14.1 Introduction
The environmental dimensions of health for society and nature are many. With the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems all recognised as target outcomes under the inclusive definition of One Health developed by the One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP) (which serves as an advisory group to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), World Health Organization (WHO), and World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), through their ‘Quadripartite’ collaboration), environmental laws and policies can be examined in an expanded way to consider their relevance for health. In addition, the underlying principles accompanying the OHHLEP One Health definition reinforce many aspects of environmental protection and environmental justice initiatives,Footnote 1 particularly regarding the meaningful inclusion of marginalised voices, socio-ecological equilibrium and intrinsic values, stewardship and responsibility to future generations, and traditional forms of knowledge. These provide important entry points and implications for action, including through the law and policy lens.
This chapter examines how a One Health approach can increase the scope and effectiveness of environmental laws and policies, including in the national uptake of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). Opportunities for integrating environmental considerations into health and other sectors, including through One Health coordination platforms, are also explored. Solutions to embed One Health considerations in regulatory environmental and social impact assessment process, using insights from Liberia, are presented. Thinking to the future, the chapter offers ideas for the legal sector to be a key contributor to progress on One Health implementation and achieving target outcomes.
14.2 National Implementation of International Frameworks
While some notable cases have afforded components of the environment legal standing,Footnote 2 in general, laws and policies for environmental protection remain weak and face limited monitoring and enforcement.Footnote 3 The voluntary nature of environmental commitments at the international level, particularly under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), provide little international motivation for meeting broad commitments.Footnote 4 National action planning allows for global and regional targets to be put into the national context of priorities, local actors, and capacity. Yet, most countries, particularly developing nations, adopt and ratify international environmental commitments which, in most cases, become domestic law, but fall short of enforcing or aligning these commitments with the national priorities. A One Health lens provides several core considerations that can help to support practical implementation: finding entry points; identifying gaps; ensuring policy is evidence-based and considers possible trade-offs; promoting coordination and harmonisation; and enabling equitable prioritisation and access to capacity strengthening. While discussed section-by-section below, these dimensions often overlap in practice.
14.2.1 Finding Entry Points
The National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) are the main implementation mechanism under the CBD. In line with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), parties have been requested to revise their NBSAPs to reflect the GBF’s four goals and 23 targets. Like the preceding Aichi Biodiversity Targets, the GBF has several points of relevance for One Health – in particular Targets 5, 7, 11, and 14 – and mentions ‘One Health and other integrated approaches’ in its introductory text. A clear One Health scope is reflected in GBF Target 5 through the focus on reducing disease risks associated with wildlife trade, calling on parties to ‘Ensure that the use, harvesting and trade of wild species is sustainable, safe and legal, preventing overexploitation, minimising impacts on non-target species and ecosystems, and reducing the risk of pathogen spill-over, applying the ecosystem approach, while respecting and protecting customary sustainable use by Indigenous peoples and local communities.’Footnote 5 Target 7 examines the risks and impacts of pollution on biodiversity, opening the door for legislation on the human and wild animal health effects of chemical exposures, including ‘cumulative effects’.Footnote 6 Target 11 acknowledges the value of ecosystem services,Footnote 7 many directly or indirectly contributing to health, to ‘Restore, maintain and enhance nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services, such as regulation of air, water, and climate, soil health, pollination and reduction of disease risk, as well as protection from natural hazards and disasters, through nature-based solutions and/or ecosystem-based approaches for the benefit of all people and nature.’ Finally, Target 14 refers to a suite of broad tools at the national level through which biodiversity can be mainstreamed, to
Ensure the full integration of biodiversity and its multiple values into policies, regulations, planning and development processes, poverty eradication strategies, strategic environmental assessments, environmental impact assessments and, as appropriate, national accounting, within and across all levels of government and across all sectors, in particular those with significant impacts on biodiversity, progressively aligning all relevant public and private activities, fiscal and financial flows with the goals and targets of this framework.
