Indicators and Data: Tools to Link Biodiversity and Health

Integrated biodiversity-health indicators are crucial to understand how changes in biodiversity affect human health, and for public and private actors to make decisions which can affect both biodiversity and health. Despite a push for such indicators at the international level, they remain rare and hard to develop. Without such indicators, governments and companies cannot see the cross impacts of their decisions-missing both health benefits (e.g., immune boosting exposure to nature) and risks (e.g., vector-borne diseases). Integrated metrics would also reveal compound risks, where environmental degradation amplifies health vulnerabilities. Developing them would require cross disciplinary expertise, better data integration, and stronger institutional commitment to systems thinking.

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journals.openedition.org/factsreports/8501