TOWARD A HEALTHY PLANET: A ONE HEALTH APPROACH TO CONSERVATION

The report argues that the 'environment' pillar of One Health is often under-prioritized and proposes six key strategies—landscape immunity, wildlife trade regulation, preventive medicine, pathogen monitoring, sustainable livestock management, and behaviour change—to reduce zoonotic spillover and spillback. It emphasizes transdisciplinary collaboration, gender equity, and the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to create resilient ecosystems and improve public health outcomes.

• The 'environment' pillar of the One Health approach is frequently the least understood and least implemented, despite the fact that environmental degradation has direct or indirect negative consequences for human and animal health.
• Landscape immunity is achieved by maintaining healthy ecosystems to balance animal-pathogen-human interactions, thereby reducing the 'infect-shed-spill-spread' cascade. Land-use changes such as deforestation, fragmentation, and urbanization increase the human-wildlife interface, which elevates the risk of zoonotic spillover.
• Wildlife trade increases the risk of zoonotic disease spillover through intensified contact during hunting, butchering, transport, and at markets. High-risk taxa frequently traded include bats, rodents, and primates.
• Preventive medicine in a One Health context involves multisectoral vaccination and health screening for humans, livestock, and wildlife. For example, vaccinating as little as 10% of a breeding koala population annually could significantly reduce chlamydial infection rates.
• Effective pathogen early warning and monitoring require integrated surveillance systems and open-access data platforms to detect novel threats at the human-animal interface. A monitoring system in Cameroon and the Central African Republic resulted in a 70% decrease in respiratory disease outbreaks in gorilla populations.
• Sustainable livestock management in natural grasslands and savannahs is critical because these areas are where people, livestock, and wildlife most frequently share resources. Up to 50% of rangelands are currently degraded, which can increase the potential for disease transmission.
• Behaviour change and education are essential for reducing the demand for high-risk wildlife products and improving sanitary practices. WWF's 'Save Nature Please' framework provides a three-step process (Develop, Delivery, Measure and Scale) to apply behavioural science to conservation.
• Gender equity is a critical but often overlooked component of One Health; women often face disproportionate health burdens and barriers to land tenure and resources, yet they are primary caretakers of poultry and families, placing them on the frontline of disease defence.
• Monitoring One Health initiatives requires a combination of disciplinary indicators (e.g., vaccination coverage) and interdisciplinary indicators (e.g., number of joint zoonotic outbreaks managed) to assess the 'value-add' of the integrated approach.

APA

Vengetas, P., Elliott, W., Kinnaird, M., Ghose, D., Fahlman, Å., Oyare, E., Terrana, A., Rapando, N., Ziegler, S., Wikramanayake, E., Martin, S., West, H., Arias, M., Herbinger, I., Fascendini, M., Hokan, M., Spielberger, M., D’haijère, T., Aisha, H., ... Bly, K. (2024). TOWARD A HEALTHY PLANET: A ONE HEALTH APPROACH TO CONSERVATION. WWF International. https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/697/1mtv11w3ks_WWF_One_Health_Approach_to_Conservation.pdf

Chicago

Vengetas, Prishani, Wendy Elliott, Margaret Kinnaird, Dipankar Ghose, Åsa Fahlman, Eric Oyare, Annika Terrana, et al. TOWARD A HEALTHY PLANET: A ONE HEALTH APPROACH TO CONSERVATION. WWF International, 2024. https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/697/1mtv11w3ks_WWF_One_Health_Approach_to_Conservation.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Vengetas |first1=Prishani |last2=Elliott |first2=Wendy |last3=Kinnaird |first3=Margaret |last4=Ghose |first4=Dipankar |last5=Fahlman |first5=Åsa |last6=Oyare |first6=Eric |last7=Terrana |first7=Annika |last8=Rapando |first8=Nancy |last9=Ziegler |first9=Stefan |display-authors=etal |title=TOWARD A HEALTHY PLANET: A ONE HEALTH APPROACH TO CONSERVATION |publisher=WWF International |date=October 2024 |url=https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/697/1mtv11w3ks_WWF_One_Health_Approach_to_Conservation.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{vengetas2024toward, author = {Vengetas, Prishani and Elliott, Wendy and Kinnaird, Margaret and Ghose, Dipankar and Fahlman, Åsa and Oyare, Eric and Terrana, Annika and Rapando, Nancy and Ziegler, Stefan and Wikramanayake, Eric and Martin, Shaun and West, Hina and Arias, Melissa and Herbinger, Ilka and Fascendini, Micol and Hokan, May and Spielberger, Moritz and D’haijère, Tania and Aisha, Hamera and Parry-Jones, Rob and Fu, Vivian and Signs, Mia and Matsuda, Emiko and Bly, Kristy}, title = {{TOWARD A HEALTHY PLANET: A ONE HEALTH APPROACH TO CONSERVATION}}, institution = {WWF International}, year = {2024}, month = oct, url = {https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/697/1mtv11w3ks_WWF_One_Health_Approach_to_Conservation.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }