OneAquaHealth Kick-Off Meeting – February 1st and 2nd, 2022
Announcing the launch of OneAquaHealth, a European project to protect urban aquatic ecosystems to promote One Health
Endowed with five million euros, the project is coordinated by Maria João Feio on behalf of the University of Coimbra (UC).
The kick-off meeting for the European OneAquaHealth project took place on Wednesday the 1st and Thursday the 2nd of February 2023 in the Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Vale das Flores stream and Marionet, Portugal Marionet. With a budget of around five million euros, the initiative aims to study the connection between the health of urban aquatic ecosystems and human health. The University of Coimbra coordinates a consortium of 13 partners from 10 European countries that include Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, Greece and Israel. OneAquaHealth is an interdisciplinary project consortium whose partners are companies, universities and research centers in the areas of ecology, human health, veterinary medicine, social sciences, communication, information technology and the arts. The project will last for 4 years.
The OneAquaHealth project aims to:
- Find the links between urbanization – ecosystems health – human health
- Investigate socio-cultural influences that shape human-nature relations
- Select the “best” indicators
- Develop an AI-based Environmental Surveillance System to support adequate and timely decisions and provide effective recovery measures of aquatic ecosystems health and consequently human health) adequate for different scenarios, including climate changes.
Ultimately, the OneAquaHealth project aims to demonstrate that the health of freshwater ecosystems and human health and wellbeing in urban contexts are highly interconnected as improving one results in the improvement of the other, reestablishing the balance between nature and humans.