Each of these targets offers entry points for implementation under a One Health approach, including for infectious and non-infectious disease risks and outcomes. For example, under a One Health frame, environmental impact assessments – a routine and typically legally required tool used in countries’ project and development proposal review and permitting processes – could in theory consider outcomes for human, animal, and environmental health.Footnote 8 Multi-sectoral participation in the development of NBSAPs and monitoring of their implementation progress may also help to encourage legal action from other sectors to support environmental protection (for example, tackling the illegal trafficking of wildlife based on public health endangerment and invasive species risks in addition to conservation status, in line with GBF Target 5).
Interactions with biodiversity by local communities are based on several different cultural, spiritual, nutritional, and economic factors. Hence, a multisectoral and multi-dimensional approach to the NBSAP revision and implementation can also affect options for law and policy development or changes. For example, in Liberia, partners have requested inclusion of One Health provisions in the amended and restated wildlife law to address zoonotic disease risks related to wildlife trafficking and increase access to information appertaining to threats to local residents based on interactions with wildlife. A similar call is made to provide varying sets of legal treatment for cases involving illegal wildlife capture by local residents, where the intended use relates to the local’s livelihood (for wildlife used as protein sources) compared to individuals illegally collecting wildlife for commercial benefit; however, a public health risk may be present in both situations.
14.2.2 Identifying Gaps
National legislation is a key channel for translating international agreements and mandates into action. Until an international agreement is ratified nationally, it does not carry the same weight as a national legislation.Footnote 9 However, even where there is a substantial body of legislation at a national level, the scope may not necessarily cover all contexts needed under a One Health lens. For example, a legislative review of 38 jurisdictions (in Africa, Asia, Australia, North America, and South America) found that despite existing global and legal responses around the management of zoonotic disease risks, legislation did not fully address risks presented by the wildlife trade.Footnote 10 The lack of harmonisation among laws, as well as the variation in risk contexts, leaves gaps among different sectors, settings, and jurisdictions. To overcome this, One Health coordination is needed in the review of proposed and existing policies to ensure coherence and coverage. In Liberia, for example, with several national outbreaks of zoonotic diseases, the One Health Coordinating platform was instrumental in recommending the restatement and amendment of the Public Health Law to include all aspects of One Health and enhanced provisions for mitigating the risk of zoonosis.Footnote 11
Mapping the coverage of laws and policies through a One Health lens can also reveal gap areas, including where formal authority, legislation, or implementation mechanisms are lacking. For example, responsibility for environmental health is often fragmented, and a designated authority for the full scope of wildlife health and wildlife disease has been lacking at the global level and within countries.Footnote 12 Overburdening national institutions/agencies with a plethora of functions or responsibilities beyond their individual capacities tends to limit the focus on environmental and wildlife health. A case in point is the Liberian Forestry Development Authority, which has operated as an entity with extreme focus on commercial timber harvest. Lately, it veered into conservation practice, initially with no or limited focus on wildlife health.Footnote 13 Its wildlife program is skewed towards illegal trade rather than wildlife health and risk of zoonosis. For instance, the national forest policy and implementation strategy, the overarching policy for forest conservation and terrestrial wildlife in Liberia, does not mention any activity related to wildlife health. It focuses on the ban on bushmeat hunting,Footnote 14 collecting biodiversity information for the establishment of protected areas and promoting community participation in area-based conservation.Footnote 15 Disentangling and specialising the focus of these agencies to account for One Health application will require legal and policy in addition to implementation efforts being championed by the National Focal Point for Wildlife. A former USAID project, Conservation Works, supported The Forestry Development Authority is finalising the National Conservation Strategy that incorporates issues of wildlife health and the general concept of One Health.
