Wilkie

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s director of forestry, Mette Wilkie, said the forests and biodiversity they contain are at risk from actions to convert the land to agriculture and other exploitative usage.

"Each year, the world loses more than 10 million hectares of forest. That is an area of about twice the size of Costa Rica. This is having negative impacts on the climate, biodiversity and people," Wilkie said.

"We know that deforestation and land degradation are affecting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people across the world and costing more than 10 percent of annual global GDP in lost ecosystem services," Wilkie said.

Wilkie said one in three outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases is directly linked to land use changes, such as deforestation and fragmentation of forests.

“The reason for that is that we are disturbing the habitat for some of the wildlife species that are carrying these zoonotic diseases, which means that we are increasing the risk of a spiral from wildlife to—either directly to people or to domestic animals and then to people. So, altering the nature of the forest and reducing their habitats, we are increasing the risk,” Wilkie said.

Wilkie said this situation can be reversed by reducing the levels of deforestation and investing the money needed to restore the forests to health.