Project description
Exploring China’s Belt and Road role in zoonotic spillover
Increased contact between humans, animals and microbes heighten the risk of zoonotic spillover. Understanding this is key for addressing global health threats like COVID-19. The ERC-funded ZOONOSIS project aims to investigate the relationship between infrastructure development and multispecies interactions along China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It will explore transmission pathways and how various actors (such as wildlife, livestock, pathogens and humans) interact within newly developed infrastructures that heighten zoonotic risks. China’s health diplomacy influences biosecurity. It will focus on wildlife trade of traditional Chinese medicine in Nepal and Myanmar, meat exports from Pakistan and Kazakhstan, and wet markets in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Objective
This project develops a zoonotic anthropology by examining the intersection between infrastructure development and multispecies relations along China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It addresses the increasing risk of zoonoses due to infrastructural expansions reshaping ecosystems and interspecies dynamics. The construction of roads, railways, and ports creates new contact zones between humans, animals, and microbes, amplifying the risk of zoonotic spillover. This is critical as zoonoses like COVID-19 pose global health threats and the BRI's transnational reach introduces new cross-cultural interactions which shape experiences and public health responses. Understanding this is vital for preventing future pandemics and promoting sustainable development.
Key knowledge gaps: how different actors along the BRI—wildlife, livestock, pathogens, and humans—interact within newly created infrastructural spaces, heightening zoonotic risk; and how China’s health diplomacy (vaccines and TCM hospitals) shapes biosecurity and preparedness.
The research focuses on three contact zones in several ethnographic sites:
1) Wildlife trade for Traditional Chinese Medicine (Nepal, Myanmar)
2) Industrialisation of meat exports (Pakistan, Kazakhstan)
3) Wet markets (Cameroon, DRC).
Ethnographic fieldwork and interviews will be combined with ecological and epidemiological data analysis, and multimodal methods used in sensitive contexts like the illegal wildlife trade.
Key Objectives:
1) Analyse how BRI infrastructure heightens zoonotic risk.
2) Explore zoonotic transmission pathways in wildlife trade, meat exports, and wet markets.
3) Examine China's health diplomacy in shaping biosecurity and medical ontologies.
The project contributes to zoonotic anthropology, infrastructure and multispecies studies, and global health security. It will offer policy recommendations for managing zoonotic risks, improving biosecurity, and promoting sustainable infrastructure development.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences knowledge engineering ontology
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology pandemics
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- agricultural sciences animal and dairy science domestic animals animal husbandry
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology zoonosis
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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9019 Tromso
Norway
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