The covid19 pandemic has, and will continue to shape how humans relate with one another as well as lifestyles in general, including finances and economy. At the end of this pandemic which remains indeterminate for now, alliances and re-alliances would have been made between people, and most especially, countries. The bulk of these alliances would be for economic reasons.
Several efforts have already been invested in trying to find vaccines or even a permanent cure to the virus - so much more is still being invested. While the Western countries seem to be focusing more on developing vaccines, most of the developing countries have been focusing more on natural products that are effective in mitigating the symptoms of the virus - an example is the covid organics manufactured Madagascar. While potentials have been discovered, there seems to no light at the end of the tunnel yet.
In all these, one big lesson to be learned is the importance of plant, animals, and microbial diversity to the continuous existence and survival of humans. Most, if not all of the important drugs and vaccines that have been manufactured and still in the process of being manufactured are from biodiversity.
Apart from biodiversity being our major source of food, drugs, and industrial materials, without them, most of the water sheds would be unprotected and planet's climate situation would be highly inauspicious. The world's climate, even though becoming more and more erratic as a result of global warming, still has some semblance of order due to diversity of plants in the various vegetation of the world. These plants sequester carbon dioxide - a major greenhouse gas that has been implicated in global warming and climate change.
One problem that is facing mankind and which threatens the health and well-being of future generation is the total lack of regards for biodiversity by some individuals and governments. While policies are in place to stem the tides of wanton abuse of biodiversity in some countries, the willingness to enforce these policies is lacking in some, and there's no single policy in place in some other countries. Forest covers housing important plant and animal diversity are indiscriminately removed for non forest uses. Those are not completely removed are degraded and the natural settings disrupted, leading to the disruption of the ecological functions of these forests.
The world's forests are not the only one that suffer from abuse. Several of the world's oceans are being overexploited for seafood. In addition, anthropological pollution by toxic chemicals kills off several of the oceans biodiversity. The consequence of all these happenings is a reduction in the biodiversity pool available for humans to exploit for drugs and vaccines.
As time goes on, new diseases such as the current covid19 pandemic keep emerging and the existing ones keep evolving. This means that humans need to expand their knowledge in researching biodiversity for drugs and vaccines. Even though eventually some of the drugs and vaccines can be synthesised in the laboratory, they need to be discovered first in natural states and this is where the world's biodiversity reserve comes in.
The big question is, "what if the organism that holds the key to the drug/vaccine against covid19 has done extinct due to our actions?"
I sincerely hope this is not the case.
Thank you all for reading.
