One Health by Design

75% of new or emerging infectious diseases that all of us are susceptible to, including the current COVID-19, originate in livestock or wildlife, resulting annually in millions of people’s deaths, and billions of dollars of economic impact (National Institutes of Health). The root causes of those diseases are human in origin, including changing land use patterns, resource extraction, livestock density, global trade, antimicrobial drugs, and climate change. This is One Health: the concept that human, ecological, and animal health are inextricably intertwined.

COVID-19, HIV, MERS, SARS, and Ebola are examples of the increasing frequency and scale of environmental origin pandemics, which will only continue to increase with population and pressure on ecosystems. COVID-19 is only one symptom; however, that indicates problems in much larger underlying systems that allowed COVID to bring the world to its knees. We need to examine not only the virus, but our built and natural environments, how we move people and things across the face of the earth, and how we can plan for a more resilient and generative future.

The science of how One Health systems interlink is clear, but what needs to change? We need a new playbook to apply it, a way to put our academic and clinical knowledge into daily use. We need a way to operationalize One Health. I call this One Health By Design.

As a landscape architect, working within the design field, I see choices that individual disciplines make, such as construction material choices, land use planning, natural resource use, etc. On a large scale, governments and planners need to design systems and work across disciplines to find solutions that not only do not compromise human, ecological, or animal health for one another – e.g. to reduce natural areas to grow more food, but to find ways in which systems can build and leverage each other – e.g. using agroforestry methods that increase biodiversity and agricultural output. We designed RICA, the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture based on this premise.

Also today, we, including you, have choices in everyday life that feed into those larger ecological systems that we need for resiliency to protect against pandemics. One example of a choice that everyone can make, regardless of whether for your personal property, or if you are the head of a national agency, is to advocate for native species to be planted. Plants are the basis of the food web, supporting caterpillars and insects that feed the food web. This includes pollinators. The food you ate today relied on pollinators at some point, which rely on a diversity of native plants for year round food sources. Exotic, ornamental species may look nice, and not have disease problems, but that is also because they are biological deserts. Pick native plants!

Another choice you can make is in materials. Research the carbon footprint of the next materials you use, whether for a backyard, garden shed, or a giant skyscraper. Concrete, as ubiquitous as it is, has a huge impact on the environment. Could you perhaps use a different material? Think about where you live and natural resources that can be used from there, as opposed to mined or harvested from another country, including shipping’s carbon footprint. Could you build with wood? Rammed earth?

All of our decisions have an impact on the environment. We need to find ways to choose systems, materials, and other ways to bolster the diversity and breadth of the natural environment that has provided a buffer and resilience to other outbreaks. Nature has a checks and balances system — One Health. What choice can you make today that has a ripple impact somewhere else?