Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESTOREID (Restoring Ecosystems to Stop the Threat Of Re - Emerging Infectious Disease)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2024-01-01 al 2025-06-30
Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) of animal origin pose a serious and growing threat to global health and stability. Scientific consensus indicates that human-driven environmental changes, such as habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, play a key role in increasing the risk of spill-over events—where pathogens move from animals to humans. These changes alter ecosystems in ways that can amplify the abundance of disease-carrying hosts or bring humans into closer contact with wildlife. At the same time, global efforts to restore degraded ecosystems are gathering momentum. The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to recover 350 million hectares of degraded land and water ecosystems, while the European Union is advancing the Nature Restoration Law as part of the European Green Deal.
This global push to restore nature presents a critical opportunity—but also a challenge. Can restoring biodiversity help reduce the risk of future pandemics? And if so, how should restoration efforts be designed to best protect public health while still meeting economic and social goals?
RESTOREID—Restoring Ecosystems to Stop the Threat Of (Re) Emerging Infectious Diseases —addresses this urgent question by examining how ecosystem restoration in both tropical and temperate regions influences biodiversity and the risk of zoonotic disease spill-over. The project brings together natural and social sciences in a groundbreaking interdisciplinary approach that reflects the real-world complexity of restoration: biological, environmental, social, and economic factors are deeply interconnected and must be studied together. Current thinking often assumes that restoring biodiversity automatically reduces disease risk. However, this assumption is overly simplistic. Restoration does not always return ecosystems to their original, pristine states; instead, it often leads to novel configurations that still allow for human use and presence. These “shared spaces” may bring humans, livestock, and wildlife into closer contact—potentially increasing, rather than decreasing, spill-over risk. Moreover, disease risk does not decrease in a straightforward way as biodiversity increases. In some cases, adding species to a degraded system may introduce highly competent hosts—animals that are especially good at carrying or transmitting pathogens. In others, increased diversity may dilute the presence of key disease hosts, reducing overall risk. Understanding which outcome is likely to occur, and under what conditions, is critical to guiding restoration that genuinely supports human and animal health.
This global push to restore nature presents a critical opportunity—but also a challenge. Can restoring biodiversity help reduce the risk of future pandemics? And if so, how should restoration efforts be designed to best protect public health while still meeting economic and social goals?
RESTOREID—Restoring Ecosystems to Stop the Threat Of (Re) Emerging Infectious Diseases —addresses this urgent question by examining how ecosystem restoration in both tropical and temperate regions influences biodiversity and the risk of zoonotic disease spill-over. The project brings together natural and social sciences in a groundbreaking interdisciplinary approach that reflects the real-world complexity of restoration: biological, environmental, social, and economic factors are deeply interconnected and must be studied together. Current thinking often assumes that restoring biodiversity automatically reduces disease risk. However, this assumption is overly simplistic. Restoration does not always return ecosystems to their original, pristine states; instead, it often leads to novel configurations that still allow for human use and presence. These “shared spaces” may bring humans, livestock, and wildlife into closer contact—potentially increasing, rather than decreasing, spill-over risk. Moreover, disease risk does not decrease in a straightforward way as biodiversity increases. In some cases, adding species to a degraded system may introduce highly competent hosts—animals that are especially good at carrying or transmitting pathogens. In others, increased diversity may dilute the presence of key disease hosts, reducing overall risk. Understanding which outcome is likely to occur, and under what conditions, is critical to guiding restoration that genuinely supports human and animal health.
The project has advanced significantly across all work packages (WPs). WP1 involved a comprehensive literature review, screening over 52,000 papers and extracting data from 173 studies, 30 policy briefs, and 58 grey literature sources, revealing that restoration generally reduces zoonotic disease risk, though impacts vary by context and ecosystem type. An interactive online evidence map and a shortlist of 50 high-priority research locations were also created. The accompanying policy review analysed 30 key policies and found limited integration of One Health and public health concerns, recommending stronger cross-sector collaboration and equity considerations. Additionally, a mobile simulation game ("Restore") was developed to explore trade-offs between restoration and disease, producing structured decision-making data from 69 players. In WP2, protocols for rapid biodiversity surveys using eDNA (from vegetation swabs and carrion flies) and acoustic recordings have been published and refined, with sampling completed across several countries (e.g. Tanzania, DRC, Scotland), including over 1,200 rodents and 20,000 audio files acriss 64 temperate sites and 39 tropical sites, with sampling ongoing. A novel CRISPR-based mNGS assay was also developed to detect pathogens in small mammals with far greater sensitivity and cost-effectiveness than existing commercial tools. WP3 has launched experiments in Finland, Scotland, Sweden, and Tanzania to investigate density-dependent transmission dynamics, alongside a mathematical model capturing species-specific infection processes under varying restoration scenarios. In WP4, fieldwork and stakeholder interviews have been conducted in flagship case sites (DRC, Tanzania, Belgium) to refine research protocols. Lastly, WP5 has produced initial scripts for unsupervised change detection in land use data, supporting ongoing spatial analysis of restoration impacts.
Within M1-M18 period the following key results are highlighted:
Games are increasingly recognised as a useful tool for engaging with stakeholders, communicating models, and collecting data in social-ecological systems. The game "Restore", developed with the expertise of scientists and game developers as part of the RESTOREID project, simulates the management of ecosystem restoration in a way that communicates the key trade-offs between restoration goals, disease spillover risk, and maintaining human livelihoods. "Restore" is therefore an effective tool for engaging with specific stakeholders and the general public concerning the challenges of ecosystem restoration, but it is also a tool to understand stakeholder decision-making.
RESTOREID research is ongoing in the following areas: Development of novel metagenomic tools for targeted and non-targeted pathogen detection and development of rapid biodiversity assessment pipelines.
Games are increasingly recognised as a useful tool for engaging with stakeholders, communicating models, and collecting data in social-ecological systems. The game "Restore", developed with the expertise of scientists and game developers as part of the RESTOREID project, simulates the management of ecosystem restoration in a way that communicates the key trade-offs between restoration goals, disease spillover risk, and maintaining human livelihoods. "Restore" is therefore an effective tool for engaging with specific stakeholders and the general public concerning the challenges of ecosystem restoration, but it is also a tool to understand stakeholder decision-making.
RESTOREID research is ongoing in the following areas: Development of novel metagenomic tools for targeted and non-targeted pathogen detection and development of rapid biodiversity assessment pipelines.