Exposome, ecosystems and resilience: rethinking health in the Anthropocene
Nicolas Venisse, Laboratoire Ecologie Biologie des Interactions, UMR 7267, Université de Poitiers et CNRS
Abstract:
The Anthropocene is characterized by an intensification of environmental pressures that profoundly impact human, animal, and ecosystem health. To anticipate and mitigate these effects, it is necessary to improve our understanding of the interactions between chemical mixtures, climate change, infectious agents, and all the other stressors that make up the exposome. These complex and often synergistic interactions modify the health of living organisms as a whole and underscore the need to intervene simultaneously on all the determinants that shape global health risks.
The long-term consequences of these transformations cannot be properly anticipated or mitigated without a thorough understanding of the adaptive dynamics of ecosystems. Thinking in terms of care in the Anthropocene implies regenerating living environments, strengthening the resilience of living systems, and moving beyond sectoral approaches to consider health as a property of the interactions between humans, animals, and the environment. This integrated vision, linking human, animal, and environmental health, is essential for understanding a systemic problem that affects all living things, from plants to domestic and wild animals, including human populations.
This symposium therefore proposes to examine, from a global perspective, how combined Exposome–One Health approaches not only allow us to better understand, monitor, and prevent the health effects of major Anthropocene disruptions, but also to explore practical, scientific, and societal pathways for addressing the Anthropocene and working towards sustainable resilience.
This symposium will draw on the expertise of the EBI unit in the integrated assessment of the exposome and its interactions within a One Health framework. It will combine invited lectures by specialists and presentations selected following a call for papers. To cover all the scientific, methodological, and societal dimensions related to Exposome-One Health approaches in the Anthropocene, the event will be structured in four main complementary parts:
- Understanding the complex interactions in the Anthropocene
- Monitoring: tools, methods, and observation systems for global health
- Preventing: strategies for action in the face of Anthropocene disruptions
- Acting: healing the Anthropocene: scientific, practical, and societal pathways for sustainable resilience. Roundtable discussion: ecologist, policymaker, physician