Claire Lajaunie

Ecosystem Services for Health and Biodiversity

The planet has entered a new geological era: the Anthropocene. Through its relationship with the planet, the human species has demonstrated its ability to modify major geochemical cycles, the climate and the biosphere. Human health has never been better than today, on average, thanks to improvements in public health that are associated with an increase in the wealth of nations. However, the corollary of this economic performance lies in its environmental impacts. The degradation in function of ecosystems because of agricultural intensification and widespread use of various biocides is cited as a factor that aggravates health risks. Changes and loss of biodiversity affect the epidemiological environment through the emergence or re-emergence of new infectious diseases and also non-communicable. Most ecosystems are considered to be more or less degraded, which increases insecurity and conflict. Human well-being is clearly dependent on good social relationships that are reflected in cognitive and affective ties to the natural habitat and the environment. There clearly exists a link between ecosystem health, well-being and human health.

Biodiversity, Cultural Diversity and Infectious Diseases

The human species is the most parasitized animal species, with more than 1,400 species of infectious parasites and microbes. Over 60% of these parasitic species are of zoonotic origin, meaning that they originate from other wild or domestic animals.

Loss of Biodiversity and Emergence of Non-infectious Diseases

The burden of infectious diseases decreased significantly throughout the 19th Century. Thus, despite increasing trends in the emergence of new infectious diseases in recent decades, their impact in terms of human mortality or morbidity remains low in Western and developed countries. Infectious diseases, however, continue to affect populations in developing countries.

A Brief History on the Links between Health and Biodiversity

The Rockefeller Foundation/Lancet Commission report on planetary health (2015) shows how improving human health has been primarily done to the detriment of the environment. The report highlights that global environmental change (including climate change, deforestation, land use change and loss of biodiversity) is a serious threat to human health. It proposes adopting the concept of planetary health, which is based on recognizing that human health depends on natural systems functioning properly. However, upon first inspection, the definitions of health and biodiversity do not show clear links between the two.

Animal and Human Pharmacopoeias

Biodiversity is often presented as an essential source of pharmaceutical drugs and molecules in the agrochemical industry. The total number of natural plant products was estimated to be more than 500,000 by Mendelsohn and Balick with only 5,000 species of plants studied for their medical properties out of an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 species. The systematic search for natural products in bacterial microorganisms and filamentous fungi was subsequent to the development of penicillin and the golden age of antibiotic discovery.

The Role of Law, Justice and Scientific Knowledge in Health and Biodiversity

As we have seen, there are many definitions of health and even the One Health approach calls on us to abandon a strictly anthropocentric vision of health in order to consider that health and human well-being depend on the health of all living things and that of the environment in general. Far from being restrictive, this approach calls for a much broader approach to health than just human health.

Governance of Biodiversity and Health

Abstract: The 1968 UNESCO Biosphere Conference (in partnership with the FAO, WHO and the UN) was the first intergovernmental conference to consider both human and health ecology from a scientific point of view. Thus, it has a leading role in addressing health issues related to ecological diversity on a global scale. It insists on the need for integrated, planned, multidisciplinary policy action for the use and conservation of natural resources within the framework of international cooperation.

Biodiversity and Health Scenarios

Abstract: In “An Essay on the Principle of Population” (1798), Thomas Malthus established one of the first scenarios that linked natural constraints (agricultural production) with demography and economic growth. This essay was an essential contribution not only to the development of economic theories but also to ecological and evolutionary theories with the concept of a limiting capacity within a given environment. The Malthusian view of human demography is at the core of the book by Ehrlich and Ehrlich “The Population Bomb”, which called for active control of births in order to avoid famine, resource depletion and corporate collapse.

12 – Ethics, Values and Responsibilities

: This chapter is not intended to be a summary of all the studies that exist on ethics, and even less is it intended to be a crash course on ethics in biodiversity and health. Instead, our aim is to open some avenues for reflection on the ethical implications of research in biodiversity and health. Recent health crises, such as the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, have often led to ethical debates when it comes to health interventions in times of crisis. These interventions tend to rely on forced quarantine or use of new vaccines that have not yet been registered or, for veterinary sanitary crises, on mass slaughter of infected and non-infected domestic or wild animals that are promulgated as a measure to eradicate infectious diseases. On the other hand, calls for “bioethics” or a “global health ethic” are not necessarily unanimous among ethicists.

3 – Loss of Biological Diversity and Emergence of Infectious Diseases

Abstract: Abiotic factors, climatic factors (such as temperature and rainfall) and biotic factors (such as population density and the structure of host communities and reservoirs) are essential variables in the transmission of infectious or parasitic agents.