Zoonotic Diseases and Climate Change

Kenneth Martinez  0:01  

Good day, everyone. Welcome from across the world to another session in our webinar series on infectious disease, presented in collaboration with the American Industrial Hygiene Association. While not the final session, this is one of the concluding webinars before we return in October.

This is a special IBEC milestone. For the first time, all our contributors are based in Australia. Consider this a prelude to some exciting announcements coming soon.

I’m Ken Martinez, President of IBEC, and I’d like to thank our amazing team for making this possible. Special thanks to Firebrand Creative for supporting our communications, including today’s session.

Above all, our scientific advisors, under the guidance of IBEC’s Chief Science Officer Dr. Stephane Bilodeau, help prioritize the information we share.

If you’re new to IBEC, please visit weareibec.org to learn more about what we do and how you can get involved as a member, sponsor, or collaborator. We’d love to have you onboard.

One of the leaders driving new developments is Josiah Padgett, who also serves as one of today’s moderators alongside Dr. Bilodeau. Josiah, over to you to introduce yourself and share some exciting updates.

Josiah Padget  1:35  

Hi everyone, I’m Josiah Padget. I have a background in microbiology, water and air quality, and occupational hygiene. I’ve worked as a lead consultant at CETEC for over a decade and currently lead the Queensland team here in Australia.

CETEC is a technical risk management consultancy focusing on the built environment, with projects across Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and the U.S.

I’m proud to be part of the IBEC community, where we address interdisciplinary challenges and share knowledge to support healthier, safer, and more sustainable buildings.

IBEC bridges science and real-world infection prevention. And Australia, despite our smaller population, has played a major role in supporting IBEC’s mission. Along with our Asia-Pacific neighbors, we’re helping lead the charge toward safer environments in the region.

New technologies for infection detection and prevention are emerging rapidly, making this one of the fastest-moving areas in public health. IBEC’s growing Australian group includes academics, industry leaders, medical professionals, and engineering experts—many of whom sit on our Scientific Advisory Board.

In September, IBEC scientific advisors will participate in the UN General Assembly through our Safer Air Project partners, helping set global standards for indoor air quality.

To better support regional collaboration, we’re establishing an Australian-incorporated nonprofit to serve the APAC region. This subgroup will strengthen our momentum and keep us connected across time zones.

If you’d like to get involved, either with IBEC or the new APAC subgroup, feel free to reach out. My email will be shared in the chat, and you can also connect through our website.

Today’s session focuses on three of humanity’s biggest public health challenges:

• Climate change
• Zoonotic disease transmission
• Antimicrobial resistance

We’ve brought together leading Australian experts working at the intersection of zoonotic disease, climate change, agriculture, environmental health, and bioinformatics.

Our session is titled “Zoonotic Diseases and Climate Change: Understanding Emerging Threats”. It begins with a keynote from Professor Ricardo Soares Magalhães, followed by a panel featuring Adjunct Professor Anne Roiko, Dr. Belinda Chapman, and Dr. Thomas Jeffries.

Professor Soares Magalhães is a global leader in zoonotic disease epidemiology and biosecurity. He is based at the University of Queensland, where he directs the Queensland Alliance for One Health Sciences.

His work focuses on geospatial modeling, using data to understand disease spread and how climate shapes our vulnerabilities. He also advises the World Health Organization and the World Bank on disease surveillance and climate-sensitive pathogens.

Please join me in welcoming Professor Ricardo Soares Magalhães as he shares his insights on today’s critical topic.

Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães  5:19  

Thank you very much, Josiah, and a very good morning and afternoon to everyone joining us on this webinar.

I can’t see my presentation, but if the organizing committee could perhaps show the presentation, that would be great.

So today, I’m going to briefly outline the main issues around the interrelationship between climate change and zoonoses.

This is a group of diseases that is dominated through a transmission process between animals and human beings; and also in reverse, which we call reverse zoonoses. These conditions are often in the spotlight for a number of media outlets, but they are much more than just news headlines. They are builders of societies but also destroyers of societies.

Before they become headlines, and much of that is because of their impact on animal health, these conditions tend to circulate in animal populations.

An important feature is that zoonotic disease transmission is really facilitated through the interaction between livestock species, companion animal species, and wildlife reservoirs of infection. The examples I have there on the right-hand side correspond to some of the examples in Australia—wildlife reservoirs including wild birds, rodents, macropods, and bats. These species coexist with existing livestock husbandry systems and pose a number of challenges in terms of the biosecurity of these systems—regarding the incursion, spread, control, and prevention of these infections.

An important driver of these conditions, and those challenges to biosecurity, is indeed the advent of climate events. We call them climate hazards. The way they interrelate with transmission that sometimes leads to pandemics is a very old connection.

Perhaps the most well-known pandemic faced by humankind in the 14th century is the Black Death, which was caused by Yersinia pestis, a disease transmitted by rodents to human beings through the biting of vectors, and also via human-to-human transmission in the case of pneumonic plague.

Back then, society was largely a feudal agrarian society at the mercy of the elements. The Black Death epidemic killed about 30% to 50% of the entire population in Europe, depending on the statistics and countries. It was a catalyst for many social and cultural changes in 14th-century Europe, contributing to the thinking and advent of the Renaissance.

What were the drivers of transmission that really led to the Black Death outbreak? Unlike what was initially thought,  (that it was introduced as a result of conflict between the Mongol Empire and feudal state-based powers in Eastern Europe) there was also a big link to crop failures and east-west cereal trade disruptions.

These crop failures were linked to significant drops in temperature across the European continent. Before the pandemic reached Crimea (the site of battles between the Mongol Empire and the Genoese), cereal trade between Italy and the Black Sea was sizable to overcome food security issues. After the blockade, cereal imports resumed and led to the disease’s incursion—first in southern Italy, and then later into major ports in France and Spain, eventually spreading inland.

