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Did Ebola Emerge in West Africa by a Policy-Driven Phase Change in Agroecology?

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Neoliberal Ebola

Abstract

We examine the recent West African Ebola outbreak from a Structural One Health perspective. We incorporate historical trajectories of economic exploitation and structural violence into the ecology of the disease, proposing globalization-led shifts in regional oil palm production served as a conduit through which a forest viral variant spilled over into humans. We deploy, and spatialize, a stochastic extinction model that offers a framework in which to explore the roles in which to explore the roles multinational mining, logging and monoculture agriculture play in destroying the inherent ecosystemic “friction” that blocks local disease emergence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Robert G. Wallace

  2. Biological Control and Spatial Ecology, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Marius Gilbert

  3. Division of Epidemiology, The New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Rodrick Wallace

  4. Animal Production and Health Division, FAO, United Nations, Roma, Italy

    Claudia Pittiglio & Raffaele Mattioli

  5. Pathology and Pathogen Biology, The Royal Veterinary College, London, England

    Richard Kock

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  1. Robert G. Wallace
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Correspondence to Robert G. Wallace .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

    Robert G. Wallace

  2. Division of Epidemiology, New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

    Rodrick Wallace

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Wallace, R.G., Gilbert, M., Wallace, R., Pittiglio, C., Mattioli, R., Kock, R. (2016). Did Ebola Emerge in West Africa by a Policy-Driven Phase Change in Agroecology?. In: Wallace, R., Wallace, R. (eds) Neoliberal Ebola. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40940-5_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40940-5_1

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