, and many more. There are many of these. In fact, more than 100 more. And in fact, well over half of known human diseases are such diseases that cross that boundary between humans and non-human animals. Some rarely come into human populations and some are making that leap on a daily basis and causing what we might call a daily grind of infection in populations. And many of these diseases are termed by the World Health Organization as neglected diseases because we know little about them or little about how they spread. But in the context of today's webinar, we might call them diseases of neglected populations. That is, they occur in groups of people who have little voice to express the importance of these, the impacts of these diseases in their populations. And many are hiding away in animal hosts that we don't yet know about. So slowly evolving and going about their evolution and one day may find a way to jump into the human population. And I'm sure Carlos will tell us more his thoughts on that kind of thing shortly. And so for all of these diseases, we have to keep up a strong surveillance effort to understand where they're a problem, where they might be a problem, and how we can predict the problem that they do cause or might cause in the future with surveillance efforts going forward. Sorry, Jonathan. I can't hear you. So COVID is only a part of the story. Thank you for making that clear. There's a lot of other neglected but important diseases out there. And yeah, it's going to happen again and again. On that question, that sort of suggests that we do need a really big holistic approach. So going back to that one health idea of David Nabarro, what is that? Could you elaborate a little bit? And what is its role, potential role as well in the COVID-19 pandemic? Sure. So traditionally or usually, we think of health in different populations separately. We worry about humans and their health as a separate problem from say, animals and their health or the health of the broader environment in which we all live. And one health really tries to bring all of that back together into a more unified kind of paradigm. It's really a concept that brings all of those elements of health back together and makes explicit that the boundary between humans and non-human animals is a very thin one. And as I described, pathogens can move across that boundary very easily indeed. And also that the environment that we as a species share with the multiple other species in the world and the health of that environment is a key factor in describing how those healthy relationships can be maintained and how pathogens might spread across those different populations. One way I sometimes think about it is a loaf of bread on the counter in your kitchen. If you cut that loaf of bread, you expose the inside of that loaf of bread and the moist environment of that bread, things that are in the air will land on it and mold might grow. And the interface between us and us as humans and other species is a little bit like that. There's a very delicate balance between our relationship with our environment and our relationship with other species. And if we mess around or play with or change the nature of the relationship in any way, we're increasing the opportunity for something interesting to happen at that interface. And really what One Health does is try and understand all of those different elements that come together at that interface to understand how something might happen, when it might happen, and why. And with respect to COVID, COVID was originally a disease in other animals, non-humans, and it evolved to be able to infect humans and moved into the human population and has then spread very quickly. So COVID is now a human disease and we worry about it very much from a medicalized perspective thinking about how one human contacts another human, how wearing a mask with other people stops the transmission of that virus. But originally it came from a different species and we missed it really. We missed that jump event and it then spread and became a big problem in the human population. So One Health allows us to try and consider all of those things together and keep a focus on those interfaces where, from my perspective as a biologist, interesting things happen. But from a public health point of view where we have to intervene to stop those kinds of things from happening and having a big effect. Thank you, Eric. Yes, those interesting things for you can be quite terrible for lots of other people, of course. And I'm really struck by the idea that the duality that we often make between human and non-human, between environment and economy is a false one sometimes and we're much more interconnected than many people would make out. So thank you for that. We'll continue those discussions shortly. I'd like to move now to Georgie. Hi, Georgie. Indigenous peoples and local communities all over the world have disproportionately suffered during this pandemic. Yet some people argue they might actually have the key to preventing future ones. Can you explain how Indigenous peoples have dealt with epidemics in the past? Thanks, Jonathan, and greetings to everyone. Here, for example, in the Philippines we have customary rules to heal and restore community health and resilience through rest days, community lockdowns or seasonal restrictions on work and harvesting, and cultural taboos to protect sacred and important cultural species. Rituals and the use of traditional medicines are important practices for healing and well-being. Local and traditional foods are important contributions to the diet and all these help to maintain the health of the community and our lands. So in the Philippines, key biodiversity areas overlap ancestral domains and ecosystems in a much better state are found mostly on Indigenous lands and waters. So Indigenous peoples actively defend our territories against land use change, agricultural intensification, wildlife trade, and harmful extractive projects. Illegal wildlife trade is rampant in the Philippines, undermining customary sustainable use practices amongst Indigenous peoples who maintain respectful and reciprocal relationships with nature and other spirits around us. Under severe lockdown, states and businesses have aggressively stepped up extractive and energy projects and military operations affecting Indigenous peoples. One example is the renewal of the Oceania gold mining operations in Nueva Vizcaya, compromising the provinces watershed and agroforestry values. So this copper and gold mining project is within the Magat watershed area feeding the Magat River, the largest tributary of the Cagayan River, and traversing one of the few remaining primary forests in the Philippines. Local residents barricaded against the entry of the