So plague outbreaks disseminated from these major cereal ports in southern Europe to the north primarily due to crop failure. A lot of food was left in fields, leading to a boom in rodent populations, and consequently, disease transmission.

These events, as you can see on the graph, are stark and have happened repeatedly in recent history. The earliest well-described event was the Little Ice Age in the 6th century, which led to the Justinian Plague; similar to what happened later with the Great Famine in the early 14th century.

These are maps and analyses that show the linkage between the drop in temperature and the Great Famine caused by crop failures.

These events were a catalyst for several zoonotic outbreaks that spread across Europe up to the 16th and 17th centuries.

By 1347, Europe was already weakened by successive harvest failures, especially after the Great Famine. Volcanic eruptions were a big trigger of these climatic events that led to crop failure and temperature drops. Sulfate aerosols, as shown on the slide, were a major driver in the temperature drop. The conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid had the most significant impact on climate change in the 14th century.

Scientific evidence links volcanic activity in Indonesia and eruptions in New Zealand (Montana region) as key drivers of these catastrophic events.

Fast forward to today, we are now faced with climatic hazards that are unlike those in antiquity. These are anthropogenic in nature, not caused by natural events like volcanic eruptions.

These new hazards stress our current biosecurity systems, which are meant to mitigate the incursion and spread of infections across the food chain.

Zoonoses can be transmitted across many exposure interfaces, many of which exist at different stages of the food chain. These stages are now more challenged than ever due to extreme weather events, as I’ll show you next.

What we see is that natural climatic variability has been rebooted. There’s a steep incline in global temperature over the last couple of hundred years. Natural patterns like La Niña (cold and rainy) and El Niño (hot and dry) are now becoming much more extreme.

Many zoonotic conditions are intimately related to the environment. These extreme weather events challenge the biosecurity systems we have in place, especially in agricultural systems that interact with environmental systems and wildlife reservoirs.

Some analyses from our team in China, shown on the right-hand side, demonstrate a clear (sometimes nonlinear) relationship between environmental conditions (like rainfall and minimum temperature) and outbreaks of Japanese encephalitis. We’re also seeing the northward expansion of these vector-borne diseases as minimum temperatures rise over the decades.

Climate change influences current biosecurity systems in many ways. One clear example is the impact on vector-borne conditions under high rainfall and humidity. But there’s also impact in dry conditions.

In Australia, during 2007–2018, we had very dry conditions that required grain to be shipped to drought-stricken areas. The movement of animals and feed imposed major biosecurity risks, which our systems struggle to control.

Another example is the impact of climate hazards on the ecology of wildlife reservoirs. The best example is the 2011 Hendra virus spillover, which followed an El Niño event.

In 2011, there were spillover events preceded by a steep rise in the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) in mid-2010, which ended a severe El Niño and began a prolonged La Niña lasting until mid-2011. La Niña events bring increased rainfall and cooler temperatures, which trigger eucalyptus tree growth but not flowering. Since flying foxes feed on the flowers, this reduced food availability and pushed them closer to horses, increasing the risk of spillover.

Fast forward to today, we now face avian influenza outbreaks with autochthonous viruses devastating poultry production in Australia. These outbreaks began in 2024 and have been driven by increased contact between wild birds and biosecurity systems.

Farming practices, like the rise in free-range egg farms, make it harder to control viruses moved by wild birds. Additionally, human encroachment into watershed areas due to the prolonged La Niña (2021–2025) has brought farms closer to wildlife habitats.

What can we do to trace these transmission paths and improve prevention and control strategies?

This slide shows that El Niño and La Niña events directly impact ecological systems, which drive zoonotic transmission in both human and animal health sectors.

What we currently lack is a clear understanding of the indicators we can use to anticipate and design interventions that allow our systems to adapt.

Next slide, please.

Our team has worked with the World Bank to design a protocol to identify:

• Key climate hazards by location
• Plausible biological transmission mechanisms
• Their combined impact on health (animals, humans, and environment)

This prioritization protocol, now in use across several countries, allows ranking of zoonoses based on national relevance and climate sensitivity.

This approach also helps identify vulnerable communities through spatial modeling, using IPCC climate scenarios to estimate how diseases may spread geographically.

These strategies show us system vulnerabilities and which communities are most at risk.

We now see that modern biosecurity systems are vulnerable to emerging criticality brought on by climate hazards. There’s a difficulty in anticipating, managing, and communicating these risks, especially across the food chain. Unknown unknowns create a need for more research, particularly around biosecurity indicators that reflect system stress and help us anticipate and mitigate events like floods or droughts.

Currently, our governance frameworks are disease-specific. But perhaps it’s time to move toward a systemic understanding of vulnerability so we can address not just individual hazards, but groups of hazards, in a more cohesive and constructive way.

And I think that’s it from me this morning. I’m very happy to take any questions or comments as part of the panel discussion that will follow.

Thank you.

Josiah Padget  25:16  

Thanks, Ricardo. That’s been quite fascinating, just how interlinked weather, animal systems, and zoonotic disease truly are. When we think about climate change, most people don’t immediately connect it with disease. Could you explain what you mean by climate hazards in this context? And who do you think might be most vulnerable?

Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães  25:43  

This draws from risk assessment terminology to help us understand the emerging drivers of zoonoses.

A hazard is an event that has the potential to cause harm. It involves both probability and consequence. When we talk about climate hazards, we’re referring to events, like extreme rainfall, flooding, or drought, that have the potential to cause harm.

Now, this doesn’t mean those events will definitely cause harm, there’s no such thing as zero risk, either in a biosecurity system or in risk assessment more broadly.

