The integration of biodiversity into One Health

A better understanding of the links between biodiversity, health and disease presents major opportunities for policy development, and can enhance our understanding of how health-focused measures affect biodiversity, and conservation measures affect health. The breadth and complexity of these relationships, and the socio-economic drivers by which they are influenced, in the context of rapidly shifting global trends, reaffirm the need for an integrative, multidisciplinary and systemic approach to the health of people, livestock and wildlife within the ecosystem context. Loss of biodiversity, habitat fragmentation and the loss of natural environments threaten the full range of life-supporting services provided by ecosystems at all levels of biodiversity, including species, genetic and ecosystem diversity. The disruption of ecosystem services has direct and indirect implications for public health, which are likely to exacerbate existing health inequities, whether through exposure to environmental hazards or through the loss of livelihoods. One Health provides a valuable framework for the development of mutually beneficial policies and interventions at the nexus between health and biodiversity, and it is critical that One Health integrates biodiversity into its strategic agenda.