ZOE – Zoonoses Emergence across Degraded and Restored Forest Ecosystems

What are the relations between biodiversity loss and the risk of zoonoses, that is, the transmission of diseases between animals and humans? How can we create synergies between holistic approaches to health and biodiversity conservation to reduce the risk of zoonoses emergence? And what is the role and impact of human behaviour in increasing or reducing risks, for example, by altering forest ecosystems through the expansion of agriculture and urbanisation?

These are some of the guiding questions of the EU Horizon-Europe project ZOE, which are being addressed by an interdisciplinary consortium of 12 partner organisations working across geography, geobotany, ecology, virology, immunology, epidemiology, sociology, psychology, and science communication.

Prof. Kerstin Krellenberg and the Urban Studies Working Group will contribute particularly to the development and implementation of the project´s trans- and interdisciplinary methodology: through a literature review on the drivers and mechanisms of relations; the co-creative development of context-specific methods to assess risk perception, vulnerabilities, and coping and adaptation practices in the case studies; as well as through a series of workshops to strengthen the resilience of local actors and reduce health risk and biodiversity loss.