The goal is to understand both the risk and the consequence components of a climate event. That understanding helps us assess transmission processes, the probability of transmission, and the impact it could have. It also guides us in identifying prevention and intervention strategies; both to reduce the probability and to minimize the consequences of an outbreak.

I hope that makes sense.

Josiah Padget  27:07  

Yes, that definitely does. And regarding vulnerability, do you think it’s more about population characteristics, food security, or regional differences?

Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães  27:27  

That’s a great question. The example of avian influenza illustrates this well.

We see an intersection between social determinants of health and environmental conditions. For example, changes in farming practices (like increased consumer demand for free-range eggs) prompt industry responses. But those responses can open the door to new risks, such as greater exposure to wildlife reservoirs.

These reservoirs, in turn, are influenced by climate: favorable environmental conditions can increase their geographic spread and bring them into closer contact with existing biosecurity systems.

So, this is where social science meets climate science; and studying those intersections within a biosecurity context is incredibly fascinating.

Josiah Padget  28:29  

Excellent. Well, I might open it up now to the rest of the group but first, I’ll get Stephane to introduce himself. Stephane, welcome.

Stephane Bilodeau  28:41  

Thank you. I was going to thank our guest, Ricardo, for that powerful talk. I’m Stephane Bilodeau, Chief Science Officer at IBEC, and I have the pleasure of working with an outstanding team. I’m also affiliated with McGill University in Canada, where my background is in bioengineering, and I work with several UN agencies as well.

Let’s dive further into today’s great topic, brilliantly introduced by Ricardo, on how climate change is shaping new hazards and risks. Now, I’d like to introduce other important panel members.

First, we have Professor Anne Roiko, an adjunct professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast, where she’s been deeply engaged in promoting the One Health approach linking environmental health with the prevention of infectious disease, right at the center of today’s discussion.

Professor Roiko, welcome. Could you tell us a bit more about yourself and your work, and explain what the One Health paradigm means in practice?

Dr. Anne Roiko  30:05  

Thank you very much, Stephane, and thank you, Ricardo, for that great introductory talk.

I’ve spent about 28 years as an academic and am currently affiliated with both the University of the Sunshine Coast and Griffith University’s School of Medicine. I’m an environmental health scientist, and at the core of environmental health lies the One Health paradigm, which recognizes the intrinsic connections between human health, animal health, and the environment.

We environmental health professionals are what I call specialist generalists. We need to work across disciplines to connect threads and that’s exactly what Ricardo alluded to in his presentation.

As part of my work, I also train environmental health professionals; those who serve as front-line officers managing many of these issues. It’s a vital, often undervalued profession. When these professionals do their jobs well, nothing happens, people don’t get sick, people don’t die, and because of that, their contributions often go unnoticed.

My own research primarily focuses on water-related health risks, and I’m very active in the Health-Related Water Microbiology Group. I serve on the Management Committee for the International Water Association’s Specialist Interest Group on this topic. Water connects so many aspects of the environment, making it a key space where One Health plays out in real life.

To me, One Health is a way of thinking. It recognizes that people, animals, plants, and their shared environments are all interconnected. The health of one depends on the health of the others.

Importantly, nature doesn’t compartmentalize, but historically, we have. We’ve separated human health, environmental health, and veterinary health into different systems and portfolios. Then we act surprised when problems (like biosecurity threats) arise. Geography used to be the discipline that connected everything, and I believe environmental health is becoming the new geography in many ways; an interdisciplinary field that bridges gaps.

Earlier in my career, we used the term ecosystem health, and One Health now expands on that with explicit recognition of animal health as central, especially in discussions like today’s on zoonotic disease and climate change.

In practice, One Health requires complex systems thinking. We need to talk about feedback loops, lagged responses, proximal and distal drivers. Some systems move fast, like pandemics (COVID, SARS), others move slowly and insidiously, like climate-linked biosecurity threats or locust plagues.

Ricardo gave excellent examples. But in short, One Health is about managing our environment to safeguard human, animal, and ecosystem health because they are all connected.

I’ll leave it there and let the other panelists continue this rich discussion.

Stephane Bilodeau  34:07  

Thank you again for the insightful contributions and for highlighting how interconnected we all are with nature, with other animals, and with each other. Systems thinking is so important to ensure we address the key factors behind these issues.

Now, I’d like to introduce another of today’s panelists, Dr. Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology at Western Sydney University. Dr. Jeffries writes extensively on zoonotic disease and climate change in both academic settings and public outlets like The Conversation. His research also focuses on tropical diseases, which are increasingly shifting in distribution due to climate change.

Dr. Jeffries, could you tell us a bit more about your work and share some of the challenges you see, not only in the science itself but also in communicating zoonotic disease risks to the public?

Dr. Thomas Jeffries  35:33  

Thanks, Stephane. I’ve got a four-year-old sitting next to me, so bear with me if I get interrupted!

The challenges span two interconnected realms: the science itself, and public communication. These are explicitly linked. One of the biggest challenges lies at the intersection of environmental change and pathogen evolution.

Our first speaker gave great historical context for how environmental change drives zoonotic disease. We’re seeing this play out in real time. For example, I’ve been working on a melioidosis outbreak in Northern Australia. This pathogen lives naturally in soil, but increased rainfall—linked to climate change—has brought it to the surface via floodwaters and allowed it to spread to areas where it normally isn’t found. That’s triggered a severe epidemic and unfortunately, several deaths.

To understand the current epidemiology and evolution of this pathogen, we need to understand what’s driving its spread—which involves not only environmental factors like rainfall, but also urban development. In this case, new roads south of Cairns have pushed people closer to flood zones and disturbed muddy habitats, increasing human exposure. So now we’re dealing with an overlap of climate change, infrastructure decisions, and public health.