company in their lands, leading to violent dispersal and injury of several Indigenous persons, mostly women. And this line of defense against development aggression is also a line of defense against disease and their spread. Land use changes and deforestation disrupt this balance in relationships between nature and people. This is true in natural systems or in industrial food systems, which create conditions for animal pathogens and diseases to transfer to people. So I can see exactly how these relationships are true in the Philippines. Thank you, Georgie. It sounds like some fairly horrible things going on there, both for local communities and with potential spillovers far beyond. Looking more sort of on the positive side, it's been suggested, as I mentioned earlier, that if Indigenous people in local communities have stronger land rights, then that could be one of the most affordable options for preventing the kind of spillover conditions that Eric mentioned earlier from wildlife. Could you talk a little bit about the potential for doing that? Yes. As I was mentioning earlier, territorial governance and customary use by Indigenous peoples have safeguarded much of the remaining biodiversity. So yes, it is affordable because it is carried out through the collective actions of community members, often without direct financial contributions by the government. But this guardianship remains precarious and land rights are not secure, despite the existence of the Indigenous People's Rights Act in the Philippines. Implementing this law will require budgetary contributions for delineation, demarcation, and restoration of community lands and support for community self-determined development. Indigenous peoples have become impoverished by the current economic model. The government continues to promote mining, which is extracting local wells and causing destruction of ecosystems and communities, which requires very expensive remediation. The costs of addressing biodiversity loss and climate change impacts are far more expensive than preventing these global problems. In much the same way that curing pandemics when they occur is much more expensive than preventing them, the incentives given to destructive projects far outweigh the meager financial support flowing to Indigenous communities for our vital contributions. So affordability may be one criterion for supporting Indigenous People's Land Rights to protect nature and prevent pandemics. But taking a broader view and other values into account, securing Indigenous People's Land Rights is also one of the best ways to address systemic and structural inequalities which are at the root of our planetary crisis. The weakness of an instrumental approach towards Indigenous peoples, for example just focusing on affordability, is that the full values of cultural diversity and our other contributions may be overlooked. For example, many Indigenous peoples are prioritizing revitalization of Indigenous food systems to address the current biodiversity and health crisis. So this nexus between food, ecology, health, and culture is at the heart of an Indigenous food systems approach which links the well-being of the planet to the well-being of people through sustainable and healthy diets. Indigenous homelands are rich in species and genetic diversity compared to surrounding lands. The full values of these lands are actually priceless contributions by our peoples. Thank you, Joji. You put that very well. You wrapped all the different elements together. This is definitely not just about affordability, though unfortunately it seems affordability is one of the driving forces. There's so much more to that and in a way the culture is wrapped into a more healthy relationship with nature. When we lose the culture maybe we lose that relationship. So I think that's a really important area of discussion. I will now move. We've heard from Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Let's cross the Pacific there and hear what's happening on the ground in Brazil. Let's hear from Francisco. Obviously Brazil is one of the hot spots of the pandemic. 439,000 people have died in Brazil. A very high number of them, proportionate to the population, are Indigenous kilumbola or from riverine communities. Francisco, can you please explain how Indigenous people in Brazil are coping in this situation? Brazil, we have a very high death toll due to the pandemics. We actually surpassed 440,000 in that and this is very of course a very important issue for us and the Indigenous community has a very high death toll as well. So us, the Indigenous peoples from all over Brazil are going through a very hard situation. Not only we are faced with the pandemic but also the lack of commitment by the state of having a proper strategy to protect the Indigenous peoples. Therefore internally within our communities we have been discussing and working in order to protect ourselves and we are using our traditional knowledge to do so. So historically we have gone through difficult times such as this and it's not only pandemics. We have knowledge, we have traditional medicines that we extract from the forest. We have managed actually to save many lives thanks to traditional knowledge from our people. So our strategy is isolation. We are isolating and preventing contact. We are also working with our traditional medicine knowledge and medicines that we extract from the forest to protect ourselves. This is from the pages, the healers. They are acting and they are and all our leaders are working very hard but we did lose a few leaders during the process. Specifically in the case of the Brazilian Amazon it also coincides with a serious crisis in terms of deforestation rates. We have very high deforestation rates going on in the Amazon. This is frightening really especially when combined with the pandemic. So we are suffering an attack. Indigenous peoples are being, they are under attack from these two spheres in a very violent manner. It is very clear to us, it is very clear to our people as you have mentioned here, it is very clear that when the forest is intact, is protected and the Indigenous peoples are in the forest, we are protected. But when you change our practices, our paths, our environment then we become vulnerable. That's when we start getting worried and concerned. We are very concerned with the pandemic and with the protection of the forest. We fight for our land rights and for protection of the forest and biodiversity. These were important conquests and victories we achieved in the past but they are now under threat because the state is not protecting, is not ensuring these rights are respected. And as they are written in the national constitution of Brazil and this has had a huge impact on Indigenous peoples. So