The local, national, and transboundary threats to wildlife health from infectious and non-infectious disease and anthropogenic change reinforce the need for law and policy action and coordination on wildlife health. In light of this, in 2022 WOAH adopted a Wildlife Health Framework that formally brings biodiversity and wildlife health into their scope;Footnote 16 however, as WOAH is an international organisation with voluntary membership, this Framework, like all WOAH frameworks and policy documents, has not been paired with legally binding requirements. At the global level, WOAH’s reporting obligations only extend to diseases of concern for international trade (WOAH listed diseases), which in general primarily affect domestic animals. Outside of the listed diseases, reporting is voluntary for disease in wild animals, and subsequently, limited. Member countries could potentially use national legislation to require reporting of wildlife diseases (as well as pathogens and toxins) based on conservation, public health, or other reasons. A natural extension of this is a mechanism for the reporting of findings to government from research, as demonstrated by Indonesia’s reporting framework mandate on wildlife and human disease surveillance studies.Footnote 17
14.2.3 Ensuring Policy Is Evidence-Based and Considers Possible Trade-Offs
Another dimension of One Health, the translation of evidence-based recommendations into practice, can also be supported by legal and policy action. For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) Task Force on Avian Influenza and Wild Birds has repeatedly identified opportunities to reduce disease risk, including for the protection of wild animals.Footnote 18 Some of these opportunities include national-level implementation considering regulating livestock production activities around migratory areas in land planning decisions (e.g. restricting poultry production around wetlands and associated risks of highly pathogenic avian influenza). To ensure effectiveness, a suite of laws, policies, or regulations would need to be issued and adequately enforced. In Malaysia, several disease risk reduction requirements were enacted following the Nipah virus epidemic in 1999, such as distancing between orchard trees and livestock, enhanced biosecurity, and the designation of farming areas safe for pig production areas (with alterative livelihoods encouraged outside of those areas).Footnote 19
14.2.4 Promoting Coordination and Harmonisation
Without sufficient coordination and harmonisation, there may also be unintended consequences of environment regulations on health. For example, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) listings have inadvertently affected the timely movement of emergency diagnostic specimens through restrictions on international movement.Footnote 20 While simplified procedures have been enacted under CITES in response, they do not provide automatic exceptions for Appendix I species, which are often among the most threatened with extinction, and thus would logically be considered priorities for rapid disease investigation.Footnote 21 In another example, decisions to manage health in some sectors could have consequences for others; the need for a One Health approach to the licensing of veterinary pharmaceuticals was highlighted after a mass decline in Gyps vulture populations in South Asia from chemical poisoning linked to the ingestion of cattle carcasses that had been treated with diclofenac for pain relief.Footnote 22 The loss of vultures has wide-ranging implications for ecosystem health given their unique and valuable role as scavengers.Footnote 23 Negative impacts to wildlife and ecosystems can also be generated from ill-informed responses to infectious disease threats; for example, the vilification and culling of bats overlooks their important ecosystem services and may actually increase zoonotic disease risk.Footnote 24 These misguided responses reinforce the importance of multi-sectoral coordination to proactively minimise trade-offs and maximise co-benefits.
14.2.5 Enabling Equitable Prioritisation and Access to Capacity Strengthening
In addition to the scope of international environmental agreements and their associated national legislation, implementation support may similarly influence priorities and progress. The overwhelming voluntary nature of funding of capacity building and technology transfer (CBTT) to support international environmental protection agreements results in uneven availability and access by countries and stakeholders;Footnote 25 it is also foreseeable how this could subject CBTT to potential conflicts of interest with economic investment priorities at odds with environmental protection. For example, a demand for investment and expansion of the Liberian government rent-seeking agenda from large-scale iron ore mining is potentially undermining the original intention to convert the Wologisi Proposed Protected Area into a National Park, thereby increasing the risk of environmental degradation, exacerbating climate change impact, and potentially generating health consequences from mining chemicals.Footnote 26 While the reporting of human and animal diseases is often associated with One Health initiatives, the reporting of environmental damages, environmental crime enforcement and deterrent capacity strengthening, and remediation measures should also be considered a priority to promote the same transparency prioritised by human and animal health sectors.
14.3 Governance Systems
We briefly examine the four contexts for governance systems for One Health law and policy for environmental action: national and subnational (governmental), community, protected and conserved areas, and industry. Examples of key governance mechanisms and issues from each of these contexts are discussed in terms of implications from a One Health lens, acknowledging that a much wider scope of governance topics and contexts may be relevant.
