Context
Environmental changes and degradations, as well as extreme climatic
events, whether they result from global changes or local anthropogenic
actions, have direct and indirect impacts on human population
livelihood, health and well-being.
These impacts and the capacity to anticipate, cope with and recover from them depend on local territorial specificities. In particular, specific issues stem from cross-border areas at international borders, making local populations more exposed and vulnerable to adverse events. This is due to, in particular: high human, animal and pathogen mobility; non-nominal functioning of health systems; lack of cross-border cooperation and of comparable data, information and knowledge sharing, preventing neighbourhood countries to have a common and shared representation of the situation, and thus to design concerted solutions and conduct joint actions.
In this context, there is a need for building acceptable, feasible and sustainable adaptation and mitigation solutions driven by local populations, that can/should be inspiring for states and international institutions at larger scales. This is particularly challenging, due to : a partial and/or erroneous understanding of the reciprocal negative and positive impacts between environment, environment changes and human health, well-being, and practices ; the fact that local communities rarely benefit from existing databases and monitoring systems; the lack of local expertise and open, interactive and linked tools to support decision in health, biodiversity conservation, livelihood and well-being; the multicultural and multi-language nature of cross-border areas.
David Western, African Conservation Center
Maasaï herders are traditionally nomadic, moving according to the availability of water and pastures for their livestock. Intense droughts in recent years have forced pastoralists to move more often, for longer periods and further distances, which impacts their health and well-being.
In East Africa,
Maasai herders living in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania are experiencing increased drought periods. This phenomenon is exacerbated by overgrazing that drastically reduce the availability of water and pastures required for livestock and wildlife survival. This results in high animal mortality, herd and population displacements, human wildlife conflict, and health issues among the human population (malnutrition, mental health issues, difficulties in accessing prevention and care, precarious living conditions, increased risk of tuberculosis for herders who spend time away from home, HIV/AIDS for separated spouses, depression, etc.).
In the Amazon,
land cover and use changes due to anthropogenic activities, especially deforestation for logging, urban spreading, the establishment of pastures or intensive crops, goldmining, dam construction, etc. have well documented impacts on population health and well-being. In fact, by modifying the habitats, reservoirs (including mammals like bats and monkeys) and vectors (including mosquitoes, Phlebotominae and Triatominae) of pathogens (like Leishmania, Plasmodium, Viruses, Bacterias and fungi) can proliferate leading human population to greater exposure to several infectious diseases.
Antoine Boyrie and Anne-Elisabeth Laque, IRD, 2012
Deforestation is one of the most common changes in land use in Amazonia, whether for grazing or cultivation, or for the construction of infrastructure such as roads, housing, etc. Deforestation can encourage the presence and proliferation of reservoirs and/or vectors of pathogens, as well as the exposure of human populations to them. It can thus contribute to increasing the risk of emergence or recrudescence of certain infectious diseases (among others, malaria, rabies).
In both previously mentioned regions, data and knowledge exist in many fields (on climate, land use, wild fauna, human and animal health, etc.) and methodological frameworks (One health, Planetary health, Sustainability science) are now promoting holistic approaches and pathways to changes (e.g. One Health theory of change). However: there is still a lack of observations related to very specific contexts; local community knowledge are not necessarily considered; discovery, access and reuse of data from one domain to another is still challenging, requiring multiple areas of expertise and the access to a large number of different and non-interoperable data warehouses; and holistic approaches are not sufficiently equipped to actually implement transdisciplinarity.