when we see these attacks to our land rights and to the rights to our traditions and customs due to this external pressure due to interests from businesses that really go over, literally go over our homes, we are threatened because the forest is our home. The rivers, the paths within the forest, this is our home and we are really working hard to protect those because this is what promotes sustainability in the world and this is the threat we are going, we are under at the moment. When you start changing and destroying the environment, our people will go with it and will perish with it. So every day of our lives we are working and fighting to have the state protect our rights and we understand that any operation in the forest is a threat to our lives and be it from the pandemic or businesses or climate change, all these threaten our existence and our lives. We may not be prepared to face the pace of change. Francisco, you have already answered the second question I was going to ask you which is what would be the value of protecting or strengthening indigenous land rights in terms of helping to reduce the risks of disease spreads? I mean I suppose I've spoken to several epidemiologists recently and they've said they're very worried that perhaps the next epidemic could come from the Amazon because there's so much deforestation happening there. You've already answered my question so maybe briefly a different question. This would be do you think people in Brazil are starting to realize that there is a connection between destroying nature and becoming sick? I think that a large portion of the population is now aware. The science and scientists are warning of this. There's a lot of research being done in this field. Universities and especially young researchers are aware and they feel the need to better understand the connection between forest and disease. But we are still a long way to go. We still need the Brazilian people as a whole to acknowledge the importance of the Amazon to their lives and to their survival. The survival that exists nowadays. We need the state to do that. But the population in general still doesn't understand because we can see that there is not enough power to face these crises to make the state fulfill its obligations. So international pressure has influenced a lot. Here in Brazil for example this is what's happening. The international pressure is very important to help Brazilians to take the responsibility into their hands. People say that the world is meddling into Brazilian affairs but I think that that's not what they're doing. I think we are globally responsible. Wherever we are we need to be concerned about the well-being of the world. Just like the Achanica people we believe that we need to work together because anything we do will have an effect and everybody will pay the same price for whatever it is that we do. So we understand that it is a process that needs to be strengthened because we need to defend the environment because the way it's going in Brazil the way things are going when it comes to the environment and indigenous peoples the fact that people just don't value our traditional knowledge we are at risk of turning the Amazon into a problem for Brazil and a problem for the world because if the Amazon does not provide the environmental services that it provides nowadays and if it disappears the consequences will be dear not only for Brazil but for the whole world. So we are working to raise awareness about this. There's no other way around it. We need to have a state that is concerned. We need to have a population in Brazil that is concerned about this issue. We are we have such a knowledge wealth in the forest peoples we still need even after many many centuries in the forest we still need every day we find new things even though we've been here for thousands of years but can you imagine people who have never been in the forest people who have never been there and just see the forest through a film or just see something green and that's it they understand that there are trees that there's biodiversity but it's much more than that there is a spirituality that needs to be understood as well. So I think that we need to act and we need to respect all continent all continents all countries with their cultural diversity but also paying attention and being responsible for our homeland which is our planet. Thank you really important point that people starting to understand but not nearly enough more international pressure is needed. Clearly webinars like this on this topic I think this you know it's why it's so important and there needs to be a lot more so thank you very much for that. We'll now move to Carlos, hi Carlos, now you know from more the science perspective and a sort of more global perspective before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic a 2015 paper from EcoHealth Alliance suggested that land use change was the leading driver for emerging zoonosis. Can you tell us a bit more about this study? I mean we kind of semi-predicted that this might happen or something like this please tell us more. Great thank you so much for the question I will reply in Spanish if I may. Thank you very much for your question yes we are working with a topic of infectious diseases and more especially the deforestation and the land use change the paper you're talking about which was published in 2015 what we did was to prepare a list of all the different diseases which started for the first time in human populations since 1940 so for example the first time Ebola started or spilled over from an animal to human or to human that was the first event and that was the first time that we could find also the first time for example that HIV also happened in a human person from the primates also that's another event we are researching for each event we're trying to understand which are the factors to try to explain what happened in that particular moment something important to remember here is that and it's important to clarify really that diseases as Eric rightly said zoonosis they are present and most of them come from animals from the wildlife and they come to the human life but the key factor is the interaction between the humans and the wildlife this indirect connection this connection how do we I mean humans interact with the wildlife and this will determine how the appearance of these diseases is going to happen these spillover effects so for each case we examine and we try to understand which are the factors underlying the appearance of Ebola for example when it first happened in a human being most cases this is due to the fact that we have an important change in the landscape of these places for example deforestation now deforestation can be measured in different types like