This article proposes a critical discussion of the concepts of One Health and Buen Vivir in order to rethink human–environment relationships. Adopting a comparative historical approach, this study analyzes these two concepts as the result of social interactions and multi-actor power dynamics. To this end, we draw on an interdisciplinary framework combining anthropology and socio-economics, mobilizing two fieldwork experiences (Bolivia and Senegal) to examine how these concepts are received, how they evolve, and how they may become diluted. This article aims to highlight both the contributions and the limitations of these concepts in understanding relationships between humans and non-humans.
This article introduces the special issue “Health and Environment : One Health, What Role for the Social Sciences and How Can It Be Operationalized ?” The One Health concept has become a key reference framework in public health policy. This special issue examines the role of the social sciences in the analysis, dissemination, and practical implementation of this concept. Three research areas are explored : (i) the place of the social sciences within One Health ; (ii) the impact of the concept on the making of public policy ; and (iii) the role and circulation of the concept in the field of international aid. The articles included in this issue highlight the crucial importance of the social sciences for gaining a better understanding of the perspectives and limitations of One Health. They draw on a wide range of analytical frameworks, methods, and case studies, underscoring both the richness of these disciplines and the productive nature of their intersections.
This article examines the implementation of the One Health approach within the state’s regional administration. It highlights the tensions between the call for cross-sectoral collaboration and public policy approaches that remain largely shaped by sectoral, centralized, and crisis-management-oriented logics. One Health appears more as an impetus for change than as a stabilized doctrine. The concept serves as a lever for transforming territorial health policies, as well as managerial practices within public administration, toward more integrated, multi-level governance that is reflective of its underlying values. However, its implementation faces institutional limitations – primarily cultural and organizational – which raises questions about its capacity to sustainably transform territorial health policies and professional relationships within the state.
Based on the revisiting of a corpus of more than 100 interviews, this article aims to make an exploratory contribution to the One Health approach in southwest Madagascar. It addresses the following question: what are the local representations of marine health, human health and their interconnections? Some initial elements for a definition of “good marine health” have emerged from the field, as well as the importance of considering human health through the prism of different types of water and the complementarity between so-called “modern” and “traditional” medicines. We also highlight a divergence between the views of scientists and those of other stakeholders surveyed regarding the interconnections between marine and human health.
The article shows that “One Health” is primarily a communication and intermediation challenge between actors, bodies of knowledge, and scales of action. It highlights three distinct visions of health: a biomedical approach focused on risk surveillance and top-down communication; an environmental approach that emphasizes dialogue and the connection between stakeholders; and a socio-ecological approach that links health, inequalities, and systemic transformations, requiring a more critical and open form of communication. These visions coexist but are in tension, oscillating between the logic of information transmission and the logic of coconstruction of meaning. The central challenge is therefore to move beyond purely instrumental communication and to acknowledge the “incommunications” that shape these systems. In this context, intermediation plays a key role: it creates interface spaces where scientific, policy, and citizen knowledge can be translated, confronted, and reshaped. By connecting local and global scales, it enables health policies to be openly discussed and helps transform “One Health” into a collective process of meaning-making and coordinated action.
The International Health Regulations were adopted in 2005 in response to the risks of health crises. This article shows how the concept of health security underlying this instrument, initially intended to protect economic liberalization, was promoted by actors in the North to the detriment of a concept based on the universal right to healthcare. It explains how the inequalities generated by the covid-19 crisis subsequently led countries in the South to join forces to negotiate, through the Pandemic Agreement, a compromise between these two approaches. The case study of Senegal illustrates these tensions in a national context and argues for the need to mobilize the “One Health” approach in support of a concept based on cooperation and solidarity.
The One Health approach is struggling to take root at the local level. In Montpellier, the “Territoires en santés” Spring School experimented with a transdisciplinary educational program designed to promote the territorial anchoring of this approach. By mobilizing local knowledge, local controversies (water, heat, wildlife) and tools for knowledge brokering, it facilitated dialogue and learning between research institutions, local authorities and non-profit organizations. The initiative revealed obstacles (language barriers, administrative complexity, the place of non-humans) and proposed avenues for local governance. These “territorial schools” appear to be levers for operationalizing One Health through collective experimentation.
The doperaus project (Guinea, Democratic Republic of the Congo) aims to operationalize the One Health approach, which is currently hindered by challenges related to governance, funding, and intersectoral collaboration. Through an implementation research approach, it combines stakeholder mapping, data collection from communities, strengthening communication mechanisms, and interdisciplinary training. This article analyzes the perception and integration of the social sciences within doperaus, which are essential for understanding vulnerabilities (including gender and inequalities), mobilizing communities, and improving governance. The results show broad recognition of their role, but still uneven mobilization, highlighting both key enabling factors (institutional support and interdisciplinarity) and persistent challenges (limited understanding and epistemological tensions).
The success of the electrification of the Norwegian vehicle fleet is the combined result of central-state and local-government actions. Often presented as a national phenomenon (Langeland et al., 2022), it remains, at country-level, restricted to urban areas and southern regions, revealing a territorial imbalance. This phenomenon overlaps with another, less discussed, phenomenon : a general decline in car use within cities, at the benefit of alternative modes of transport (Tortosa, 2023). This modal shift policy calls into question the advantages granted to electric vehicles. Norway is, in fact, experiencing that electrification, often considered as a means of converting the automobile to sustainability, actually reduces little of the disamenity caused by cars in cities (Héran, 2011).
Alien invasive species are species originating from remote biogeographic areas, having negative impacts on ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services. Numerous policies around the world target these species, with dedicated fundings and eradication programs. Such policies should be anchored in strong normative underpinnings. However, standards paradigms in environmental ethics fail to account for such normative underpinnings. It is hence tempting to infer that these policies might be anchored in a repugnant rejection of alterity. Here I propose an alternative view, according to which these policies are anchored in the value of alterity.
