Abstract

As the Ebola crisis continues to unfold across West Africa and the international community belatedly but now intensely responds, bigger, broader questions arise beyond the immediate challenges on the ground. What does the Ebola crisis reveal about contemporary patterns of environment, health and development? What would it take to build more equal, sustainable and resilient societies and systems, so that the events we are seeing in 2014 do not happen again? Can this crisis provide a moment for reframing development, in the region and beyond? In order to understand the causes and consequences of this particular outbreak, and to prevent such disasters in the future, our attention must turn to why such outbreaks occur in the first place and why they often have such devastating impacts in some places and times and not in others. The magnitude and persistence of the current crisis has exposed the hazards of living in a highly interconnected yet inequitable global political and economic system, and the consequences that can emerge from underdevelopment and related ‘structural violence’. In turn, reflecting on these processes can help define future research and development priorities for a world where the risks of zoonotic disease emergence are growing.