Scaling One Health Approach through Multistakeholder Engagement in Arthropod Adaptations to Ecosystem Plasticity Associated with Climate Change

This project will bring together scientists, doctors, and community leaders to discuss how climate change and pollution are making insects spread more diseases. It’ll look at how farming, city planning, and other factors affect these insects and how to manage them to protect plants, animals, and people’s health.

The contributions of climate change to animal, plant, human and environmental health by arthropod disease vectors and pests is a dynamic threat affecting global ecosystems. Arthropods are ectotherms that adapt to varied environments across seasons and ecosystems impacted by climate change effects such as extreme heat and flooding. The occurrence of pollutants from urban and agricultural systems aggravates this situation by exposing insects in the environment to xenobiotics such as industrial wastes, pesticide runoff, polluted air, built-environment heat and water perturbations and PFAS in soil and aquatic systems.

There is need to bring together subject matter experts and community stakeholders from diverse fields that converge at the economic burden posed by arthropod pests and disease vectors. The project creates a platform for participants to contribute knowledge, perspectives, and experiences in how factors such as agricultural practices, industrial waste management, urban planning, storm water and aquatic habitats management, landscape geology, ecological conservation practices, healthcare systems, veterinary and crop care systems, pathogen, vector and pest surveillance and biodiversity influence the life of arthropods across generations and topographies.

The project will deploy plenary and breakout sessions over a period of one and half days, to deliberate on causal factors and mitigation strategies able to contribute to solutions of emerging burdens of plant, human and animal diseases in a One Health context. Multi-modal approaches to data science use and interdisciplinary research will be discussed to explore gaps, harness technologies, and decipher solutions towards climate change adaptation.

A project report will summarize the findings and recommendations of the participants, aligned to State and Federal government initiatives for funding in climate science. The report shall establish networks of ecosystem and biomedical researchers, health practitioners, urban planners, rural sociologists, policy experts and community representatives who will form teams to advance climate science research in arthropods of economic importance.