Environmental damage raises global disease risk, warns study

GROWING populations and expanding economic activity have strained the planet’s ecosystems over the past half century, destroying 60% of the world’s grasslands, forests, farmlands, rivers and lakes.

The trend is threatening international efforts to combat poverty and disease, a UN-sponsored study of the Earth’s health warned yesterday. The four-year, €19m million study found that humans had depleted 60% of the world’s grasslands, forests, farmlands, rivers and lakes.

Unless nations adopt more eco-friendly policies, increased human demands for food, clean water and fuels could speed the disappearance of forests, fish and fresh water reserves and lead to more frequent disease outbreaks over the next 50 years, it warned.