EU publications

Key policy briefs and reports published or sponsored by the EC

Final Report for the Assessment of the 6th Environment Action Programme
This assessment report of 6EAP by external experts was commissioned by DG ENV.

Evaluation report of the 7th Environment Action Programme
Report (2019) from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.

Proposal for an 8th Environment Action Programme
This is the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on a General Union EAP to 2030.

Towards a monitoring and outlook framework for the zero pollution ambition
This is a Commission staff working document.

A water blueprint for Europe
This blueprint aims to facilitate EU water policy implementation by identifying remaining obstacles and ways to overcome them. Its proposals are reflected in the work programme of the common implementation strategy under the water framework directive.

Fitness check of the Water Framework Directive and the Floods Directive
This fitness check (2019) assesses whether the main water-related EU directives are fit for purpose by examining their performance against five criteria set out in the Commission’s Better Regulation agenda: effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, relevance and EU added value.

Impacts of climate change in human health in Europe. PESETA-Human Health study
This JRC-IPTS publication (2009) reports on the PESETA health project's analyses of projected health effects of future climate change. These effects include increases in summer heat-related mortality and morbidity; decreases in winter cold-related mortality and morbidity; changes in the disease burden e.g. from vector-, water- or food-borne disease; increases in the risk of accidents and wider impacts on wellbeing from extreme events (storms and floods).

The link between biodiversity loss and the increasing spread of zoonotic diseases
This analysis was prepared by the Policy Department for Economic, Scientific and Quality of Life Policies (DG IPOL) at the request of the European Parliament  committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI).

BiodiverCities: A roadmap to enhance the biodiversity and green infrastructure of European cities by 2030
This is a JRC technical report on the BiodiverCities project, a European Parliament pilot that aims to improve civil society participation in decision-making towards a joint vision of the green city involving civil society, scientists and policymakers. The project will collect practices for engaging citizens in vision-building on enhancing urban nature and biodiversity, monitoring, and solutions. It will also assess how urban green infrastructure can provide local benefits for people and nature, and contribute to enhancing regional biodiversity.

The Health and Social Benefits of Nature and Biodiversity Protection
This is an EC-funded report on public health benefits from improved air quality, climate, exercise and healthier lifestyles and of social benefits from access to nature and working with nature. It aims at filling gaps in knowledge on the health and social benefits of protecting and enhancing biodiversity in the EU – in particular the Natura 2000 network and wider green infrastructure.

Evaluating the impact of nature-based solutions
This publication provides a summary of key principles for developing an impact evaluation framework for nature-based solutions via the presentation of four European case studies with diverse geographies and challenges.

UN publications

Nature, Biodiversity and Health: An Overview of Interconnections
This report (2021) by the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health provides an overview of the impacts of the natural environment on human health. It presents the ways nature and ecosystems can support and protect health and wellbeing, and describes how nature degradation and loss of biodiversity can threaten human health.

The sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6) Assessment for the pan-European region
This UNEP-UNECE publication (2016) presents a comprehensive picture of the environmental factors contributing to human health and wellbeing at the regional level.

Connecting Global Priorities: Biodiversity and Human Health
This UNEP-CBD-WHO State of Knowledge Review (2015) synthesises the available information on the inter-linkages between biodiversity, ecosystem stability, and epidemic infectious diseases such as the Ebola virus; and the connection between biodiversity, nutritional diversity and health. It also covers the potential benefits of closer partnerships between conservation and health

Guidance on Mainstreaming Biodiversity for Nutrition and Health
This WHO report (2020) aims to support countries in the necessary transition toward healthier, more sustainable diets by integrating biodiversity in food-based interventions to support nutrition and health.

Preventing diseases through healthy environment: A global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks
This WHO report (2016) presents a wide-ranging assessment and detailed findings to show by how much and in what ways improving the environment can promote health and wellbeing.

The Ostrava declaration
This is the declaration of the sixth ministerial conference on environment and health (WHO-Europe, 2017) relating to major health impacts of environmental determinants in the European region.

Healthy wetlands, healthy people: a review of wetlands and human health interactions
This Ramsar–WHO joint report (2012) focuses on providing advice to wetland managers and decision-makers on the range of often complex issues concerning wetlands and human health and wellbeing.

