Impact of climate change on livestock disease occurrences

The first objective of this chapter is to review how climate change and climate variability may affect livestock diseases' occurrences while emphasizing how little the knowledge on the links between livestock diseases and climate change is. The review of the literature shows that most of the investigated diseases are zoonotic ones with few specific to livestock and, moreover, these diseases appeared to be dramatically affected by climate variability rather than by ongoing climate change. A second objective of this chapter is to introduce some new modelling tools that can help predict diseases' occurrences in space and in time in relation to climate variability and change, namely, environmental niche modelling, epidemiological modelling using R0 map and teleconnection modelling. A working example on cattle trypanosomiasis in China is given to illustrate teleconnection modelling by using data from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). The conclusion of this chapter stresses three points: the need to consider the entangled linkages between ecosystems, society and health of animals and humans; the need of elaborated scenarios of livestock diseases linked to climate change and variability, which necessitates to develop and improve the recording of livestock diseases; and the need to incorporate climate-mediated physiological responses into the programs that manage breeding genetic diversity.