This report 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 well-being, and describes how nature degradation and loss of biodiversity can threaten human health. It is targeted at readers who do not have extensive experience with the links between nature and health.

Duration: 1 January 2019 - 31 December 2021  Total grant: € 3 097 322,50

The EU-funded HERA project will advance an environment and health research programme by adopting an integrative and systemic method considering global environmental changes. It will encourage decision-making and help accomplish the improvement and protection of ecosystem quality and human health. By identifying opportunities and obstacles, it will help detect health and environment-related policy areas and propose strategies and instruments engaging stakeholders.

Human health and well-being are intimately linked to the state of the environment. At the same time, the environment represents an important pathway for human exposure to polluted air, noise and hazardous chemicals. Learn more about this topic from the European Environmental Agency.

In the late 1980s, European countries initiated the first ever process to eliminate the most significant environmental threats to human health. The European Environment and Health Task Force  is the leading international body for implementation and monitoring of the European Environment and Health Process. Progress towards this goal is driven by a series of ministerial conferences held every five years and coordinated by WHO/Europe.

This request addresses the question what types of habitats and their components have a significant (and preferably positive) effect on mental health and psychological well-being? The resulting report provides recommendations regarding the design, management and creation of natural spaces in urban or sub-urban areas in order to promote the mental health of urban inhabitants.

The COVID-19 (video) debates bring expert knowledge and reflections on this topic to wider audiences, by focusing on the impacts of COVID-19 and the challenges the pandemic poses to meeting long-term climate and environment goals.

This Policy Brief by the OECD 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.

Between 2014 and 2018 the COST funded Action “Network for Evaluation of One Health” (NEOH) brought together more than 250 researchers, practitioners, decision-makers and other stakeholders with an interest in One Health and evaluation. They shared a vision to develop and use methods and frameworks for improved decision making on complex health issues. To further the new and strong working relationships between many of the people involved, a new organisation was established to continue NEOH’s journey and to invite interested people to join and contribute to a respectful, inclusive dialogue on One Health and ecohealth.

Duration: 01/02/2020 – 31/03/2023   Total grant: € 2,121,268

This project aims to understand the impact of diversity on the invasion of natural microbial communities (microbiomes of aquatic stream biofilms and terrestrial soils) by ARBs, ARGs and their associated mobile genetic elements (MGEs).

Duration: 01/03/2020 – 28/02/2023   Total grant: € 950,820

BIODIV-AFREID will investigate how biodiversity conditions (dis)favour transmissions of infectious agents from small mammals into human populations in African forests.

Duration: 01/03/2020 – 28/02/2023   Total grant: € 1,123,930

This project aims at elucidating the relationship between biodiversity and diseases by integrating the influence of temporal dynamics, and the simultaneous consideration of host, microbiome and multiple pathogen diversity levels, focusing on dynamics of rodent-borne diseases in European temperate forests and urban green spaces. 

Duration: 01/03/2020 – 31/02/2023  Total grant: € 947,628

DiMoC will contribute to better understand the effects of biodiversity in mosquito-borne pathogen transmission, through the analysis of different organisational (hosts, insects, viruses, human population), spatial (continental, regional, local, organism) and temporal scales (current conditions / future projections).

Duration: 01/02/2020 – 31/01/2023   Total grant: €1,357,732

To better combine biodiversity conservation with ecosystem management that supports human health and well-being, a group of researchers has set out to quantify the impacts of forest diversity on human health.

Duration: 01/04/2020 – 31/05/2023   Total grant: € 647,874

This project aims to investigate how to efficiently preserve and restore marine food webs. It will notably determine the effects of protection strategies such as marine protected areas on marine food webs.

Duration: 01/03/2020 – 28/02/2023  Total grant: € 1,328,784

This project aims at gaining a better understanding of the complex relationships between wild bees’ nutrition, interaction with pathogens, bees’ health and their diversity in order to strengthen the protection of wild bees and consequently secure the future of our food supply. 

Duration: 01/03/2020 – 28/02/2023  Total grant: € 1,171,364

This project aims at developing an integrated understanding of the relation between soil biodiversity and crop protection, using soils of contrasting suppressiveness status in several countries, in a context of global change materialized by changes in crops and in pathogen/pest importance. 

Duration: 15/01/2020 – 14/01/2023  Total grant: € 2,037,760

VOODOO will generate new knowledge on the disease risk in different landscapes to pollinators arising from the effects of urban and agricultural land-use on floral resources, pollinator foraging and viral pathogen coinfection and transmission.

Duration: 01/04/2020 – 31/04/2022 Total grant: € 242,936

This project will provide key operational knowledge for policy makers to guide the implementation of ecological intensification throughout Europe while preserving a competitive and healthy food production sector. 

This summary, prepared for the United Nations on the occasion of the International Year of Biodiversity, uses concrete examples from the award-winning Oxford University Press book, Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, to demonstrate that human beings are an integral, inseparable part of the natural world, and that our health depends ultimately on the health of its species and on the natural functioning of its ecosystems. 

This scoping review aims to characterise and evaluate the nature of zoonotic disease research in the Horn region. Specifically, it addressed the following questions: (i) what specific zoonotic diseases have been prioritised for research, (ii) what data have been reported (human, animal or environment), (iii) what methods have been applied, and (iv) who has been doing the research?

This report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) addresses the links between the degradation of nature and increasing pandemic risks, quantifying the economic costs of pandemics as well as the costs of preventing future pandemics, and offers evidence-informed policy options for governments and decision-makers to escape the era of pandemics.

Launched in 2016 by the world-renown medical journal Lancet, this initiative aims to respond to the 2015 Lancet Commission’s conclusion – that ‘tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century’ highlighting the need for a global monitoring system with the ability to engage policymakers and support health professionals.

Planetary health is a field focused on characterizing the human health impacts of human-caused disruptions of Earth's natural systems. Via this link you can access introductory videos, explore how our environment is changing, explore how this is impacting our health, and browse research articles.