From a scientific standpoint, my work looks at the genomics of the pathogen, specifically how its virulence increases in different environmental conditions. But beyond that, we need to understand how people are interacting with those environments—why they’re living where they are, how economic factors like construction play a role, and how that ties into healthcare response capacity.

This complexity also plays out on a global level. We’ve seen diseases like Ebola and HIV emerge due to increased human encroachment into wildlife habitats—driven by logging, mining, and other development projects in Central Africa. That interaction between human activity and the environment is now being reflected in the genetic evolution and pathogenicity of these diseases.

And then comes the second challenge: communicating all this to the public. I write a lot for The Conversation, covering topics like recent plague cases in the U.S., the melioidosis outbreak, and currently, an article on bird flu. The big challenge is language. Words like “pandemic” or “plague” can trigger fear, or even burnout—especially after COVID. Some people are more aware and engaged, but others are tuned out.

So I try to tailor my language carefully. Instead of leading with technical terms or alarming phrases, I often start with human stories—a specific case, the symptoms someone experienced, the environment they were in. For example, a construction worker exposed in a flooded zone. That kind of storytelling draws people in, and once I have their attention, I can explain the science underneath.

But it’s a balancing act. COVID created more awareness of zoonotic disease, but it also exhausted people. So the key is finding that middle ground—communicating effectively without overwhelming or alienating the audience.

I’ll leave it there for now.

Stephane Bilodeau  40:43  

Thank you, Dr. Jeffries, for those insights and especially for emphasizing the importance of communication. Yes, science is key—but it’s just as critical that the public understands what the science means. You gave some excellent examples of how to bridge that gap. Thank you again.

Josiah, I’ll turn it back to you to introduce our next speakers and continue the session.

Josiah Padget  41:10  

Thanks, Stephane. I’d now like to introduce Dr. Belinda Chapman. Dr. Chapman leads a microbiology research facility in Sydney and has spent her career exploring disease risks in agriculture, food systems, and beyond. Her work spans the private sector and government, including leadership roles at CSIRO.

Dr. Chapman, I understand you’ll be discussing a less well-known but important aspect of zoonotic disease: the role of fungal pathogens in transmission. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and explain why fungal zoonoses matter?

Dr. Belinda Chapman  41:50  

Thanks, Josiah—it’s great to be here, and I’m really enjoying listening to everyone. It’s always amazing how much more you learn when people come together around a common topic.

A bit about myself: I started as an environmental microbiologist, then transitioned through food microbiology, agriculture, medical microbiology, and water microbiology. About ten years ago, I brought all those areas together and co-founded my company, Quantal Bioscience, where I serve as director and principal microbiologist.

Quantal is, in many ways, like a miniature One Health organization. We focus on how environmental, medical, animal, and plant microbiology intersect. While zoonoses haven’t always been our primary focus, we’re particularly interested in emerging fungal zoonoses.

As Ricardo and others have pointed out, the conversation often focuses on viruses—understandably so, after COVID and the current concerns with bird flu. Bacteria also get significant attention. But fungi are often the overlooked third piece of the puzzle.

And to clarify: when we talk about fungi here, we’re not talking about mushrooms. We’re referring to molds and yeasts, the smaller types of fungi. These organisms are highly influenced by climate change and interact with humans and animals in similar ways to viral and bacterial pathogens.

There are four key environmental factors influencing fungal disease transmission:

• Rising temperatures — Some fungi are very well adapted to heat. As global temperatures rise, species that were once limited to the tropics are now expanding into new regions.

• Increased moisture — Fungi thrive in damp conditions. If you’ve ever had mold appear in your bathroom, you know how quickly it grows when moisture is present.
• Drier, dustier environments — On the other hand, in some parts of the world, we’re seeing increased dryness and dust. These conditions help fungal spores travel, since many molds are resilient in dry soil and can become airborne when disturbed.
• Greater human-animal interaction — Just like with other zoonotic risks, more frequent contact between humans and animals increases the likelihood of exposure to fungi.

While fungal zoonoses don’t often make headlines, they do cause significant morbidity—from skin infections to respiratory illnesses. They’re a growing area of concern, especially as climate conditions shift.

Fungi have entered the public consciousness recently thanks to pop culture, like the series The Last of Us, which dramatized fungal infection scenarios. While that’s fiction, it highlights that fungi can have major impacts—especially as they adapt to new environments and conditions.

I’ll stop there for now, but I look forward to diving deeper into fungal zoonoses as we continue the discussion.

Josiah Padget  46:35  

Thanks, Belinda. I think your point about fungal migration is important—and it connects with another issue: our buildings are not resilient. They’re built for specific climate conditions, so as the weather changes, those structures won’t always adapt well. That could become a major problem in the future.

Thank you again for those insights.

Now, I’d like to thank all of our panel members for sharing their expertise and for raising key questions we should continue to explore. We’ll open the floor for audience questions shortly. Feel free to post them in the chat box. If we don’t have time to answer all of them, you’re welcome to email us and we’ll follow up.

Let’s bring all of our speakers back in.

Josiah Padget  47:40  

Great—everyone’s back. I’d like to pose a final question to the group:

Over the past several years, what have you observed in terms of the risks of zoonotic disease and other environmentally driven diseases?

What trends are you seeing?

Who would like to start?

Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães  47:59  

I’m happy to begin.

What we’re witnessing now in terms of zoonoses associated with climate hazards, such as heavy rainfall, is not just isolated incidents—it’s part of a multi-hazard dynamic.

Traditionally, we’ve treated these as individual disease outbreaks. One disease hits the news, then disappears, and the next one takes its place. But what’s really happening is that a single environmental event—like a severe rainstorm—can trigger cascades of transmission across multiple pathogens.

That’s because many zoonoses share similar modes of transmission. Whether we’re talking about bacterial, fungal, or viral pathogens, their interaction with environmental conditions is deeply interconnected.

