Mercoledì, 20 Maggio 2026 - Sessione di Apertura
One Health and Sustainability: two sides of the same coin
Andrew A. Cunningham - Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London
One Health has been rapidly rising up the political and research agendas over recent years, with notable urgency following the recent occurrence of multiple pandemics, including COVID-19 and Mpox in people, H5N1 influenza in multiple species of farmed and wild animal, and amphibian chytridiomycosis. The One Health approach is now widely accepted (if not followed). It has been adopted by governments worldwide, such as through the “G20 declaration on climate change, health and equity, and One Health”, and it has been embedded in the WHO Pandemic Agreement, which was formally adopted by the World Health Assembly’s 194 member states in 2025.
The fundamental drivers of infectious disease emergence in human beings, but also in wildlife and plants, are human behaviours and activities. These activities also underlie the current biodiversity extinction crisis, compounding their negative impacts on public health: in addition to biodiversity being critical for ecosystem function (and, hence, the provision of public goods such as fresh water, food and carbon sequestration), biodiversity loss has, in itself, been identified as the major driver of novel infectious disease outbreaks in people. Further compounding this, is that the main driver of biodiversity loss - livestock production - is a major source of zoonotic pathogens in itself and is an important bridge for zoonotic spill-over from wildlife.
Until now, the One Health focus has been on infectious diseases, particularly those that are zoonotic, but as defined by the One Health High Level Expert Panel, One Health encompasses so much more than infectious disease. This is particularly pertinent when it comes to planetary health and sustainability, with the human-mediated global loss of wildlife habitats and biodiversity causing the collapse of ecosystem services that support life on Earth. Again, livestock production is the fundamental driver of this collapse, driven by the combined effects of a growing human population and rising global wealth. It doesn’t have to be this way, however. An urgent and fundamental change in our food systems is required to improve planetary and public health and to ensure the sustainability of humanity.
Professor Andrew Cunningham is a veterinarian who has worked at the Zoological Society of London since 1988, initially as veterinary pathologist and latterly as Deputy Director of Science. Andrew’s research includes investigating infectious and non-infectious disease threats to wildlife conservation, including the drivers of disease emergence and zoonotic spill-over. Andrew discovered a new epidemic ranaviral disease of amphibians in Europe and he published the first definitive report of the global extinction of a species by an infectious disease. He has led several international and multi-disciplinary wildlife disease research projects, including the investigation of vulture declines in South Asia and the international team that discovered the chytrid fungus that is currently causing global amphibian population declines and extinctions, for which he was awarded a medal by the CSIRO in Australia. In 2010, he won a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award for his work on zoonotic viruses in African bats and in 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. In 2025 he was awarded the British Veterinary Association’s Advancement of Veterinary Science award. He was a first term member of the Quadripartite’s One Health High Level Expert Panel, and a member of the WHO/Europe One Health Technical Advisory Group. He currently sits on the British government’s Wildlife Disease Core Group and on their One Health Vector Borne Disease surveillance group.
