What is Health?

Each morning, your body signals the start of a new day. Every movement, every pulse of your heart, and every thought of your mind reflects your health. Beyond the absence of disease, health is a state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing. Everyone’s health is different because our bodies and minds are unique. However, being healthy includes having a resilient body and mind strong enough to face the challenges of everyday life and enjoy life. Just as an ecosystem thrives due to the roles and interactions of its plants, animals, and microbes, the wellbeing of your body depends on the organs, tissues, cells, and all the body’s microbes, which operate together to shape your health. Your body is a finely tuned ecosystem, with each part carrying out a function. It provides you with energy and the ability to think, move, and feel. Your skeleton is the structure that supports you. Your heart sends oxygen and nutrient-rich blood throughout your body. Your digestive system transforms food into energy. Your brain is a command center. Your lungs take in the air you breathe. By observing and understanding the needs of your body, you can notice how different foods, activities, and amounts of rest and sleep affect your energy and moods. This way, you can better understand the diversity of things that keep you healthy. Health is a balance within the body that allows people to live well.

What is Biodiversity and Why does it Matter?

If you look out a window, go outside, or visit a park, you may notice a bustling display of life: a variety of plants, chirping birds, buzzing bees, blossoming flowers, different grasses and jumping spiders, among many others. This lively scene represents a snapshot of biodiversity! Biodiversity is the variety of life forms on the planet, but it also involves the important relationships among and between life forms. Consider the Amazon rainforest, home to an unimaginable array of life, from plants to colorful fish and river dolphins. Yet, it is not just the existence of these species that is essential. It is the role of these species and their functions within the ecosystem, where everything works together, that keeps ecosystems thriving and ensures that they can resist or adapt to changes—just like the organs, tissues, cells, and microbes in your body do for you.

Ecosystems can be viewed as essential life-support areas because of the vital benefits they provide thanks to biodiversity. Forests and other natural systems provide oxygen and absorb pollutants, cleaning the air we breathe. Plants also have a form of breathing, in which they absorb carbon from the air (or from water, for plants that live in water) and they release oxygen. In this way, plants help to keep Earth’s temperature stable by reducing carbon in the atmosphere, while also releasing oxygen for humans and other animals to breathe. Natural environments also produce water, which is cleaned with the help water-living animals that filter the water. Birds, bats, and many other animals feed on fruit and thus disperse the seeds wherever they go, maintaining the place where they live over generations, or even creating new forests as they spread seeds to new areas. Plants provide us with material for medicines, clothing (such as silk), and even fuel (such as alcohol from sugar cane). Many plants also need insects and other animals and organisms to grow. Bees and other insects pollinate flowers that grow into fruits and vegetables we eat, and biodiversity can even be seen in what we eat. A colorful plate of fruits, vegetables, and grains indicates diverse nutrients and fiber that our bodies need to keep us healthy, including the microbes that live inside our guts.

Why Should we Care About Biodiversity When it Comes to Health?

It feels wonderful to take a dip in a river or stroll through a lush forest, breathing in the fresh, clean air. These experiences are essential to our physical and mental health. For example, studies have discovered that people who have greater contact with nature and biodiversity from a young age have fewer allergies [1]. People who eat meals with lots of diversity, including fruits and vegetables, have better digestion, fewer illnesses, and greater energy levels. See? Our wellbeing is tied to the biodiversity within ecosystems, including our own bodies (Figure 1).

Today, many people live in cities, people travel more than they did in the past, and they use more natural resources. Farms occupy more space to produce more food for the world’s growing population. Pollution and destruction of the environment and biodiversity loss can increase diseases for both humans and animals [2]. When humans use ecosystems without thinking about environmental impacts on land and water, they often disturb other species and their relationships. This can affect the health of soil, which we need to produce food, along with the abilities of rivers to provide water, plants to create natural medicines, and trees to maintain Earth’s pleasant climate. Biodiversity destruction makes it less likely that we can have pleasant experiences in nature, so our mental health cannot benefit from great outdoor experiences.

Biodiversity loss may increase the risk of new infectious diseases, like those that are transmitted from animals to humans. In a healthy ecosystem, biodiversity can help control infections because different species keep each other in check. When we disturb biodiversity, for example when we cut down forests to convert them to farms and cities, the relationships between animal species and the microbes that live with them also change. Species may be exposed to new or more microbes that may cause disease (Figure 2). Or species that we are not used to interacting with may move into our surroundings, or we might move into theirs! So, understanding and respecting the delicate balance of biodiversity is not just about preserving an external environment; it also ensures our own health.

What is Being Done to Help Health and Biodiversity—And What can you Do?

There are many ways to help our environment and human health. For example, pollution and climate change impact the environment and human health. Reducing what you use and reusing and recycling items can reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change and can prevent pollution from mining as well as the amount of waste in landfills and incinerators. Eating foods that grow closer to where you live can reduce environmental impacts through reducing travel and waste production. Plant-based diets often have lower environmental impact and greater positive health impacts. Learning more about your own impacts and health is one step, but being in contact with nature and learning about your surroundings is another, because this can help connect you to the environment you live in.

Protecting natural areas like forests, rivers, lakes, and oceans is another way to help. Protecting these does not only mean creating national parks or protecting forests and the ocean. It is also about protecting people and learning from groups of people who have a long history of protecting biodiversity. Indigenous peoples have been strongly connected to the land and rivers for thousands of years, with traditional ways of farming, hunting, and fishing that can help to protect biodiversity and improve health. Better farming in ways that are less harmful to ecosystems can reduce the use of chemicals, maintain greater biodiversity, and help the soil stay healthy. There are also groups working to help species that might go extinct, like pandas or tigers, by protecting them and helping them to find safe places to live and thrive. Alongside these, there are health programs that support communities. We need a change to our whole system, so there are different groups working on improving our connection to the environment and nature. These groups often use the terms “One Health” and “Planetary Health” to describe the interconnectedness and need for balance in the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment.

Finally, experts are also developing new technologies, strategies, and plans to help understand and protect our planet’s diversity and health [3]. Most importantly, experts are finding ways to work together, share knowledge, and make better decisions without damaging the environment. Examples are making plans to save endangered species, monitoring their movement and growth, understanding how our behaviors influence pollution and climate, or finding ways to help plants grow better. These actions will all become even more important as we live in a warmer climate, so help us spread the word by telling friends that our own health thrives thanks to biodiversity.

Glossary

Ecosystem: ↑ A place where organisms live that includes the non-living physical environment (water, light, temperature, etc.) they interact with.

Microbes: ↑ Microbes or microorganisms are super tiny living things, like bacteria and viruses, that you need a microscope to see. They can be found almost everywhere.

Biodiversity: ↑ A measure of the variety of genes, species, and ecosystems in a location or region.

Indigenous Peoples: ↑ The first people who lived in a place and are connected to it for a very long time, with their own traditions, languages, and ways of seeing the world.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

AI Tool Statement

ChatGPT was used to improve writing for young readers in earlier versions of the draft. Parts of Figure 1 were generated with the aid of DALL-E through Microsoft Bing Image Creator.

Acknowledgments

RM and DH were supported by Bryce Carmine and Anne Carmine (née Percival) through the Massey University Foundation. PP was supported by the Ford Foundation and NSF (2225023). We extend our thanks to our illustrator, young reviewers, teachers, and editors for their invaluable support. The opinions in this article are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the InterAmerican Institute for Global Change Research or its Parties.