Water Quality for Ecosystem and Human Health
This UNEP report (2008) presents assessments of current water quality status and trends. It uses data and analyses from GEMStat, the global water quality database of UNEP's GEMS/Water Programme, the only UN programme exclusively dedicated to monitoring and assessing environmental water quality.

Toxic cyanobacteria in Water: A Guide to Their Public Health Consequences, Monitoring and Management
This WHO publication (2021) includes an introduction to cyanobacteria and their toxins, an overview of human exposure routes, guidance for assessing risks to human health and preventing human exposure, as well as guidance on effective management and monitoring from catchment to the end user.

The Second Report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (SoWPGR-2)
This synthetic FAO account (2010) is a snapshot of the main changes and urgent needs in managing, safeguarding and using plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA), as well as in the area of national and international collaboration, to further increase PGRFA contribution to global food security.

WHO traditional medicine strategy: 2014-2023
This WHO traditional medicine strategy 2014–2023 was developed and launched in response to the World Health Assembly resolution on traditional medicine. It builds on the work done under the WHO traditional medicine strategy: 2002–2005 while devoting more attention to prioritizing health services and systems, including traditional and complementary medicine products, practices and practitioners.

Other publications

European waters: Assessment of status and pressures 2018
This EEA report presents results on the status of EU waters based on the Water Framework Directive, River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) and pressures that are causing less than good status.

Source apportionment of nitrogen and phosphorus inputs into the aquatic environment
This EEA study is the first step in a wider framework action dealing with the assessment of nutrient inputs from agriculture and other sources into water bodies of inland waters as well as transitional, coastal and marine waters.

The economics of ecosystems and biodiversity for water and wetlands
This IEEP-Ramsar publication highlights the role of wetland ecosystem services like clean drinking water, water for agriculture, flood regulation and erosion control that are also crucial for health. It emphasises the importance of integrating their full value into decision-making in order to meet our future social, economic and environmental needs.

Climate Change: New Dimensions in Disaster Risk, Exposure, Vulnerability, and Resilience
This IPCC report draws on current scientific knowledge to assess perspectives and challenges of climate change for disaster risk management, and to optimise adaptation by strengthening resilience and sustainability.

IPBES workshop on biodiversity and pandemics
The scientific evidence reviewed in this IPBES workshop report demonstrates that pandemics are becoming more frequent. Their underlying causes are the same global environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss and climate change. These include land-use change, agricultural expansion and intensification, and wildlife trade and consumption. They bring wildlife, livestock, and people into closer contact, allowing animal microbes to move into people and lead to infections, sometimes outbreaks, and more rarely into pandemics.

Biodiversity and the economic response to COVID-19: Ensuring a green and resilient recovery
This OECD Policy Brief (2020) focuses on the vital role of biodiversity for human life, and the importance of integrating biodiversity considerations into the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

Academic publications

Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity
This book examines the full range of potential threats that diminishing biodiversity poses to human health. It provides detailed case studies of some of the most endangered organisms, their contribution to human medicine and their expected contribution if we do not drive them to extinction. A summary can be found here.

Global water pollution and human health
This is a review of the main groups of aquatic contaminants, their effects on human health, and approaches to mitigate pollution of freshwater resources.

On Some Issues of Maintaining Water Quality and Self-Purification
This paper presents the basic elements of the qualitative theory of water self-purification in freshwater and marine ecosystems, and gives recommendations for the sustainable development of water resources.

Climate Change, Human Health, and Integrative Research: A Transformative Imperative
This publication outlines the direct, indirect and multiplier effects of climate change on human health.

Impacts of climate change on the future of biodiversity
This review examines the effects of climate change on biodiversity at individual, population, species, community, ecosystem and biome scales.

Microbial ‘old friends’, immunoregulation and socioeconomic status
This publication discusses the immunoregulatory role of the natural environment and microbial exposure.

Emotional wellbeing and gut microbiome profiles by enterotype
This publication highlights the enterotype-specific links between gut microbiome diversity and emotional wellbeing.

Microbes and mental health: Can the microbiome help explain clinical heterogeneity in psychiatry?
This review provides an overview of the factors, including environmental factors, contributing to individual differences in the microbiome, and proposes steps towards a better understanding of microbiome impacts on mental health.

Diet, Metabolites, and “Western-Lifestyle” Inflammatory Diseases
This paper highlights the role of diet and bacterial metabolites in controlling various immune pathways, and – in the context of increased incidence of allergies, asthma, and certain autoimmune diseases – proposes that insufficient exposure to these metabolites might underlie the development of inflammatory disorders in western countries.