for example the loss of forest cover but also to to fragment or to just leave small patches of the forest also to have more crops of palm oil for example just the monoculture and also the expansion of the agriculture area we are feeding ourselves more we are feeding and we are eating more as the world and we demand more meat to consume so the demand for meat products in europe or in china this is going to cause deforestation in the amazon so it's just up to these demands which are put in the pressure in these places and when we deforester more there are more people working in this place there's going to be a greater interaction between human beings and animals and there's going to be more opportunities or more likelihood for an unknown virus to come to the human context thank you Carlos very important the way you linked the the local outbreaks and global pressures to to eat into rainforests and other biologically rich environment and create new interfaces as Eric described them where these interesting things happen that start to cause problems in a much wider area so thank you for elaborating on that and then the question that you know we're asking everyone the fundamental question here for this webinar is how can stronger indigenous land rights help to reduce these risks or manage these risks and maybe you could also tell us a little bit more about the study on this subject recently by IPEZ the it's basically the the UN's collection of scientists to study biodiversity they they looked directly at this link between biodiversity and pandemics so maybe you could tell us a little bit about that as well thank you great thank you so much I will keep this out in English to streamline the discussion yes and in the IPEZ report on pandemics and biodiversity and pandemics we we look at what is the evidence that link biodiversity and the emergence of infectious diseases so one of the important discussions that we put there is the role of indigenous territories to prevent a pandemic so we need to understand that indigenous territories mostly the diversity of the world exists in this landscape that are traditionally owned by indigenous people and a local community so that it's it's extremely important to understand from this part from this this this this landscape this landscape it has the biodiversity is slowly declining in this area so there's less biodiversity loss inside these areas where they're serving better biodiversity but but also these territories indigenous are suffering from the you know a lot of pressure around these areas for expansion of agriculture for example and so these areas can really preserve biodiversity for for you know like for for any reason that you may think even for future generations even for you know genetic resources natural resources only just by by the part that we wanted to say biodiversity but also there is a co another co-benefit of having territories indigenous territories which is the maintenance of human health so indigenous territories provide another service which is again maintenance of human health for example we've seen that the forest stations directly link to the the increase of malaria especially in brazil and in in in malaysia and in other countries that we are working on by keeping the forest you know low disturbance of forest then we reduce the number of the cases of malaria and that has you know benefits for the people in general but also reduces the costs of the government that they need to invest to treat people with malaria so this is just one example this is just one disease think about other diseases that Eric mentioned before so this there is an accumulated and saving benefits that economic benefits that they can be and we can gain for from keeping indigenous territories finally I want to mention that we need to start thinking about indigenous territories as a as a network not just an isolated area in somewhere in brazil or somewhere in africa or in the southeast asia this can really as a whole can help to to to protect the the human health for for everyone we we we need to take advantage of the the protected areas in general overlap somehow with indigenous territories I'm having this network global network of of well managed forest can really help us to you know save our our health our human health but also can help they come from each country gracias Carlos I thought that was very exciting that last point you made of an in you know really thinking in terms of an indigenous network not one pace here one piece there I think to some degree that has started but it's not nearly recognized enough and this year when we have big cop events for climate and Glasgow for biodiversity and coming I would love if this was discussed more fully because I think too often indigenous and traditional communities are very wrongly seen as sort of like backward or whatever way you want to put it they put it in a back in a pejorative way but this is nonsense they provide their specialists on protecting biodiversity and needs to be thought of in those terms it's like super specialists who contributed a lot to biodiversity in the forest so thank you I really found that very very stimulating now our last speaker Gladys we turn to you now it would be great if you could tell us from the programs that you've been working on and the work that you do what would be your recommendations for preventing zoonotic diseases in in local and indigenous communities yeah thank you very much for inviting me on this webinar I would say that you know we championed a one-health approach as early as 2003 based on experiences I had working as a first vet for the Uganda wildlife authority and the reason they hired a vet actually was because they were very concerned about diseases spreading from tourists who are coming to visit critically endangered mountain gorillas which at the time were only about 650 left in the wild they were concerned about a fatal flu such as COVID-19 spreading to them and they felt they needed a veterinarian up to that point everyone thought that wildlife you know should just be left on its own and it should be natural selection and but very soon when I started working I found out that community health was very important for protecting wildlife because within nine months of my being hired we investigated a skin disease outbreak which turned out to be scabies in the gorillas the baby gorilla died and the rest only recovered with treatment but it came from people the local communities living around the park so the gorillas go out went outside to eat people's banana plants because once they got habituated for tourism they lost their fear of people and then they went back to range where they used to range before and you know windy when it was created as a park it used to be a forest reserve