Did Ebola emerge in West Africa by a policy-driven phase change in agroecology?

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.