So rather than treating each disease separately, we need to take a systems approach. Instead of focusing on isolated pathogens, we should examine the underlying systemic changes—the root environmental, ecological, and societal shifts—that create fertile ground for multiple outbreaks.

For example, avian influenza often grabs headlines because of its pandemic potential. But many other zoonotic threats are emerging at the same time, driven by the same environmental changes—and they’re getting far less attention.

This is what’s striking: we are facing multiple disease threats simultaneously, triggered by shared drivers like deforestation, climate shifts, and urban expansion. And it’s that multi-layered complexity that demands new governance frameworks—ones that aren’t disease-specific, but designed to manage cross-cutting risks.

Dr. Belinda Chapman  50:11  

I’ll jump in again—just to comment further from the fungal perspective.

I completely agree with Ricardo’s earlier point. When we see flooding events, they can trigger the growth of fungal species that wouldn’t typically pose a threat under normal conditions.

There are both direct and indirect transmission routes for fungal pathogens. For example, we sometimes see direct transmission between animals and humans, particularly in high-contact environments. But we also have indirect forms—like with Cryptococcus, a fungus spread by birds. Increased interaction between birds and humans can amplify the spread.

Another example is Aspergillus fumigatus, which thrives in decaying plant material. With more humid environments, things like stable bedding or stored hay can degrade faster, becoming ideal habitats for fungi. When humans are exposed in these settings, the risk of infection increases. It’s a combination of environmental changes and human or animal presence that creates new windows of exposure.

Dr. Anne Roiko  51:53  

I’d like to add another perspective, building on that.

Ricardo mentioned pandemics—and it’s important to think about how our behavior changes during such events. Take COVID-19, for example. We stayed indoors more, adopted more companion animals, and many of us took up gardening.

Those shifts can unintentionally increase exposure to fungal risks. For instance, potting mixes, especially if stored incorrectly, can harbor fungal pathogens. Our actions, combined with climate changes, shape microbial behavior and risks.

We live in linked socio-ecological systems, and unless we bring together different disciplines to examine these emerging risks, we’ll miss the hidden roots of exposure and unexpected points of transmission. It requires a holistic mindset.

Dr. Belinda Chapman  52:48  

Anne, your earlier comment really struck a chord with me—the idea that microbes don’t divide the environment the way we do.

We artificially segment health, animal care, environmental systems—but microbes don’t care what we call their habitat. They simply exist, thrive, and adapt. That’s such an important insight.

Dr. Thomas Jeffries  53:08  

I’d like to underscore that connection—especially regarding floodwaters.

Belinda mentioned fungal pathogens, and I previously spoke about melioidosis. But flooding doesn’t just increase exposure to existing pathogens—it also brings them into contact with sewage runoff, which can contain antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes.

From a One Health perspective, floods are a major concern. They connect human exposure, pathogen spread, and the environmental drivers that may increase pathogen virulence, including the spread of AMR.

If I had to summarize, I’d say floods and birds are two increasingly well-established and emerging drivers of infectious disease risk.

Dr. Belinda Chapman  53:58 

When you have floods, you often see bird populations move in to take advantage of the floodwaters—and with them, the potential for disease transmission increases.

Dr. Thomas Jeffries  54:08  

From a local perspective—here in Sydney—these large floods used to happen maybe once a decade. Now, they’re occurring three times a year. The frequency and severity of such events are definitely rising in some regions, making them a major factor in public and environmental health.

Josiah Padget  54:28  

I’d like to guide the panel now to explore how we predict risk, both for zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Ricardo, your work focuses on visualizing how infections spread geographically.

Dr. Jeffries, you develop detailed microbial datasets that support those models.

Dr. Chapman, you’re at the coalface, building microbial databases to ensure our findings are interpreted correctly.

(I’m having some technical issues at the moment, but if the team could begin discussing this broad topic of predicting zoonotic and AMR risks, that would be great.)

Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães  55:23  

This is one of the big questions in our field.

AMR is a complex and multidimensional issue. It encompasses:

• The bacteria and genes responsible,
• The environmental context in which they circulate,
• And the human behavior that drives antimicrobial usage.

Antimicrobial agents aren’t just used in hospitals or vet clinics. They’re also found in agriculture, plant pesticides, and other compounds that impact microbial life. And yet, data across all these domains remains incomplete and unconsolidated.

Even when we do have data, interpreting its public health implications is difficult. There are so many unknown unknowns when it comes to AMR, particularly around its links to climate hazards. For example, Thomas mentioned how floods can spread bacteria and chemical residues from farms—but we don’t fully understand the health impacts of this dissemination.

Even basic questions like:

• “What concentration of exposure is safe?”
• “What levels require public health intervention?”
  

remain largely unanswered.

Some progress is being made:

• On the agriculture side, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is leading efforts through the Annual Antimicrobial Use database, collecting global data on usage across member countries.
• On the human health side, the World Health Organization (WHO) is spearheading initiatives through the GLASS framework for AMR surveillance.

At the national level, we’re seeing stronger efforts in the health sector—such as databases led by the Department of Health. But we still lack consistent data from the animal, plant, and environmental sectors, which is critical for effective surveillance and prediction.

There’s still a lot of work to do.

Dr. Anne Roiko  58:37  

Thanks, Josiah. I’d like to add more from the One Health perspective on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Ricardo is part of this effort, and many of us are now working with the new Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) – Safe, which just received 10 years of funding to explore this complex issue.

AMR is the epitome of a One Health problem—it crosses all boundaries. Historically, we’ve studied antibiotic resistance mostly in the clinical sector, but now we’re realizing how critical environmental compartments are too. AMR is found in our air, water, soil—and as Belinda said, microbes are quite promiscuous when it comes to sharing resistance genes.