where people could cut trees actually there were indigenous people living there the Batwa community but unfortunately they had to be taken out in order to create the park and they were put in settlements and they're being looked after by various NGOs but they felt that they couldn't have them there when tourists are entering the park although surprisingly or they used to protect the wildlife because they had this this belief that if you look in the eyes of a gorilla it's bad luck but when it was created as a park it was better to put them the government thought it was better that they stay outside so that doesn't disrupt the activity but a lot of the money from tourism also goes to the local communities so when it was traced to people living around the park we set up an NGO a few years later conservation through public health it's also a US registered nonprofit because we felt that you can't protect the wildlife without also improving the health of the communities so though a lot of people think of zoonotic diseases only spreading from animals to people there's also disease zoonotic diseases are spread from people to animals and that was has been our main focus but one thing that we've also realized that why did they get why do we have such zoonotic diseases you know they also have a high prevalence of tuberculosis they also have you know because they have poor hygiene and sanitation so they're more likely to get all kinds of infectious diseases and they also eat bush meat and bush meat has you know they've been Ebola outbreaks in Central Africa gorillas that have died of Ebola or chimpanzees people who ate them died of Ebola so disease goes in both directions and one thing that we do at CTPH is on top of preventing diseases by looking at comparative pathogen analysis between people wildlife and livestock we also very much focus on behavior change communication where we basically work with the local communities and from them we select community health workers stand transparently with their local leaders and these community health workers are trained to do conservation work so as they tell people not to you know to be healthy and hygienic not to poach because poaching also results in picking up diseases from wildlife they told them not to cut down trees protect the forest it's important water source when you protect it you're also more likely less likely to get diseases so the whole it's a whole package which goes towards them and because it comes from people within their community it's not imposed from someone elsewhere from you know from within Uganda or from another country they're more likely to change and we've seen a lot of behavior change and I believe that the way forward is by putting communities at the forefront of changing and making their lives better not imposing from elsewhere but having a bottom up approach and through it we even had a batwa because it's we mainly have around green de forest where the mountain gorillas are found mainly by batiga but the batwa who are evicted from the forest they have village health and conservation teams among them basically community health workers doing conservation work as well they basically are changing the communities in their settlements and one great thing that has come out of the pandemic is that because they're worried about getting COVID which has been a focus of our work when the pandemic began getting stopping people from getting COVID through improving hygiene mask wearing of social distancing the hand the number of hand washing facilities has gone up outside people's homes so I really believe that behavior change communication is a very good way of getting indigenous communities to prevent zoonotic disease transmission. Thank you Gladys, really interesting points many struck out but among them were this idea that this transmission is a two-way street and we can harm nature as well as nature of non-human nature as well as human nature that was important and this idea that you don't just train community activists to be conservationists or health workers that the two jobs are in a way combined and it's important to see those two things together and the health of nature and the health of humans is interlinked I think that's very strong the question again going back to the question we're asking everyone and do you think you know in the areas where you work that this pandemic has helped people understand that protecting indigenous and local land is helpful to protect biodiversity and as a result can help to reduce risks of disease outbreaks is that happening? I believe it's happening a lot more people realizing the big link between you know protecting biodiversity and and reducing the level of emerging infectious diseases is being understood a lot more because everyone needs to think it's not linked but actually when the pandemic began people who used to wonder why we're combining the two came and said now we understand what you've been doing all along and this was not only at the community level but also at the government level and the donor community as well and I think that even within where we live in Uganda East Africa people are beginning to realize that we have to protect nature in order to save ourselves and you know a lot of it is like you have to really support the local communities you know make sure that when they have agriculture on their land it's sustainable because that's what they used to do before these for these protected areas were set up they used to do things sustainably they used to live with the wildlife sustainably but now it's a matter of getting them back to doing things in a sustainable way they don't over harvest from the forest they don't they protect their land they use proper soil and water agriculture and go back to some of the things that they used to do before which they have kind of given up on I mean we even work with traditional healers in the communities to get them to you know recognize people who are ill take them to refer them to the health centers but also to continue to protect what they have the forest is a good resource of medicinal plants but the more that you destroy it they no longer have these medicinal plants and they're not even able to plant them elsewhere because everything's changing the whole climate and the ecosystem is changing so it's a matter of working with all the existing cultural leaders or cultural systems that were in place and building upon them to to really protect the wildlife some of our cultures you know I for example come from the lion plant and I'm not in my clan you're not allowed to kill or touch a lion because it's a big taboo and everybody has a different plan that they're oh whether it's an elephant or a particular plant my mom is from a certain plant and the way that it