The war on trees and what it means for disease

Many people have worried that the Covid-19 pandemic meant the harm of climate change was being ignored. But could the opposite be true? Neal Razzell and Graihagh Jackson look at the links between both emerging pandemics and deforestation. We’ll be on the ground in Nigeria, with BBC reporter Nkechi Ogbonna showing us the reality of farming and land use change in the tropics. While in the bush, she meets an illegal logger to find out their take on climate change and pandemics.

Professor Thomas Gillespie studies emerging infectious diseases, the types we don’t even have a name for yet. His work has shown the problems of land use change for mining and agriculture and the emergence of diseases that jump from animals to humans, like Covid-19. The more we cut down, the closer we get to diseases we’d never encountered before. We also hear about global solutions from World Service environment correspondent Navin Singh Kadhka, and how we can help in the fight to save the rainforests.