14.3.1 National and Subnational
The establishment of multi-sectoral coordination mechanisms, such as national One Health coordination platforms, is a major focus for advancing One Health implementation at the government level.Footnote 27 Different models have been used for governance structures, with varying form and funding mobilisation mechanisms (e.g. a lead agency, coordinator role, pooled resources).Footnote 28 These models have also been established at regional levels.Footnote 29 These mechanisms provide a foundation for the coordination and mapping of roles and responsibilities; in doing so, the clarification of mandates can reveal gaps needing attention. In most cases, the roles and responsibilities of government ministries and agencies overlap and/or are absent on the issue of wildlife health. When coordinated through the One Health platforms, the need to delineate the specific functions of wildlife health becomes apparent, from wildlife protection, public or domestic animal health protection, protected area management and environmental protection. These functions, in some cases, could be housed in a single ministry or department but the clarity, through law or policy, on the responsibility to ensure adequate protection must be stated. Additionally, in general, responsibility is fragmented for managing risks and impacts (e.g. certain agencies are responsible for watershed management and agricultural runoff, whereas water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services and treatment for waterborne diseases are handled in other domains). This division and resulting dis-incentives for collaboration (and lack of jurisdiction) can hinder coherent policy decisions; the need to engage beyond the health sector is recognised in the sentiment of ‘health in all policies’.Footnote 30
A mix of assessment, planning, information sharing, and risk communication tools have been used to operationalise collaboration under national (and in some cases subnational) One Health platforms. The ongoing development of One Health Strategic Plans, intended as a national-level translation of the global One Health Joint Plan of Action developed by the Quadripartite,Footnote 31 offers an opportunity to contextualise a One Health approach to each country’s unique context, including risks and policy instruments.Footnote 32 To inform decision making, a One Health economics approach has the potential to support more robust evaluation of investments, in particular to assess and weigh trade-offs and co-benefits.Footnote 33 While the value of ‘societal’ (versus single-sector) perspectives in economic analysis has been emphasised, the increasing integration of environmental and health economic methods provides an exciting opportunity for the field of economics.Footnote 34 Economic and other evaluations can also be informed by the findings from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), in particular in terms of an increasing evidence base on the interlinkages between biodiversity and health.
14.3.2 Community
Community governance can play a key role in managing natural resources, including in decision making on use of proposed protected and conserved areas. These rightsholders (whether formally or informally established) often include Indigenous Peoples, who make up approximately 6 per cent of the world’s human population but govern a quarter of terrestrial areas, including 39 per cent of the planet’s most ecologically intact landscapes, many of which are threatened by industrial development.Footnote 35 One important element of governance centres on land tenure, including those with formal ownership as well as those with informal rights and dependence on ecosystems (e.g. for cultural, religious, economic, or other reasons). The lack of clarity on land tenure or the absence of specific rights to land by local communities can undermine conservation efforts, lead to uncontrolled and unsafe interactions with wildlife, and destruction of key habitats with the risk of increasing the probability of zoonotic disease spillover and vulnerability of these communities.
The principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is recognised (and increasingly enforced) as a minimum standard for decisions on land tenure in/around proposed protected areas. Defined as ‘a specific right granted to Indigenous Peoples recognised in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which aligns with their universal right to self-determination’, ‘FPIC allows Indigenous Peoples to provide or withhold/ withdraw consent, at any point, regarding projects impacting their territories. FPIC allows Indigenous Peoples to engage in negotiations to shape the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of projects’.Footnote 36 Factors such as influence, awareness, and different value systems should be considered throughout community land formalisation processes to ensure FPIC is respected. Importantly, the lack of recognition of certain rights of communities to land and natural resources in local policy and legislation can undermine the principles of FPIC and increase the likelihood of conflict, unstainable harvest of natural resources and unsafe exposure to wildlife. In Liberia, for example, the Land Rights Act 2018,Footnote 37 has vested in the community unequivocal and unconditional right to customary land and the resources thereon. This has improved bargaining power of the community to negotiate, using the FPIC principles, for sustainable utilisation of their land. In addition, the national guidelines for establishing protected areas, as a legal instrument, require land tenure clarification as condition precedent to the creation of conservation or protected areas on land.Footnote 38
One Health understanding is particularly relevant for the ‘informed’ component of FPIC, given how direct and indirect impacts may affect the health and wellbeing of communities in diverse and potentially complex ways. For example, a timber logging concession in a primary forest area may generate jobs, revenue, and potentially improved access to health and other services, at least in the short term; whereas longer-term environmental consequences could lead to persistent pollution of waterways, change in species ecology, and other effects that may be at odds with other principles (e.g. intergenerational and multi-species rights and equity). Even formalising or increasing the protection status of a conserved area can potentially have adverse consequences for communities and rightsholders, such as loss of access to sacred sites. The use of a One Health lens in cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analyses can explore trade-off and co-benefits and consider the distributions of monetary and non-monetary costs and benefits (e.g. to government, private industry, and local communities).Footnote 39 An extended time horizon, in some cases longer than a development project lifespan, may be needed to reflect long-term impacts on the environment and health, societal, and economic impacts (whether positive or negative) to a community.