works is that there's always going to be a group of people that protects a certain species of animal or plants within our culture and so all these things people are realizing that if you want to avoid future pandemics you have to start go back to preserving culture and preserving nature and preserving you know the rights of people who are living in certain places so yeah I mean in a way the pandemic the silver lining to the pandemic has been that we need to be much more careful about conserving nature and looking at it as a way of keeping us all healthy. Thank you Gladys thank you all for for these these comments and we are now moving on to question and answer a little bit later than planned but have a fair bit of time we already have quite a bunch of questions but feel free to add to them don't forget at the question and answer button at the bottom of the screen. Let's start thank you to my colleagues who've filtered some of these questions for me. There is okay the top question for it's addressed to Eric and Carlos so this question the researchers have successfully trained communities in DRC to use technology to monitor and report signs of Ebola before spillover occurs and IPEZ experts worked with indigenous hunters to assess extinction risk so the question is what role do you see for local communities as partners in protecting human and planetary health so very much building on what Gladys has just told us but Eric and Carlos from from this sort of bigger global perspective what's what are your thoughts on that okay you said my name first I'll start and then hand to Carlos it's essential I think any any health system that is divorced from the people it's supposed to serve won't function very well and so in in the context of of those kinds of interface environments working with people who who live and use those environments is is really important we've heard Gladys examples sometimes it may simply be around surveillance and sometimes technology can help with that reporting systems and so on but but otherwise ensuring that there is a means by which the people at those interfaces have a voice to speak of the things that are going on there and and and report that through the system where it needs to be heard so that appropriate actions or preventative preventative actions can be can be taken so I don't think we can divorce the actions that need to be taken at those interfaces from the people who live at them the two are completely intertwined Carlos yeah that's a good question and actually there are absolutely I think that the the indigenous people and local communities play an important role in surveillance systems and this has been some interesting examples for example in Bolivia a few years ago there's a part of a project that I was working with there's a local community living very close to the area they they were working with us and they observe different like a bunch of monkeys that holler holler monkeys that were dead immediately one of the teams the examine these these animals and they found that these animals were you know they they they had yellow people so we so there was a response by the by the it's possible to do that and there are systems for example in Thailand there are a few systems you can see if you see other animals they take pictures and then they they send it to a center you know like where they're like veterinarians they can assess immediately if these animals are you know what are the diagnosed of reasons because they are far away areas and then they can help even potentially prevent local objects this is developed for for domestic animals but then can be easily expanded to other you know monitoring other wildlife thank you um the the next question that this is for all of you but um maybe as Eric and Carlos have already spoken on the first one we could focus on uh Gladys, Georgie and Francisco for this one but later Eric and Carlos happy to chip in if you wish to um so this question is how would you see the global north and western countries wealthier countries making up for decades of colonizing and resource extraction that have resulted in the mass deaths of indigenous communities and resulted in environmental and infectious disease ramifications that we see now um so basically I suppose this is a question of uh responsibility is a question of um uh inequality and how to address that and yeah who you know some of the things might have costs who should be paying if any of you um uh Francisco or Georgie Gladys whichever of you would like to start just jump in um I'll come first I think uh everyone is so interconnected uh today and as you yourself as mentioned a lot of the um very destructive policies uh money or uh law actually emanates from these powerful governments in the north right and also the over consumption of goods are also emanating from the north right so um acting on structural changes in uh your own countries and societies will actually be very important in um lifting the pressures away from um uh for example indigenous peoples because uh indigenous peoples are in a way our survivors we have navigated how to address these problems but a lot of them emanate from um an equal wealth an equal loss and even a lack of understanding that modern societies have actually much to learn from indigenous peoples and that uh these impositions of knowledge from uh coming from the north um needs to be addressed in uh in our own minds and in everyone's own practice and behavior thank you Georgie um Francisco or Gladys would you like to address that um Francisco I believe that countries such as Brazil uh could act in a smarter way when we think of of our political leaders they could act in a smarter way we have seen many countries from the developed world already discovering already identifying harmful practices from the past especially in this stage of development Brazil cannot afford to go blind to to play the blind man and pretend it is not seeing all these problems that have already been identified by other countries we cannot ignore the experience from other countries I think we need to follow the global debate because we can find in the global debate that there are many questions there are many uh there are many issues that have improved to be wrong I mean we can correct wrongs from the past because even though there is uh that that things have reached a certain level there are things still to be done so that we can have a population that can fully solve their problems but I think that first world countries face many problems still but there are more things that things that can help us not to make the same mistakes so that we do not repeat the same mistakes that were made by developed countries in the beginning of their development another point that I think it's important to mention