Global trends in emerging infectious diseases
This study emphasises the strong correlation between infectious disease emergence and socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors. It calls for more focused allocation of global resources to regions where EIDs are most likely to emerge.

Ecology of zoonoses: natural and unnatural histories
This is a study of zoonotic disease emergence from natural pathogen ecology and the impact of anthropogenic practices on their transmission.

Invasive species, ecosystem services and human well-being
This study of the impacts of invasive alien species (IAS) emphasises the importance of filling knowledge gaps on IAS impacts and drawing on ecology and economics to incorporate these impacts into decision-making.

Natural Products as Sources of New Drugs from 1981 to 2014
This review is an updated and expanded version of four prior reviews tracing the utilization of natural products and/or their novel structures in the discovery and development of the final drug entity over the last decades and continuing into the present.

Plants as a Still Unexploited Source of New Drugs
This publication draws urgent to the estimated 350,000 plant species on earth, a large percentage of which still have not been investigated for their phytochemical and pharmacological potential.

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment: agents of subtle change?
This review draws attention to the environmental pollution, in particular aquatic pollution, caused by bioactive chemicals including pharmaceuticals and active ingredients in personal care products.

Contamination of surface, ground, and drinking water from pharmaceutical production
This study investigated the fate of APIs in a major production area for the global bulk drug market, and reported unprecedented drug contamination of surface, ground and drinking water due to insufficient wastewater management.

Veterinary medicines in the environment
This is a study of the routes via which veterinary medicines are released into the environment, which greatly affects their potential impact: it is highest for treatments used in aquaculture and from veterinary medicines in intensively reared livestock.

Factors affecting the degradation of pharmaceuticals in agricultural soils
This study aimed at understanding the factors affecting the persistence of pharmaceuticals in the soil. It foresees that risk assessment procedures based on single-compound studies can underestimate environmental impacts, and calls for further work on a larger range of substances.

Pharmaceuticals, Hormones, and Other Organic Wastewater Contaminants in U.S. Streams, 1999−2000:  A National ReconnaissanceThis study of the first nationwide reconnaissance by the US Geological Survey of the occurrence of pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other organic wastewater contaminants (OWCs) in water resources reported the presence of OWCs in 80% of streams sampled.

Sexual dimorphic responses in wildlife exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals
This study of species response to exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals emphasises the importance of considering gender-differentiated response in future studies.

The value of plants used in traditional medicine for drug discovery
This review discusses approaches to selecting higher plants as candidates for successful drug development, emphasizing the role and utility of information derived from systems of traditional medicine for drug discovery purposes.

Plants for life: Medicinal plant conservation and botanic gardens
This report draws attention to the over 70,000 plant species with medicinal potential whose survival is threatened by habitat loss and over-harvesting, and emphasises the importance of botanical gardens for their conservation.

Exploring connections among nature, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human health and wellbeing: Opportunities to enhance health and biodiversity conservation
This study points to evidence of links between biodiversity and ecosystem services, nature exposure and health, and calls for new multidisciplinary collaborations to enhance health and nature conservation.

Green space, urbanity, and health: how strong is the relation?
This research shows that the percentage of green space in people's living environment has a positive association with the perceived general health of residents, and concludes that the development of green space should be allocated a more central position in spatial planning policy.

Dysbiotic drift: mental health, environmental grey space, and microbiota
This study considers the impacts of dysbiosis, or the loss of microbial diversity, on mental health in western industrialised nations, and the role played by green/grey spaces.

Regulation of the immune system by biodiversity from the natural environment: An ecosystem service essential to health
This study reviews the multiple long-term health benefits of living close to nature, and suggests that microbial input from a biodiverse environment to drive immunoregulation is a major component of the beneficial effect of green space, and a neglected ecosystem service essential for our wellbeing.

Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations
This book provides scientific investigations and thought-provoking essays on children and nature.

Using nature and outdoor activity to improve children's health
This article reviews the current evidence of the mental and physical health benefits for children of unstructured outdoor activities, and time spent in a natural environment.

Repositioning Children's Developmental Needs in Space Planning: A Review of Connection to Nature
This paper points to various physical and health problems faced by children as a consequence of rapid urbanisation and declining contact with nature, and reviews the benefits of direct connection with nature on children’s developmental needs.