Complexity of Scenarios of Future Health: Integrating Policies and Laws

Abstract

In Southeast Asia, regional institutions insist on the crucial role of innovative research to address sustainable development challenges. Among those challenges, the increasing human dominance of the global landscape, particularly in regard to forest cover loss is of major concern. Such dramatic habitat changes are accelerating the biodiversity loss. This reduction in biodiversity through altered landscapes due to urbanization and agricultural intensification appears linked to major epidemiological changes in human diseases with higher disease risks and the emergence of novel pathogens resulting from increased contacts between wildlife, domesticated animals and humans. It appears necessary to investigate the multiple impacts of the intensification of the circulation along the economic corridor Thailand-Laos (linking Myanmar to Vietnam) on the evolution of infectious diseases of public health interests. Integrating the various dimensions of complexity thanks to disciplines such as ecology and environmental sciences, health sciences, policies and law, we analyse retrospectively, and comparatively infectious diseases’ dynamics associated to policies, land use and biodiversity changes. The need of prospective scenarios of health that are embedded in the socio-ecosystems is crucial: we will thus produce scenarios of future health embodied in the One Health approach at the human-animal-environment interface and directed towards decisions-makers or communities concerned at the national or local scale.