14.3.3 Protected and Conserved Areas
Protected and conserved areas (PCAs) and Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) can involve a range of governance and management strategies. The IUCN has broadly defined these relevant for protected areas as governance by government, shared governance, private governance, and governance by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, with a set of management categories generally based on use purpose and restrictions.Footnote 40 In practice, PCAs often face multiple demands (some competing) from conservation management (including external management models), large-scale tourism and revenue generation (e.g. private lodging concessions, mining, and logging), as well as small-scale livelihood and cultural and space considerations (e.g. poaching, transhumance, access to medicinal plants). Activities at the periphery may also affect conditions within a protected area, such as through livestock grazing or wastewater generated via mining. As conditions are often dynamic, monitoring and decision-making processes can benefit from a One Health lens to identify and manage risks and impacts to human, animal (domestic and wild), and environmental health, requiring coordination between communities, industries, environmental scientists, the human and animal health sectors, and park managers.
International standards also provide guidance and benchmarks for the effective management of PCAs. For example, the IUCN Green List Standard for protected areas provides a voluntary certification on the basis of sites demonstrating certain criteria: ‘Respect: for the local community through fair and meaningful engagement of rights-holders and stakeholders; Design: planning that identifies the needs to secure the important values of the area; Effective management: monitoring of the status of these important values; Successful conservation results: for nature and for people; clear contribution: to climate change responses, health and well-being and other challenges’. The integration of a One Health approach in the Green List Standard has been recognised, with the planned integration of disease management indicators into the revised Green List Standard,Footnote 41 and the formation of multi-sectoral Expert Assessment Groups (including veterinary expertise, for example) for the Green List at the country level.
14.3.4 Industry
There is precedent for voluntary sustainable industry standards, potentially to pre-empt environmental regulations, respond to public demand, and meet corporate social responsibility obligations. For example, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has developed a system for voluntary accreditation to certify companies as providing services and goods in line with ‘environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable forest management’.Footnote 42 The existing FSC standard includes indicators around worker health and ecosystem services and could potentially be interpreted under a One Health lens. Parallel mechanisms could be explored for other industries; for example, an audit checklist was developed to assess emerging infectious disease risks in the extractive industries.Footnote 43 Implementation of such tools and standards in line with a One Health approach will likely require a broader scope of expertise (e.g. disease ecology and wildlife health) than commonly included in biodiversity and community health impact assessment and monitoring.
14.4 Case Study: Insights from Liberia
Liberia is rich in biodiversity and plays a vital role in climate change mitigation and adaptation, with the largest remaining tract of the Upper Guinean Rainforest and important wetland and mangrove ecosystems. After two Civil Wars between 1989 and 2003, the country’s institutions were left weakened, affecting the governance of environmental laws and policies. Following the cessation of hostilities in 2005, Liberia embarked on a rigorous process to improve the legal and regulatory landscape in support of sustainable natural resources management, land tenure and security, especially in the context of community ownership, access and use, and wildlife management. In 2016, Liberia adopted the National Wildlife Conservation and Protected Area Management Law of Liberia.Footnote 44 While it prohibits wildlife hunting and trade by default, the harvest, sale, and consumption of wildlife has continued, and the enforcement of the law and its penalties remain weak, with few prosecutions. In 2020, the process to amend and restate the wildlife law began. Following three years of painstaking research, consultation, and redrafting, the amended and restated wildlife law was submitted to the Office of the President, now inclusive of provisions on institutional arrangements and establishing regulation to minimise zoonotic disease risk. Application of the existing law to practice reinforces the importance of multi-sectoral planning, resourcing, and prioritisation; for example, wildlife confiscations may require the involvement of the Liberian National Police, requiring joint security initiatives. In addition, the lack of suitable facilities and caretaking requirements for rescued wildlife served as a deterrent to confiscation.Footnote 45 The availability of rescue centres in the country, through partnerships between non-governmental organisations and the Forestry Development Authority and sustainable resourcing for day-to-day operations, has helped to overcome this barrier.
