The health of humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems is deeply interconnected and mutually dependent. This idea is adopted within the "One Health" approach. But what is One Health and why should we care about it?

Today, we are witnessing an alarming decline in global biodiversity: more than a million species are threatened with extinction and many critical ecosystems destroyed or severely degraded. Global ecosystem collapse may be closer than we think if we fail to mitigate these trends. The implications would be far-reaching and catastrophic, extending beyond ecological concerns. So how does biodiversity loss affect our society?

To halt or reverse biodiversity loss, it is critical to understand the role of biodiversity in food production and consumption, water quality and availability, climate regulation and mitigation, human and ecosystem health, energy production and means of transportation.

The European Commission funded the BIONEXT project with 4.1 million euros. We in the project asked the European Commission why the project was funded to shed light on the importance of the project. The answers were provided by our project officer Colombe Warin who works at the European Research Executive Agency (REA) as a project adviser.

We’ve read over 1,000 case studies related to biodiversity. Here’s what we’ve learnt so far.

2023 has so far been a year dominated by new climate records and extreme weather events such as extreme heat in southern Europe, flash floods in Hong Kong, Slovenia and Brazil, and the highest recorded global monthly average sea surface temperature in August (WMO, 2023). The list goes on.

People and nature are interconnected in many ways. Our lives depend on nature’s goods and services, but our use of these resources has an impact on nature and its capacity to support us.

We are all familiar with the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in relation to one of the major challenges of our times: climate change. IPCC works in close consultation with governments to assess scientific knowledge about climate change.

New research and innovation project BIONEXT creates novel science-based solutions and tools for halting biodiversity loss and achieving sustainable, nature-centered future and societies.