PD 18 - Climate Change and One Health

Now more than ever before, the world has been awakened to the threat posed by diseases which are closely linked to human-animal-environment interaction, and which have far-reaching global health and socio-economic implications. There is overwhelming consensus on the components of One Health involving human animals, non-human animals, and the environment. As both human and non-human animals fundamentally cannot exist outside of an environment, which they are an integral part of and share, shared spaces need to be managed. Therefore, an imbalance in activity by any party within a shared space puts that space in jeopardy of unsustainability.

Destructive human and animal (often via humans) activity within the shared environment has been shown to have direct impact on climate, which in turn impacts negatively and directly on the shared environment, animals and humans. This complex negative cycle links Climate Change very tightly to One Health.

In this session, we propose to discuss in-depth, the importance of climate change, considering the current global awareness and movement around the subject, to One Health within the context of global pandemics. The discussion will explore how the linkages extricated between One Health and Climate Change can be translated into global, regional and national policies and actions to promote a healthy and sustainable reconnected future for our planet.