is that even developed countries can still receive products that are produced in in developing countries such as Brazil that are actually illegally obtained that are the result of deforestation and and and the like products that do not obey the environmental legislation and we still have a large market of Brazilian products that are illegal that do not respect the current environmental law and also do not respect the indigenous people's rights and these products are in the market so I think that it's possible to work in a way that would start hindering this market thank this would be something that I think that we could use as a strategy because you cannot you cannot say Brazil don't do this but you buy products from Brazil that are illegal so it doesn't make sense thank you Francisco very important um yes that connection between what what's happening here um well me in the in a consumer nation uh and what's happening there um gladus did you want to address this too yes um just to add on to what Francisco has just been said regarding consumption of products responsible consumption it's very possible for people from the the global north to really support the global south for example during the pandemic it's been widely seen that through is because of the lockdowns all over the world people have not been able to travel to these places where they can spend money at wherever they find you know the wildlife and the people but if there are ways that you can export these products abroad and for example if someone's buying coffee or tea they'd rather buy tea or coffee that's been you know bought at a fair price and is helping smallholder farmers and is helping not to destroy the environment and and I would just like to give an example of uh we have like we started a social enterprise called Gorilla Conservation Coffee where the farmers around windy forests we found that they were not benefiting from tourism directly so where we decided to give them a better price for their good coffee which is then sold all over the world but it was mainly being sold in Uganda until the pandemic occurred and then we started to look for markets elsewhere like the UK or the US and New Zealand and in this way then they don't have to enter the forest to port to survive because they're getting money and other people in the community are now trying to sell their crafts abroad so responsible consumption is one very good way of support of the global north supporting the global north to keep things going and help to protect nature at the same time I think it's very important for the global north to really recognize that it's it's much more sustainable to train people and build the capacity of local groups in the global south rather than only bringing in you know experts from abroad to do all the work that people locally should be learning to do for themselves um because this then enables a long long-term capacity building and ownership of the solutions and helping things to be on a long term to get the countries in the global south you know to come from being underdeveloped to improve you know to reduce poverty in these countries and raise their standards of living on a long term the global north can help with training and things like that but if they start implementing the work that people are supposed to be doing for themselves to get themselves out of poverty or you know get themselves out of destroying their own habitats then it basically you just keep on perpetuating this cycle that keeps going on for decades and decades so I think that's something that donors and you know need to find better ways of supporting biodiversity and health in such situations. Thank you very much Gladys. The next question going back to Eric and Carlos there's a few on this on this line but they basically all say well along the lines of if one health had been properly implemented 10 five years ago how could it have made a difference in this COVID crisis to make the the epidemic less severe whoever wants to jump in first. Okay Carlos I'm happy to see the floor to you unless you want me to start. Go ahead Eric. Okay so one health is not a new concept and organizations, individuals, scientists, the public have been working or thinking in a one health context to some extent already for many years and that's helped us understand the interconnectivity between ecosystems between hosts and reservoirs and so on and as others have rightly said the fact that something like COVID was likely to occur at some point wasn't a surprise to those who'd sat down to consider it and there are lots of places lots of areas where which we haven't really discussed very much where the one health concept is also very relevant in terms of food systems for example and the connectivity of farm to urban populations who might consume food and so on so with with respect to the to the question it the fact that an event such as the jump of a virus into the human population would occur we knew that was happening we were sort of ready but we weren't doing enough surveillance in order to catch where and when that might actually happen and so I don't think we can blame one health on that what we what we can what we need to say is that the the approach and then the response to the occurrence of that event wasn't particularly well handled and it dragged on too long and it was allowed really to become an outbreak an epidemic and then a global pandemic so I'm not sure one health could have prevented that from happening but certainly it can it it can one health can help us understand that that is likely to happen and then we need to work with people who are responsible for surveillance policy effectively to to put in place stronger surveillance so that we can detect when that happens and that we can respond to it more quickly thank you Eric no I didn't mean to suggest I don't I don't think the questions mean to suggest that one health is responsible in any way I suppose the question is if you could implement it more thoroughly and more countries took it more seriously and put more resources into it how could it have helped and I think you did address that thank you and and Carlos if you could also tackle that no I completely agree with Eric it's a matter of resource mobilization through these type of approaches another example interesting example is the Ebola outbreak a few years ago in in in Liberia and Sierra Leone there's some you know like 2014 so it's hundreds of thousands of people got infected with Ebola and after learning about this you know a difficult problem the Liberia government implemented a one health approach that it's embedded in the government now so they learn by you know by by living through this extreme problem and they they now have this implemented in the government so now every