Taking biodiversity in 'One Health' to the next level

Université de Montréal ecologist Timothée Poisot will lead a new "One Health" working group and "knowledge-to-action" (K2A) hub of the Group on Earth Observations - Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON).

The working group's mission? To help the global GEO BON community "mainstream" the environmental expertise, data and research accrued by the One Health approach to the health of people, animals and plants.

Four international bodies are involved in the One Health effort: the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Environment Programme, the World Organisation for Animal Health, and the World Health Organization.

Under their 2022-2026 One Health Joint Plan of Action, the four bodies committed to leveraging biodiversity to act on the threat of emerging disease, a principle enshrined in Article 5 of the WHO's planned pandemic agreement.

The goal of the new working group is to assess how research on biodiversity monitoring, which has been ramping up following the adoption in 2022 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, can help in this effort.

Led by Poisot, an UdeM biology professor, the group will draft guidelines on essential biodiversity variables and collaborate with working groups designing national biodiversity monitoring networks so as to help them better support One Health initiatives.

Also on the group's radar is the surveillance of infectious diseases of zoonotic (animal-to-human) origin. For its part, the K2A hub will coordinate with external stakeholders to ensure that the data and indicators delivered by GEO BON are tailored to their needs.

GEO BON brings together close to 1,000 researchers from more than 550 institutions and 90 countries. In 2020 its headquarters was moved from Leipzig, Germany to Montreal.