The good, the bad and the ugly: framing debates on nature in a One Health community

Abstract

Originating in medical and veterinary spheres, the One Health concept stands as an open call for collaboration also between these disciplines or professions and those of environmental and social science. However, the communities of practice in question show uneasy or under-developed collaborations, due to a variety of factors. We argue that an important factor is the way issues are raised and questions are formulated, i.e., their framing. Based on complementary perspectives on health and knowledge, this overview provides an inter-and trans-disciplinary analysis of the role of the framing of « nature » in One Health discourses as a barrier or a facilitator to collaboration, as revealed by the scientific literature. We find that the lack of reflection by scientists about the framing under which they operate appears as a major factor of misunderstanding between disciplines, and a barrier for inter-and trans-disciplinary solutions to improve management of health risks and benefits. Hence, to build such solutions, framing will have to be a conscious and repeated step in the process, acknowledging and explaining the diversity of viewpoints and values. The interdisciplinary dialogues inherent in this process promote translation between scientific domains, policy-makers and citizens, with a critical but pluralistic recourse to various framings of health risks and benefits associated with nature, and a deep awareness of their practical and ethical consequences.

“Health in” and “Health of” Social-Ecological Systems: A Practical Framework for the Management of Healthy and Resilient Agricultural and Natural Ecosystems

“…The frequency and magnitude of emerging zoonotic diseases outbreaks have increased in recent decades, with a sequence of epidemics suspected to have resulted from human practices directly or indirectly impacting on wildlife ecology: Avian Influenza viruses, Nipah virus, SARS-Cov-1, MERS-CoV, and SARS-Cov-2, to name the most deadly. While there has been a proliferation of proposed approaches for improved and concerted human and animal health and environmental management, the lack of a common, coherent framework ( 10 ) and a consensus on what defines healthy social-ecological systems (SES) ( 11 ) have impeded operational implementation thus far ( 12 , 13 ).…”

“…The multiplicity of competing “systemic holistic approaches” to health have added to the confusion ( 39 , 50 ). Antoine-Moussiaux et al ( 10 ) argue that the main barrier to inter- and trans-disciplinary solutions to improve the management of health risks and benefits lies in the lack of reflexivity and reflection by scientists about their respective operational framing, which is also acknowledged by Wilcox et al ( 12 ), along with the ill-defined problem structuring of policy makers ( 51 ). In this paper we highlight the main theoretical and practical challenges that have precluded the full development and implementation of collaborative and participatory integrated approaches that support collective actions in health.…”

Will the COVID-19 crisis trigger a One Health coming-of-age?

“…Overcoming the fundamental ambiguities in the framing of One Health-ie, whether it addresses the resilience of social-ecological systems or the health of humans, animals, and the bio-physical environment in the context of social-ecological systems-is essential to overcoming a number of challenges to its practical implementation as a transdisciplinary concept. 3,7 Without more explicit framing as complex systems, the ambitions of One Health are likely to fail most of the time at the implementation phase due to functional mismatches between the scale of management and the scale of the processes being managed. 8 Public health and veterinary services are not usually organised or equipped to operate according to how ecosystems are hierarchically organised.…”

“…Overcoming the fundamental ambiguities in the framing of One Health—ie, whether it addresses the resilience of social–ecological systems or the health of humans, animals, and the bio-physical environment in the context of social–ecological systems—is essential to overcoming a number of challenges to its practical implementation as a transdisciplinary concept. 3 , 7 …”

Global change increases zoonotic risk, COVID-19 changes risk perceptions: a plea for urban nature connectedness

“…Next to contrasting media uproar, we also observe stark differences in risk perceptions underlying the responses to EVD and COVID-19, respectively. Like multiple other recent zoonotic outbreaks, and certainly as it hardly directly affected the Global North, public opinion may consider EVD restricted to 'exotic', often rural places where (proximity to) nature seems antagonistic to human health (Antoine-Moussiaux et al 2019). This stance focuses on animals as a health threat to humans: 'us versus them'.…”