At the same time, we’re seeing societal shifts toward circular economies—recycling water, reusing wastewater—which may unintentionally promote horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic resistance across the environment. My own field, water and wastewater management, has attracted international attention due to the complex ways resistance genes spread in these systems.

These genes have always been in the environment—we originally got antibiotics from nature—so it shouldn’t surprise us that they’re mixing and circulating again, especially now that human behavior has changed.

There’s also the zoonotic amplification of these genes: our increasing contact with animals, contaminated food, and unsafe water threatens food security and public health. While people might understand what it means when an antibiotic stops working, most don’t grasp the environmental or microbial dynamics behind it.

That’s why we need science communicators like Thomas, who writes accessible articles for public platforms like The Conversation, helping people understand how waste management, animal interaction, and AMR policies are all connected.

I think CRC Safe will help improve this understanding, and I’m also very pleased to see that the new Australian Centre for Disease Control (ACDC) is adopting a One Health lens, giving more visibility to environmental health.

(I can see Thomas is eager to jump in!)

Dr. Belinda Chapman  1:01:27  

He probably wants to comment on ACDC—I was just excited by the name! But yes, I completely agree: public awareness and integration into policy and management are absolutely essential.

Let me just build on what Ricardo and Anne have said. At the coalface level, especially from the fungal side, we face an even more complicated scenario.

We’ve been studying antibiotic resistance for a long time—it’s relatively well understood, especially because bacteria have smaller, less complex genomes, and they’re biologically different from us, which makes it easier to find treatments that don’t harm the host.

But with fungi, we’re dealing with eukaryotic organisms—they’re biologically much more similar to humans. That makes antifungal resistance harder to study and treat. Their genomes are larger, more complex, and less researched, which makes finding a “chink in the armor” to target without harming the host extremely difficult.

It’s also important to highlight that animals often carry more fungi and are more susceptible to fungal diseases than humans. As we get closer to animals, we also increase our exposure to fungal pathogens.

There’s growing evidence that some fungi can jump between species. For example, we’re seeing more ringworm, which traditionally affected animals, now showing up in humans due to increased animal contact.

And the question becomes: How do we treat these infections—especially when resistant?

Dr. Anne Roiko  1:03:52  

Josiah, I believe you wanted us to touch on management and solutions, and you’ve already heard how specialized the knowledge is across our speakers. For instance, Thomas works with omics data and other molecular methods, mapping genomes and resistance genes—very specialized work.

But because of that specialization, we also need analytical approaches that help bridge these different knowledge systems and promote complex systems thinking. One promising development is the rise of Bayesian methods, particularly Bayesian Belief Network modeling. These allow you to combine expert knowledge with data, even if that data isn’t complete.

And when you bring the right people into the room—wastewater operators, farmers, members of the public who understand human behavior—you get invaluable insights alongside the technical data. We need to recognize and integrate different types of knowledge and create spaces for these disciplines to come together.

I think organizations like IBEC are helping make that happen. This session is a great start—we just need to keep the conversation going.

Dr. Thomas Jeffries  1:05:13  

I completely agree. Building on what Anne said about Bayesian analysis, there are now very sophisticated statistical models that integrate all these diverse factors. What’s really exciting is how we can now visualize these models in ways that make them much more accessible—not just to scientists, but also to policy makers and the general public.

For example, I use network analysis, and the tools we use to visualize these systems are similar to social networks. So, you can make these interactive visual diagrams that show how variables related to zoonotic disease interact. It’s powerful because it makes complexity visible and understandable, especially for communication and policy engagement. Statistics don’t have to stay abstract.

Stephane Bilodeau  1:06:08  

That’s a great transition into our next topic. We’ve now seen how your work connects—each from different angles, but all very much interconnected. Thank you for that.

Now, let’s talk about emerging technologies. We’ve touched on emerging and re-emerging diseases, but now let’s discuss the “elephant in the room”—which is AI and machine learning.

So I’ll start with this:

What role does AI and machine learning currently play in your work—and what role do you think it will play in the future—in the prevention of zoonotic disease?

And a second-level question:

What specific technologies or tools do you see emerging right now that are changing how we protect ourselves from current and future zoonotic risks?

Some of you hinted at this already—let’s explore it further.

Dr. Belinda Chapman  1:07:35  

I’ll start quickly from the coalface perspective.

In the 30 years I’ve been a microbiologist, the rise of molecular technologies has been enormous. They’ve opened doors to microbial worlds we didn’t even know existed.

Today, I encounter microbes I’ve never heard of—daily. Each time, I have to ask: What is that microbe? What does it do? And that means I’m constantly learning and researching, every single day.

But that’s just the microbes we already can detect. It’s become overwhelming. The volume of data is now beyond what any individual can handle.

That’s why AI is already essential—just to help us synthesize data, spot patterns, and access large-scale insights quickly. Even at the hands-on, coalface level, it’s getting to the point where it’s impossible to work without it.

Dr. Thomas Jeffries  1:09:13  

I’d like to build on that. Molecular technologies like real-time DNA sequencing in the field—especially nanopore sequencing—are really revolutionizing how we monitor diseases. A great example is how it was used during the Zika virus outbreak, where field-based epidemiology involved in-situ sequencing right on-site.

As for AI, it’s a huge emerging area that we need to engage with carefully and thoughtfully. It has the potential to reshape how we process all this incoming data.

Dr. Anne Roiko  1:09:45  

I can add to that. I’ve worked on several international projects where eight or nine countries were using the same high-throughput sequencing methods, generating huge volumes of data. But the real challenge is:

What do you do with all that data?

Before applying AI, it’s essential to ensure the data is valid. One project, SARA, led by German researchers across nine countries, spent 18 months just validating techniques—making sure we were measuring the right things first. That step is crucial. If you feed flawed data into models, the results will be flawed too.

