Facilitating biodiversity mainstreaming into One Health
Jihyun Lee, Director of Science, Society and Sustainable Futures at the CBD Secretariat
1. What motivated the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) Secretariat to join N4H and what role will your organisation play to ensure its success, specifically when it comes to delivering on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework?
The CBD COP adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at its fifteenth meeting in December 2022. This Framework includes four outcome-oriented goals to be achieved by 2050, 23 action-oriented targets to be achieved by 2030, a monitoring framework for tracking progress towards the goals and targets and several sections providing guidance on the implementation of the framework. For example, the Framework "acknowledges the interlinkages between biodiversity and health” as well as underlines that it will be “implemented with consideration of the One Health Approach. It also highlights “the urgent need to reduce pressures on biodiversity and decrease environmental degradation to reduce risks to health, and, as appropriate, develop practical access and benefit-sharing arrangements”.
The CBD Secretariat facilitates the national implementation of the Framework, by providing capacity-building activities, guidance/guidelines, policy and technical tools, awareness building and knowledge management. As part of this work, we will ensure that biodiversity and health linkages are addressed and mainstreamed, particularly through national biodiversity strategies and action plans as well as other relevant policies and programmes, in partnership with N4H and other relevant partners. N4H offers opportunities to catalyze the process of mainstreaming the biodiversity aspects of One Health by bringing expertise from various sectors towards the common goal of pandemic prevention, in particular preventing zoonotic disease. The CBD Secretariat can also contribute to the implementation of the N4H initiative, through its convening role for CBD processes related to biodiversity and health as well as by supporting knowledge management and information-sharing activities through its wide network of biodiversity-related stakeholders.
2. From your perspective, as the Director of the Science, Society and Sustainable Future Division in the CBD Secretariat, what is so unique about the Nature for Health initiative?
N4H offers a unique opportunity to collaborate with a range of organisations active in the One Health approach, and to mainstream the biodiversity and health agendas through a multisectoral and collaborative engagement. This directly relates to priorities identified through COP decisions on biodiversity and health, which will contribute to the achievement of the GBF goals and targets, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
N4H also aims at addressing the root causes of a problem through forward-looking approaches, which is well aligned with the approaches for GBF implementation. Through its preventive approach, N4H could potentially ensure the prevention of future pandemics and foster a cost-effective approach that could save millions of US dollars through prevention as opposed to response-led actions.
3. What does success look like to you and your organisation when it comes to N4H?
N4H’s success through the lens of the CBD Secretariat would be defined by its potential to trigger transformational change in the area of pandemic prevention and the One Health approach. This would include the provision of necessary capacity development activities that enable Parties to turn their national efforts for addressing biodiversity and health linkages into national policies, programmes, and strategies, which would also include national biodiversity strategies and action plans. It would be critical also for N4H to ensure that there is ownership taken by relevant government agencies and stakeholders for these country-driven actions, helping to secure long-term sustainability of these actions over time which can be scaled up and replicated.
Likewise, success for N4H could be associated with its potential to establish a solid and functional network of partners that will continue to strengthen the biodiversity inclusive approach of One Health. This would allow CBD Parties to continue to benefit from the collective expertise from this group of actors and partners. Similarly, success should also be linked to a catalytic force, such as N4H’s demonstrative power. Such influence could inspire other actors to join or complement the efforts of the initiative, while leveraging the expertise and resources of a diverse group of partners in a cost-effective manner. An example of this could be extending this type of collaboration and financial commitments towards other actions and initiatives that would also aim to support the implementation of the GBF.
