One Health in the New Pandemic Agreement

After over three years of negotiations, on 20 May 2025 the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA) finally adopted a new international instrument, the WHO Pandemic Agreement, which aims to strengthen countries’ capacities to prevent, prepare and respond to future global health threats. In particular, the new Pandemic Agreement codifies One Health, a key approach to prevent and address infectious diseases of animal origin (zoonoses). However, the final text lacks crucial operational provisions to prevent or contain zoonotic diseases, especially in least developed countries (LDCs), paving the way for substantial inequities.

In this article, after a brief introduction of the One Health concept and its limits, I’ll analyze the new One Health provisions at the intersection between International Environmental and Food Law with a focus on zoonoses. I argue that the Pandemic Agreement reveals some gaps in relation to data sharing, building efficient surveillance systems and food safety, thus failing to address certain challenges resulting from human-wildlife interaction. I also argue that these shortcomings are exacerbated by the limited legal links that the Pandemic Agreement establishes with other biodiversity, climate and food conventions, despite the re-emergence of spillovers (i.e. the transmission of pathogens from wild animals to humans). The article concludes with proposals to incentivize a better implementation of One Health through the Agreement.

One Health: Content, Aims and Challenges

As stated in a joint declaration by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the WHO, One Health is a multi-sectoral, holistic “integrated and unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems”. According to this conception, human health is necessarily interconnected to and interdependent with that of animals and ecosystems. In concrete terms, this approach calls for collaboration across various sectors and disciplines (e.g. sanitary, environmental, agricultural, legal, political etc.) to tackle the drivers of pandemics and reduce their impact on humans. As mentioned before, a pivotal One Health objective is to prevent the spread of zoonoses.

Unsurprisingly, the growing interactions between humans and animals have easily allowed pathogens (e.g. bacteria and viruses) to evolve and transmit between species, ending up infecting humans as well. In fact, nowadays 75% of the emerging epidemics (e.g. HIV, Sars-Cov, MERS-Cov, Ebola, SARS-COV-2, M-pox) have zoonotic sources. This is due to uncontrolled human activities, above all the exploitation of natural habitats, poaching, hunting, illegal trade of wild species, which have dramatically contributed to zoonotic spillovers, enhanced antimicrobial resistance (AMR), climate change and global warming. The fact that the recent Covid-19 pandemic probably originated from mammals sold at a seafood market (most likely bats, pangolins or raccoon dogs) clearly demonstrates the need of the One Health approach.

One Health in the Pandemic Agreement: Implementation Gaps

The current Article 5 of the Agreement recognizes the One Health approach in that States shall address the drivers of pandemics “at the human-animal environment interface” in their national health strategies. Article 4 requires Members to enhance surveillance and early detection capabilities to tackle spillovers with pandemic potential, especially in high-risk activities or contexts (e.g. laboratory facilities). A positive feature highlighted by Article 18 is that Parties shall not reduce their domestic funding against pandemics.

However, though the final text recognizes One Health in a global binding instrument, it falls short of expectations and exacerbates some of the Zero Draft’s (2023) shortcomings.

Firstly, the nature of One Health was formally downgraded in the text, as the final version does not recognize it as a principle in its Article 3, unlike the Zero Draft, making One Health seem potentially unrelated to (or less important than) equity, solidarity and transparency. Secondly, Article 4 of the new Agreement fails to address some aforementioned upstream events connected to human activity, most importantly the exploitation of natural habitats and livestock farming. On this point, a previous draft (2024) instead engaged States to address both spillovers and spillbacks through national “measures aimed at safe and responsible management of wildlife, farm […] in line with relevant international standards and guidelines”. Additionally, the original Zero Draft acknowledged the collaboration among the WHO, FAO, WOAH and UNEP – including other UN and non-UN institutions – aimed to tackle “any One Health-related issue”. The Zero Draft embraced a broader approach, by requesting countries to adopt domestic measures aimed to “but not limited to climate change, land use change, wildlife trade, desertification and antimicrobial resistance”. Moreover, the former preamble and Article 4 para. 6 emphasized transparency on source of infections to build public trust, on one hand, and a greater engagement of communities against the spread of zoonoses, on the other.

In the end, both the Zero Draft and the final version share common implementation gaps.