We saw this during COVID-19, where machine learning was used to analyze fragments of viral RNA in sewage to predict outbreaks—often before clinical cases were identified. These global collaborations also involved sharing machine learning code and protocols.

But that raises another critical issue: the social license to use this data. People need to understand how their data—from sewage, air, or other environmental sources—is being used.

It’s about transparency. During the pandemic, I received calls like,

“There’s COVID in the sewage—can we catch it from swimming?”

That kind of fear shows we’re not communicating complexity well. We need infographics, clear visuals, and better public communication to demystify the science. People deserve to know that this data is used to promote public health, not invade their privacy.

Stephane Bilodeau  1:11:57  

Absolutely important. You’re right on that point.

Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães  1:12:03  

I’d just like to add that Belinda, Thomas, and Anne have all shown the tremendous potential of AI—especially in pathogen investigations, tracking evolutionary pressures, and predicting outbreaks.

But AI’s role doesn’t stop there. It also has massive implications for biosecurity systems.

Currently, many biosecurity strategies are based on best knowledge, but that often means simplistic, linear models—the old Newtonian approach, where we assume there’s a straightforward cause-effect chain. But these challenges are multi-pronged, multidimensional, unfolding across space and time.

And let’s face it—the human brain isn’t built to process all that at once.

This is where precision biosecurity comes in. Imagine custom tools for farmers and decision-makers, allowing them to make localized, bespoke decisions rather than applying blanket rules that don’t fit all situations.

Biosecurity systems often operate in a fragile balance. Small disruptions can lead to massive, non-linear outbreaks—what we call criticality.

AI gives us the tools to understand those dynamics, identify hidden drivers, and help humans make decisions under uncertainty—not just big-picture policy, but small, targeted interventions that matter on the ground.

Dr. Anne Roiko  1:14:08  

Just picking up on Ricardo’s point—yes, we have existing data, but we also now have tools for scenario modeling, and those are just as important. They let us predict potential outcomes before disasters occur, instead of learning after the fact. We can ask questions like: What if we follow this management path? What could go wrong? These tools allow us to simulate future possibilities and improve our preparedness.

Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães  1:14:33  

Exactly. At the CRC, for example, within our analytics program, we’re exploring digital farming systems—essentially creating digital twins of farms.

These digital simulations can model real-world interventions using nuanced parameters already being captured through advanced farm monitoring systems. Farmers today have a wealth of data at their fingertips—from soil sensors to weather feeds. In countries like Australia, and other digitally advanced farming regions, we’re in a great position to leverage those data streams to train AI models that support localized decision-making.

Let me give you an example: there’s a fantastic website called Long Paddock that many intensive farms in Australia use. It monitors the daily Southern Oscillation Index, a key driver of floods and droughts. Farmers use that information to make real-time decisions like: Should I harvest today? Should I delay planting?

By integrating tools like this with AI-powered modeling, we can help farmers make bespoke, moment-specific decisions that reflect climate hazards and changing risk conditions. It’s about resilience in the face of uncertainty.

Dr. Anne Roiko  1:16:17  

And listening to Belinda earlier reminded me—she mentioned how much she’s still learning after 30 years in microbiology. That leads me to think about the skills our young people will need.

What skill sets should we be fostering in the next generation of scientists, policymakers, and citizens? With the rise of omics, machine learning, and systems thinking, we need to embed these competencies in education early—even at the primary school level, where kids are already learning to code.

Dr. Belinda Chapman  1:16:48 

Absolutely. I can add something here.

Right now, in my lab, I have a Year 10 high school student working alongside university undergraduates on DNA sequencing. We actually welcome students from as early as Year 9 because we believe this is such a critical skillset—not just for scientists, but for scientific literacy more broadly.

We live in a world where being digitally literate—especially when it comes to biology, microbiology, disease surveillance, and epidemiology—is essential.

Take antimicrobial resistance. It’s not just coming—it’s accelerating, and will soon steamroll over us if we’re not prepared. We have to educate young people now about the challenges and the tools available to address them.

But it’s not only about training future researchers. It’s about raising scientifically literate citizens who can contribute to conversations about risk, data, and public decision-making—even if they don’t work in labs. That’s what will help guide our societies through the challenges ahead.

Dr. Thomas Jeffries  1:18:20  

I just want to highlight that now is a great opportunity to advance these educational goals, because many universities are undergoing structural and curriculum changes. This is a positive moment—especially if we use it to embed systems-level thinking and digital skills into tertiary education.

Belinda is already doing incredible work with younger students, and continuing that momentum into higher education is critical. We need to ensure students leave university not only inspired but also equipped with the technical skills they’ll need in the field.

Dr. Anne Roiko  1:18:51 

That’s where the hosts of today’s session—like IBEC—and our professional communities come in.

I’m a member of Environmental Health Australia and the International Federation of Environmental Health, and we regularly host educational forums that go beyond just Australian case studies. We have to think globally, using examples from around the world.

Also, we need to keep as much of this information as open-source and collaborative as possible. I have PhD students learning Python because others have generously shared their code online. This kind of open sharing accelerates learning—because honestly, we don’t live long enough to learn everything on our own!

But this raises a real tension. Many emerging technologies are tied to patents and profitability, which can limit access—especially for less developed countries. So we need to figure out how to balance commercial interests with equitable access to the benefits of innovation.

Stephane Bilodeau  1:20:05  

Absolutely. That’s a great synthesis of our recent discussion—technology, education, and the importance of sharing and collaboration.

Josiah, I believe you have a final question from the audience before we move to closing remarks?

Josiah Padget  1:20:27  

Yes. We’ve heard a lot today about zoonotic transmission—how disease can pass from animals to humans. But animals today are more than vectors—they’re also our food, our pets, and part of our families.