14.4.1 National One Health Coordinating Platform
Liberia has been a leader in operationalising One Health, including through the establishment of a National One Health Coordination Platform in 2016.Footnote 46 A formal governance structure set expectations and designated roles for participation, including for its Steering Committee, Technical Committee, and Technical Working Groups.Footnote 47 The Steering Committee is chaired by the Vice President; the Technical Committee is chaired by the Director General of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia; and the six Technical Working Groups have a rotational chairing format. This leadership structure is supported by a One Health Secretariat with a coordinator and officers from seven target agencies (Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry Development Authority, Environmental Protection Agency, National Disaster Management Agency, National Public Health Institute of Liberia, and Ministry of Defense). Terms of Reference have been developed in the Platform’s Governance Manual to clearly define roles and responsibilities for each component of the governance structure. A standalone website managed by the One Health Platform Secretariat has been developed to provide a central place to access information, including laws and policies.Footnote 48 The development of county-level platforms is now translating this model to the subnational level to promote more localised dialogue across ministries and support information flow to and from national authorities.
14.4.2 Revision of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP)
The National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP), in theory, presents a turnkey solution for the sustainable management of biodiversity and creating a conditionality whereby humans, ecosystems, and wildlife can thrive harmoniously. NBSAPs are ‘central for mainstreaming biodiversity by translating global ambition into national policies’.Footnote 49 They are also useful ways of integrating the One Health concepts and practices into national planning and decisions for managing wildlife. The first NBSAP for Liberia was designed in 2004 in an effort by the national government to centralise decisions and incorporate issues affecting biodiversity into national policies and plans. Upon the signing of the Nagoya Protocol and Aichi Targets, Liberia, again, realised the need to adjust its NBSAP to mirror and align with the international agreement.
Despite the attending value attached to sustainably managing biodiversity, certain underlying conditions, if not addressed, can lead to a complete failure of the NBSAP. ‘Conflicting interests, weak financial support, and poorly integrated institutional and regulatory structures can affect implementation of NBSAP’. Thus, coordination across sectors is vital.Footnote 50
In March 2017, a new revised NBSAP, encapsulating five goals and twenty targets, was endorsed by the Liberian Government spanning the period 2017–2025. Positioned as the overarching national strategy for managing biodiversity, neither the 2004 nor the 2017 described the concept or mentioned the word One Health. Understandably, this may be as a result of the limited exposure and understanding of One Health in the country. More so, the international community was still piecing together the inextricable link between wildlife health, environmental change, and disease spillover vis-à-vis the need to imbed these considerations into national planning for environmental decision making.
The twin devastating outbreaks of Ebola and COVID-19 impetuously shattered health systems, livelihoods, and human wellbeing. Incontrovertibly, the Ebola outbreak was a wake-up call for Liberians that highlighted the unavoidable need to integrate One Health into national policies and laws. This notion was furthered re-echoed following the global pandemic of COVID-19. In time past, global biodiversity instruments did not reference or strategically consider the importance of this concept. Notwithstanding, following the devastating impact of the Coronavirus, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework moved significantly towards integrating One Health. With the vision to align its national strategy with the GBF, Liberia embarked on the revision of its NBSAP, as a standard practice and based on a request from the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Interestingly, the initial call from the government was to integrate the interfaces between wildlife health, environmental changes, and human health. After a few national consultations and engagements with key national experts, the government took a bold step towards establishing a new target in the revised NBSAP relating to One Health. Submitted to the CBD Secretariat and awaiting finalization of the implementation plan and monitoring and evaluation framework, Target 1.5 of the 2024 revised NBSAP provides that it will ‘by 2030, integrate the One Health approach into the assessment and management of biodiversity and establish and implement a comprehensive national program to monitor, control, and reduce the risk of chemical hazards and pathogen spillover presenting risks to human and animal health’.Footnote 51 To this target, six indicators were correspondingly developed for monitoring and evaluation purposes. When finalised and officially endorsed, this will not only highlight the importance of improving policy and legislations for One Health but will increase awareness on the subject, attract international and national support, and subsequently reduce the risk of zoonosis.