other week I believe it's there's reports from not just from from the public health component but also from the environmental sector but also for the human and the animal sector so they everybody's working together they'll learn from this from this problem and they now implemented that there are new initiatives similar similar initiatives in other countries I believe Cote d'Ivoire also I think implemented something like that and the great thing about this is that more people are learning and understanding this problem and they're trying to implement a one health approach into their you know legislation into their government so it's a lesson learned but now we need to start mobilizing researchers and training more people on this topic thank you Carlos you remind me of an interview I had last year with Roger Fruthos who's a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Montpellier and he also predicted that a huge pandemic would happen and he said to prevent this in the future he told me we need a massive international cooperation and investment to encourage monitoring and education at a local level so yes protection of land rights is important but also investment at a local level in building up surveillance systems and then responding so you catch things early and again I said you know of course that will cost a lot of money but look at if you don't do it how much we've all paid I'd love to get in if we went a little bit further and everybody kept their answers very short I'd like to put a last question to you and if you could just keep it to two or three sentences your answer I think will will not be too late but it will be this question for all of you looking forward this is an epic year with a cop for the climate it's an epic year with a cop for biodiversity and lots of other reasons if you could do one thing to sort of promote this idea of indigenous help to prevent pandemics support for indigenous land rights at that level if you could send one message to those policymakers what might it be and again please do keep it brief because we're actually at the end of our time but it will almost be like your your final headline that you do leave with so maybe we could start with Georgie sorry to put you thanks Jonathan so the governments are now negotiating a new biodiversity strategy which is supposed to be adopted and the message we're sending them is that if you want to succeed in conservation in sustainable use and protection of ecosystem species and genetic diversity really respect the rights of indigenous peoples and put that in our strategy thank you Georgie to the point and very precise next Eric if you don't mind yes so the the scientific community has been saying a lot of what I and others have been saying today for a long time and what what I would say to those groupings of people is that ministers of finance need to now listen and need to allocate the resources necessary for a lot of what we know works to be put into action and if if if the finances aren't available at national level at international level and at the very local level too then we can keep talking but things will never really change so we need that financing and that that is demonstrative of commitment totally agree which is why I emphasize the beginning look at the cost if you don't do it we could have that again and so let's find that money glad is please yeah I would say that just echoing what what everybody's saying it's very important for yes ministers finance to put more resources into both human and animal health care because we often find actually that when you have diseases there's much more resources going into human health and animal health when you have disease outbreaks and then once you've served go to case management the source of the disease outbreak remains because it's not enough resources to prevent it or to do enough ecological monitoring and so government should put more resources in health care in general and also to support communities to you know to improve on their livelihoods and I think that's very important thank you thanks Gladys Francisco please I believe that that in terms of public policy in in the case of Brazil we have made huge advancements but now these legislation needs to be enforced come out of paper and become real tangible for example our environmental act which protects the forests and our communities this legislation has been established in the past but nowadays we see the contrary movement going against the our past conquests so these care for the environment has to be embedded in our souls we need to take care of the precious knowledge from indigenous people and the peoples from the forest thank you Francisco embedded in our souls what a fantastic message and finally Carlos please yeah thank you so two things I think it's important to recognize that the rights of indigenous people is and securing rights for indigenous people is essential it's cost effective so we need to start talking with policymakers in economic terms so because that's what they that's the language they understand and second that we need to make sure that indigenous people and local communities participate in the negotiations and all these high events that we are discussing usually those people are not represented for the you know by by their authorities and we need to make sure they are there speaking raising their voice thank you Carlos thank you all I think we've had some amazing discussions today some really strong bright ideas indigenous networks across much stronger than we even have now the need to focus at a community level to to link human health animal health that nature health the idea of embedding nature protection in our souls I mean all wonderful wonderful messages and also reinforcing that this this is and it makes economic sense if this isn't a cost doing nothing is the cost I think that you know this has been fabulous for all of those reasons so thank you to our panel thank you again to our host the Ford Foundation the land portal foundation the tenure facility and Thompson Reuters Foundation thank you to the translators Luciana Cynthia Maria Sarah Sandrini and Natalia thank you to all of you in the audience for watching and staying with us sorry we couldn't use all of your questions but I hope it was as enjoyable and as intellectually stimulating for you as it was for me please there will be a survey you can see a link there will be a survey about this that I hope you can fill in this don't forget this recording will be available in a few days so it can be a very useful resource and please look out for the next episode of this land dialogue webinar webinar series remember there's one a month and with that I will say thank you all and goodbye I wish you a wonderful rest of your day wherever you are