As the world grapples with interconnected challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, and emerging health threats, new findings from Biodiversa+, the European Partnership supporting biodiversity research, highlight the crucial role of biodiversity in maintaining the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems. These insights reveal the strong links between biodiversity and health, offering solutions to reduce risks to both public health and the environment.
Launched in 2018, the BiodivHealth programme funded ten pioneering research projects, exploring the intricate ways biodiversity influences health outcomes. Biodiversa+ has now released three policy briefs summarising key results of these projects, offering practical recommendations to leverage biodiversity as a tool for resilience. Additionally, short video presentations outline the objectives and outcomes of the funded projects. A selection of key scientific articles and their messages are also featured.
These findings arrive ahead of the anticipated publication of the IPBES NEXUS Report, which will further explore the interconnections between biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate change. Three BiodivHealth projects—METRODIVER, DiMoC, and Dr.Forest—have already contributed significant insights to this landmark report.
Biodiversity promotes healthy agricultural systems
Biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes is a critical threat to food security, ecosystem stability, and human health. Agriculture intensification severely reduces critical ecosystem services, including pest control, pollination, and soil fertility, which leads to cascading effects on crop productivity and nutritional quality.
This brief presents findings from FUNPROD, NutriB2, SuppressSoil, and VOODOO on the role of species and functional diversity in the health of agricultural systems, specifically the role of diversity in providing the unique nutritional requirements for wild bee health, reducing the risk of pathogen spillover to wild bees, and the importance of soil microbial diversity to protect crops from disease and insect pests. The brief emphasizes the urgency of protecting and enhancing biodiversity within agricultural systems to secure food production and support the health of ecosystems and people.
- Read the policy brief: Biodiversity promotes healthy agricultural systems and benefits humans
- Watch the videos presenting the objectives and outcomes of these projects
- Selected publications
- An increase in farming crop cover from 30% to 80% in a landscape results in the loss of 20% of both pollinator species and plant-pollinator interactions.
- Pollination functions may be threatened in simplified agricultural landscapes.
- This is particularly concerning since the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) removed the requirement for farmers to maintain at least 5% of non-farming land in order to receive subsidies.
Haresman 2024. Natural plant disease suppressiveness in soils extends to insect pestControl (SuppressSoil)
- Pests and pathogens cause approximately 20% of global losses in major crops.
- Soils that protect plants from diseases, such as bacteria and fungi, can also help guard against insect pests.
- This protective ability of soils depends on a higher proportion of plant-protecting bacteria in their microbiome.
- This further demonstrates the importance of soil microbial diversity in supporting healthy agriculture.
Biodiversity mitigates health risks
Recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in the emergence of new infectious diseases, most of which originate from wildlife. This increase has been attributed to human-driven degradation of natural ecosystems and the resulting dramatic decline in biodiversity. Biodiversity is the source of most infectious diseases, with more than 60% of human pathogens originating in animals (zoonoses). At the same time, biodiversity is essential for protecting human health, as intact ecosystems control the spread of pathogens. Biodiversity can also reduce the prevalence and transmission of some pathogens.
This brief presents findings from ANTIVERSA, BIODIV-AFREID, BioRodDis, DiMoC, Dr.FOREST, and SuppressSoil on how biodiversity can mitigate the propagation and spread of infectious diseases, including zoonotic diseases, vector-borne diseases, and antimicrobial diseases. It also examines how human disturbance of nature alters ecosystems and the ability of biodiversity to protect human health.
- Read the policy brief: Biodiversity mitigates health risks
- Watch the videos presenting the objectives and outcomes of these projects
- Selected publications
- This paper shows how abundant viruses with zoonotic risk are in wildlife, highlighting the potential for human infection.
- 20% of bats sampled in West and Central Africa were infected with some type of coronavirus
- Some of these coronaviruses belong to the Sarbecovirus subgenus, to which SARS-CoV-2 is related.
- It is crucial to continue monitoring and studying zoonotic viruses in wildlife to provide early warnings of potential spillover to humans.
- The paper reveals complex relationships between a host of pathogens (such as the bank vole), its parasitic worms (helminths), and its gut microbiome.
- A reduction in the abundance of certain gut microbiome families was linked to a higher number of bacterial infections.
- This example highlights the importance of microbial diversity in protecting against infections.
- It underscores the need to protect microbial diversity in the environment by reducing the use of chemicals and antibiotics, enhancing human microbial diversity, and minimizing the risk of zoonotic infections.
- Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is directly responsible for approximately 1.3 million deaths globally every year. It could lead to losses of $1-3.4 trillion USD in gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030.
- Antimicrobial resistance spreads due to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans, which then contaminate the environment.
- Greater microbial diversity in the environment can act as a barrier to the spread of antimicrobial-resistant genes (ARGs).
- Increased microbial diversity has been linked to an 85% reduction in ARGs and a lower number of antimicrobial-resistant genes in soil.
- Extensive environmental sampling was conducted across Europe, covering 7 countries.
Landscape diversity enhances human health
Landscape diversity refers to the variety and spatial arrangement of different ecosystems and landforms within a specific area. It supports species diversity and is essential for ecological processes and functions, thereby playing a crucial role in the ecosystem services that nature provides for human health and well-being. However, significant land use changes and intensification have led to landscape homogenisation, reducing biodiversity and the benefits it provides.
This brief presents findings from ANTIVERSA, Dr.FOREST, and FUNPROD on how diverse agricultural and forest landscapes enhance human physical and mental health and, conversely, how even small changes in land use can introduce health risks such as tick-borne diseases and antimicrobial resistance into the environment. The brief further suggests practices that can promote landscape heterogeneity to improve both biodiversity conservation and human health outcomes.
- Read the policy brief: Landscape diversity enhances human health
- Watch the videos presenting the objectives and outcomes of these projects
- Selected publications
- A 20-minute visit to a forest, compared to a built environment, led to reduced short-term anxiety, increased positive affect and mental restoration, and decreased negative mood and stress.
- The perceived biodiversity, as experienced by the participants, had a positive impact on mental outcomes, although actual biodiversity (the number of tree species) did not show the same effect.
- Forest soundscapes that contain more animal species promote well-being.
- This article presents one of the largest experimental forest intervention studies, involving 223 participants.
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Biodiversa+ in a nutshell
Biodiversa+ is the European Biodiversity Partnership, part of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, supporting impactful biodiversity research for policy and society. It connects 83 research programmers, funders, and policy actors across 41 European and associated countries, with five key objectives:
- Drive biodiversity research with a unified strategy, joint calls, and capacity building.
- Create a European network to harmonise and improve biodiversity monitoring.
- Promote Nature-based Solutions and biodiversity valuation in business.
- Offer science-based support for European policy and implementation.
- Boost the impact of European biodiversity research globally.
Since 2012, Biodiversa+ has contributed directly to IPBES by generating significant knowledge, producing factsheets, and developing policy tools at the science-policy interface.