Save The Planet .Org Editorial

Republished from an article by  John Vidal , the Environment Editor of Ensia with permission: As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the novel coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics. March 17, 2020 — Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150 or so people who live in the village, which sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe forest in northern Gabon, are used to occasional bouts of diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and sleeping sickness. Mostly they shrug them off. But in January 1996, Ebola, a deadly virus then barely known to humans, unexpectedly spilled out of the forest in a wave of small epidemics. The disease killed 21 of 37 villagers who were reported to have been infected, including a number who had carried, skinned, chopped or eaten a chimpanzee from the nearby forest. I traveled to Mayibout 2 in 2004 to investigate why deadly diseases new to humans were emerging from biodiversity

The Global Environment Facility's new report published on May 16th, 2020 says "The coronavirus pandemic has forced us all to confront how environmental degradation bringing wildlife and people too close together endangers economies and societies alike." "The coronavirus pandemic that has shuttered most of the world in 2020 has its roots in the environmental degradation that the Global Environment Facility and its partners are working to stop. It is increasingly clear that to manage this crisis and avert future ones, we need to understand the root cause of zoonotic diseases – namely, a collision between human systems and natural systems." "Recognizing the urgency of this moment, and the high stakes for governments and businesses who are starting to think through economic recovery plans, the GEF Secretariat has outlined a set of steps for the immediate, medium, and longer term to help address the present situation and reduce the probability of new env

An opportunity to “Build Back Better” after the Coronavirus pandemic HRH The Prince of Wales it to launch a “Great Reset“ project on June 1st with Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Form.  A Sustainable Markets Initiative spokesman, speaking to the Daily Telegraph said “No-one could have anticipated this horrific pandemic but one unmistakable positive consequence of it is that the environmental pollution that has been so hard to slow in recent decades has virtually ground to a halt in some key areas almost overnight.” “Before industries simply return to the old ways of doing things, this group, led by the Prince and Professor Schwab, is setting out to show we have a chance to recover by doing things differently and with a lot less negative impact on the world we live in.” Since the beginning of the pandemic, Prince Charles has been working with global leaders and the WEF “to determine how Sustainable Markets can serve as a catalyst to ‘build back better’ and to