Water and One Health
Ensuring sustainable access to safe water and sanitation, achieving sustainable water management, and preventing or reducing pollution, scarcity and flooding events are major global challenges.
Water is also essential for agricultural production and food security. It is the lifeblood of ecosystems, including forests, lakes and wetlands, on which our food and nutritional security depend. Yet, our freshwater resources are dwindling at an alarming rate.
Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals worldwide, and pressure on water supplies for industrial, domestic and agricultural sectors is growing. That is why sustainable water resource management to increase water productivity in food and agriculture remains critical.
Agriculture and waterborne diseases
Agriculture is recognized as an important source of water contamination, including microorganisms. There are different pathways of pollution that can reach water resources. These include unsustainable cropping systems, waste from livestock and aquaculture as well as misuse of fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria, microorganisms and antimicrobial residues via leaching, surface and subsurface runoff from croplands and grazing systems.
Livestock can become colonized or infected by microorganisms that are human pathogens; they can act as reservoirs for potential human infection via water. Nowadays over 1,400 infectious diseases have been described by modern medicine and most of them are shared between humans and animals. Human health is strongly linked to ecosystem health.
⦿ 2.2 billion people still lack access to water
⦿ 4.2 billion people to sanitation services
⦿ Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals worldwide
⦿ 70 - 80 percent of antibiotics given to fish are excreted into water and spread rapidly through water systems
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Highlights
One Health below the surface: The role of aquatic biosecurity
Despite aquatic foods providing essential nutrition for billions of people the aquatic dimension of One Health remains insufficiently integrated into global policy and investment.
Highlights
Plastics in agrifood systems: From field to fork – and back again
Plastic pollution is increasingly contaminating agricultural soils, disrupting soil biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
Highlights
One Health approach can advance public health through better water management
Challenges related to water, sanitation and health are multifaceted. However, resilient water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) systems – coupled with the One Health approach – can provide the right framework for safeguarding public health.