Particularly, the text lacks a multilateral data-sharing platform on high-risk national spillover environments and guidance on how to prevent contagion, and solid financial obligations aimed to develop and strengthen infrastructures in LDCs. The need for the first instrument is clear, as the rapid spread of Covid-19 was also the result of China’s limited transparency, which ended up delaying the WHO declaration of Covid-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The second one is also paramount, as One Health oriented measures require developing countries to deploy enormous resources and funds to improve surveillance and successfully tackle the drivers of pandemics. In my opinion, LDCs and vulnerable communities could end up receiving no financial support for necessary One Health measures, as the new Coordinating Financial Mechanism (Article 18) will exclusively rely on voluntary monetary contributions either from States or other (not yet identified) entities. This poses a serious equity issue and endangers the implementation of core provisions. Additionally, the absence of an enforcement mechanism within the WHO Agreement, along with the fact that the Conference of the Parties is not authorized to adopt binding decisions in case of violations, could further threaten the overall implementation of the Agreement.

Environmental Law: Progress and Fragmentation

The Pandemic Agreement’s ties to international environmental agreements are weak. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is barely mentioned, while the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is not recalled at all. This is surprising, because human ecological disruption is directly associated with biodiversity loss and is considered to contribute to pandemic risk. In this regard, the IPBES Pandemic Report recommended concrete actions to address land-use change, including less consumption of palm oil, meat “and other products of globalized livestock production”. In addition, it recommended the adoption of measures to address wildlife trade, such as building a new intergovernmental health and trade partnership between WHO, FAO, OIE, CITES (etc.) to strengthen control in the food production chain. Unfortunately, the new Pandemic Agreement does not sufficiently consider these aspects. Conversely, the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) acknowledges the linkage between wildlife trade and zoonoses through a set of decisions of its Conference of the Parties. In fact, the Conference urged the Secretariat to make sure States report and inform other members about the measures adopted against the spread of pathogen spillover associated with international wildlife trade and connected supply chains (Decision 19.15). The Secretariat was also asked to reinforce collaboration and share information with other biodiversity conventions and UN agencies, including FAO and WHO, on one hand, and to review its Cooperation Agreement with the WOAH “for reducing pathogen spillover risk in wildlife supply chains”, on the other (Decision 19.15). The Standing Committee of CITES was asked “to consider the establishment of an advisory body to provide guidance […] to Parties, in their efforts to reduce the risk of zoonotic pathogen spillover from wildlife trade and associated wildlife supply chains, including markets” (Decision 19.17). However, although these decisions are remarkable, CITES itself probably is not the best instrument to respond to zoonoses, as it does not protect animals based on public health grounds or pandemic risk, but because of the risk of extinction. CITES further does not cover domestic wildlife trade and lacks a deep-prevention approach (i.e. a range of regulatory techniques to prevent “the spillover happening in the first place”). The Pandemic Agreement’s inability to consider these aspects exacerbates the (already) weak interaction between international health and environmental law.

Wet Markets and Food Law

Recalling the origin of Covid-19, an immediate solution would have been to include a global trade ban on wet markets for public health reasons directly in the Pandemic Agreement. This could have been enforced internationally, after unsuccessful consultations, through the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) within the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework.                In this case, given the absence of an enforcement mechanism within the Pandemic Agreement, the WTO system could have offered a more effective remedy.  Article XX (b) of the GATT exceptionally allows restrictive measures to protect human, animal or plant health. Also, as occurred in the past, the DSB panels could use WHO statements as valuable parameters for definitions and clarifications concerning (zoonotic) diseases in their proceedings, as Article 3 of the SPS Agreement also acknowledges the importance of international standards.

It is disappointing that the WHO, together with WOAH and UNEP, has only recommended the suspension of the “trade in live-caught wild animals of mammalian species for food or breeding” by default, considering a trade ban of such species only as exceptional remedy. Differently, eminent scholars have proposed an annex to enlist new animal species based on public health grounds or to adopt a new treaty on zoonoses to accommodate the aforementioned global ban.

In relation to Food Law, the Pandemic Agreement could have included a One Health preambular provision urging States to enhance food supply chain control and transition to sustainable food systems, in compliance with Codex Alimentarius and SPS standards. This would have increased the text’s cohesiveness, comprehensiveness and coherence in relation to Food and International Environmental Law as a whole. Not surprisingly, the 2021 WHO report on the origin of Covid-19 demonstrated how certain cases were linked to imported frozen food and other cold-chain products, thus confirming the global need to actually improve surveillance on this matter.

Ultimately, another immediate solution to foster the implementation of the Pandemic Agreement would be the inclusion of a list of best practices against zoonoses in a WHO updated guidance document, taking also into account relevant international guidelines and reports from other UN and non-UN organizations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while the Pandemic Agreement can be considered a diplomatic success in a complicated time for international relations, it lacks implementation mechanisms and coordination clauses, thus failing to follow the long-awaited “deep prevention approach”. The path is long and difficult, but the extraordinary diplomatic results achieved in global health in the past clearly demonstrate the feasibility of making further progress for “a healthier world” through international cooperation.