14.4.3 Integrating One Health in Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA)
Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) are a tool typically used to assess the effects of a proposed project on the environment.Footnote 52 In Liberia, EIA is the primary mechanism for assessment of potential development projects, covering a wide scope ranging from commercial and artisanal extractive activities to agricultural and transportation development to protected area establishment and ecotourism. Projects classified in Annex I of the Liberia Environmental Protection and Management Law of Liberia (EPML) must undergo the EIA process prior to receiving approval by the government. Health impacts are potentially included in the scope of the EIA procedures, but there has historically been limited awareness of health aspects by the country’s impact assessment workforce. The system, processes, and regulations for EIA significantly improved over time due, principally, to the evolution of different impacts associated with major capital projects that were not originally embedded in the EIA framework. For instance, after many years of evaluating project impacts via the EIA process, many issues still existed within these locations including those affecting residents, expropriation of land, and health-related impacts not necessarily attributed to environmental pollution. Hence, the Government of Liberia, through the Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia (EPA), published the first legal instrument, in the form of regulations in 2016 calling for the adjustment to the list of project categories that are covered under the EIA process as well as the inclusion of social impacts.Footnote 53 Essentially, this resulted in the designation from EIA to ESIA, with the ‘S’ representing social impacts.
Despite this seemingly progressive intervention, the evaluation of health impacts from these projects under the ESIA process did not meet the required threshold. Project proponents or developers were required to assess only the occupational health risks and hazards of their interventions and not a full health impact assessment with consideration of direct and indirect impact to wildlife, environment, or people as a result of the project. A One Health approach was proposed as an anchor for evaluating health impacts, mainly those associated with the project and directly affecting wildlife or indirectly leading to a zoonotic spillover. In 2022, the EPA launched a call for inputs to be made to the ESIA regulations. With support from national and international experts, a set of recommendations were proffered as an improvement to evaluating health impacts with emphasis on integrating the One Health concepts in the revised regulations. Unfortunately, by the time the recommendations were received, EPA had already published the new revised ESIA Regulations, 2022. Notwithstanding, the government received the draft of recommended changes and committed to integrating specific language during the next iteration of the regulations in 2026. More importantly, the new requirement for assessing health impacts under the 2022 revised regulations incorporates wildlife health impacts associated with projects earmarked for an ESIA study. This progress is not the anticipated result but it is a watershed movement for highlighting, in a legal instrument, the importance of integrating One Health as well as the immense contribution this can have on wildlife and ecosystem health with a cascading effect on human health. At the request of the EPA, to support capacity for implementation, in 2023 training on One Health in ESIA was conducted for members of the Union of Certified Environmental Professionals of Liberia.Footnote 54 The training highlighted how a One Health approach can more comprehensively assess the impacts of toxicology and infectious disease risks across a project lifespan, including direct impact at a site as well as from biodiversity offsets.
14.5 Conclusion
This chapter has demonstrated there are numerous needs and opportunities for integrating One Health in environmental law and policy. Future decisions and frameworks can be examined with a One Health lens to identify relevant stakeholders for monitoring and implementation. The relevance of human, animal, and environmental health risks and outcomes to legal standing and liability requires an interdisciplinary team. Academic institutions have a role to play in bridging disciplines to encourage new ways of envisioning and implementing legal frameworks. Similarly, practitioners from human, animal, and environmental health disciplines should consider the legal and policy elements of the topics they are working with to support a comprehensive understanding of the issue and viable solutions. At the national and subnational level, and university levels, the role of One Health coordination platforms could expand to deliver broadly on sustainable development objectives, including outcomes relevant for biodiversity and ecosystems, rather than only disease response as a primary objective. The practice of environmental law and legal training can encourage interaction with other sectors, including for harmonisation and more holistic interpretation of law and liability.
