About this Research Topic

Background

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s interest in the link between nature and human health has increased drastically. One Health (and similar holistic approaches) are increasingly mentioned as an essential pre-requisite toward a healthy, green, and just recovery solution to challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic. But, currently, institutional adoption of One Health is narrowly focused on zoonosis, AMR and food safety and from a domestic animal and human perspective. Institutions with a mandate in environment, biodiversity and wildlife health are notably under-represented in the operationalization of One Health, and this relative absence significantly undermines our ability to recover from the on-going crises in health and economy. The mere difference in framing and endorsing health in concerned disciplines and sectors may additionally hamper a balanced approach.

What does One Health entail, or rather, what can it entail, as we can question whether the beauty of One Health is the same in the eyes of many beholders? Are there imperatives to a One Health approach that are imposed by the complexity of the challenges? How can we take into account the decolonizing perspectives regarding One Health? What are the key benefits and challenges of creating or strengthening the essential third pillar of One Health (and integrative nature – human health approaches and concepts)?

We invite papers on:
One Health complexity challenges:
- Ontology of health & disease terms relevant to biodiversity and health, and One Health. This is a complex issue in terms of evolution of terms which have been quite ad hoc, with in some cases, considerable confusion and contradiction in literature. This is the case for the terms; zoonosis and its related host pathogen transmission/evolution dynamics and; emerging infectious diseases, the categorisation of which is heterogeneous making interpretation or results from data and analysis of drivers/risk factors, problematic.
- How to deal with static (conservation) and dynamic (development, evolution, response) aspects of sustainability and health.
- What is “healthy” (or resilient) at different levels of socio-ecological systems (cell, individual, household, community, ecosystem, landscape…); integrating animal, ecosystem, human, plant health.
- What values are driving our relationship(s) with nature/ biodiversity and health? And how do these differ over the globe?
- Key structural socio-political-economic and cultural determinants of One Health.
- Inter- & transdisciplinary, traditional/indigenous/local knowledge, diverse conceptualizations of relationships in nature, quantitative/qualitative research.
- What are the critical factors and trade-offs in balancing One Health to the benefit of all (human and nature)? How can such holistic perspectives support and strengthen livelihoods especially in LMICs
One Health operationalization challenges:
- Pathways to institutionalising the missing pillar (environment, biodiversity and sustainability (healthy ecosystems) into One Health community at international, national and local scales.
- How to put One Health into practice? Case studies.
- How to deal with a multi-level and multi-stakeholder governance perspective?
- How to weigh scientific and other evidence?
- How to organize One Health science – policy – society interfaces.
- How to (co-)design One Health decision support?
- How One Health can help to improve national environmental law implementation?
- How ethics should envision One Health.
- How can actors be supported to avoid the fallacy of an ad hoc reductionist response to complex crises?
COVID-19 and One Health:
- Late lessons from early warnings.
- Early lessons from crisis management and recovery.
- Forward looking: How can One Health contribute to a healthy, sustainable and just recovery from COVID 19?

Keywords: one health, operationalisation, biodiversity, complexity, COVID-19

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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