So, how can we reduce the risk of disease while still keeping animals close in our lives? How can we manage this without asking people to separate from their animals?

Dr. Belinda Chapman  1:21:09  

I’ll start with a very simple but powerful answer: Wash your hands.

It sounds basic, but hand hygiene is one of the most effective risk reduction strategies. Companion animals are wonderful, but they carry different organisms than humans—whether inside them or just on their fur.

For example, dogs love to roll in the dust, and we now know dust often contains fungal spores. So even indirect contact can be a risk.

It’s not about avoiding animals—it’s about smart behavior and hygiene. Wash your hands after contact. It really makes a difference.

Dr. Anne Roiko  1:22:08  

Basic environmental health principles—like hand washing—still stand as some of our most powerful defenses. Good hygiene doesn’t need to limit our contact with animals or nature. In fact, contact with nature has significant mental and physical health benefits—such as immunity building, stress reduction, and social connection. The key is managing the risk without losing the re

Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães  1:22:38  

It can’t be understated—the social dimensions of all of this, right? We can engineer the biosecurity system as much as we want—with vaccines and very good data pipelines to manage animals so they can produce at their maximum. But the social dimensions, as we’ve seen in the presentations, are really critical. They are the glue of everything we do

So, having that level of awareness—not just among the people who interact with animals directly, such as farmers and others along the food chain, who are very much aware of the risks because there are standard operating procedures in place and biosecurity frameworks across the industry—but also among consumers.

Social science can’t be understated. And livestock—when we talk about the health of livestock, we talk about two dimensions. One is obviously being healthy, and the welfare of animals is of core importance. When we’re talking about confined animal farming operations, we need to understand that welfare plays a really important role. The lack of immunity or suffering causes these pathogens to be excreted. It’s an important driver of the level of spillover that can happen. So maintaining animals in a humane situation—in a context which is obviously not a natural one—is a big way to mitigate a lot of these transmission processes.

The other dimension is that animal health is not just about being healthy and having good welfare but also producing at an adequate level. We must understand that these are biological systems and not ask too much from them.

I had a slide there of the evolution of a chicken since the 1950s until now—how they looked back then and how they look now. They were very lean, sort of skinny-looking—they looked like dinosaurs. Many dinosaurs. Now we have chickens that are so large they can barely walk throughout their 42-day life cycle before they’re on our plates. There are limits to biology, and pushing biology to the maximum can undermine how we ensure food security.

The monocultures of animals is a big issue. It’s a complex system—of economic, social pressures—and then you’ve got climate in the mix of all of this.

Dr. Thomas Jeffries  1:25:37 

Yeah, and I think that’s a great point. Intensive farming also relates to intensive housing and increasing the interactions of humans with animals in that context as well.

To use a historical example: when the third pandemic of the plague hit in the late 19th and early 20th century—Sydney in 1900 and San Francisco in 1900 as examples—it was the high-density tenement housing that got hit the worst. We tend to view that as a Victorian-era, Dickensian thing, but in many parts of the world, that sort of housing still exists.

Even as we increase housing density in countries like Australia, more and more people are being housed in environments that increase interactions with rats, insects, and mosquitoes. To build these developments, we need trucks that come in, which create ruts in the road filled with water—and then you get mosquitoes.

So how we do high-density housing and construction is really important to how humans interact with animals. And that gets even more exacerbated in the developing world, where people are being pushed further into environments where they interact with wildlife—at the fringes of jungles, particularly in Central Africa and Latin America.

How we do intensive people, as well as intensive animals, is really important.

Dr. Anne Roiko  1:27:06  

That’s a really good point—with you bringing in that historical context. And yeah, we can’t just think that that’s a Victorian era thing. Look at our refugee camps, and ecological refugees, and the way we design social housing. It has to be foremost. We can’t cut corners and create those conditions where the least able and the most vulnerable become more exposed to these complex environmental health risks.

Josiah Padget  1:27:36  

Well, thanks everyone. It’s been a fabulous session today. Unfortunately, we’ve probably run out of time for audience questions. But as I said earlier, if you email them through, we’ll get the experts to address them for you. Thanks to everyone for coming in today. Stephane, did you want to just close out?

Stephane Bilodeau  1:28:01  

Yes, thank you. Thank you all for your great participation. We’re sorry we don’t have time for more questions, but you were explicit, and the exchanges were awesome—so thank you.

We also want to extend an invitation to all of you panelists—those who aren’t yet part of IBEC—and to everyone watching today: we’d love you to join us. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me, Claire (our Vice President), Ken (our President), or Josiah as well. Or look at our website—everything is there.

We also want to say that IBEC is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization. Ana talked about the importance of collaboration, and we’ve seen throughout these exchanges how sharing and discussing is essential. As Tom referred to—it’s so important.

We’re coming to the end of the funding for this webinar series, but as Ken said at the beginning, we want to continue. We are already planning new things. So all help would be really welcome. If you believe in IBEC’s mission, if you believe in what we’re exchanging and discussing, and how science can be explained and shared between people and with the public—as we discussed today—and you want us to carry this work even further, we welcome your support.

So thank you to everyone who joined today. You can join as a member, or even as a sponsor. We have different sponsorship packages available and we’d be happy to share details if you drop us a line or email.

Finally, I want to thank all of our outstanding panelists for their expertise, and their generosity and insights. And thank you to everyone in the audience for listening and for engaging with these important issues around zoonotic disease.

If you know someone who would have liked to attend but couldn’t, the video will be available on our website soon. And if you have questions for the panelists—whether ones we didn’t get to today or ones that come up later—send them to me or my colleagues and we’ll forward them to our panelists.

Thank you one last time—and please stay safe in our ever-changing world.