President János Áder said a third of all epidemics are connected to changes in land use, with diminishing biodiversity giving way to a growing number of epidemics worldwide.
According to MTI, President Áder highlighted to the 17th National Higher Education Student Conference for Environmental Science (OFKD) in Gödöllő, the effects of the pandemic on economy, budgets, the labor market and society worldwide.
In the past 60-70 years, human activity has become the factor with the largest impact on nature, he told the conference. The Earth’s population has grown three-and-a-half-fold in a mere century, he noted. By 2050, three-quarters of the Earth’s population is expected to live in cities, and half in areas suffering from acute lack of water, he said.
The OFKD conference was pushed back from April to September due to the first wave of the coronavirus epidemic in Hungary.