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The Nordic countries are like the rest of the world largely affected by the processes brought about by human impacts on the Earth. However, the speed of climate change in the Arctic is several times as fast as in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification (Rantanen et al. in Commun Earth Environ 3:1–10, 2022). Thus, climate change in the Arctic is not just having an impact on the Nordic region, but it also acts as a driver for conditions in the rest of the globe. This makes the Nordic North of particular interest to the whole global society. Among the most important changes detected here are declines in nature, directly driven by land and sea use (change, intensification); direct exploitation of resources (especially fishing and mining); pollution; the expansion of invasive species; the effects of globalization and its various economic components; geopolitical tensions; and other significant processes worthy of consideration. This chapter summarizes the rapid development of the One Health approach in addressing the specific challenges posed by climate change and zoonotic diseases in the Nordic region. It highlights collaborative efforts among Nordic countries, including Arctic Six cooperation, and other major regional funding efforts at research and education. It discusses how the utilization of One Health principles can address the needs of the region and noted the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in achieving identified goals. Also, it discusses the specific health challenges posed by environmental contaminants, the transmission of zoonotic diseases, and the impact of climate change on species distribution that are seen in the Nordic North. It also considers the role of citizen science in data collection and the need for international collaboration in addressing these complex issues. Overall, the chapter underscores the urgency of addressing environmental and health challenges in this area through evidence-based policymaking and community engagement in the Nordic region.

Social determinants of health (SDHs) and the impact of colonization can make Canadian Arctic Indigenous communities susceptible to infectious diseases, including the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This scoping review followed the PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews and studied what is known about selected pandemics (COVID-19, tuberculosis, and H1N1 influenza) and SDHs (healthcare accessibility, food insecurity, mental health, cultural continuity, housing, community infrastructure, and socioeconomic status (SES)) for Canadian Arctic Indigenous communities. Original studies published in English and French up to October 2024 were located in databases (PubMed, Medline, and CINAHL), AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, and through reference tracking. We included 118 studies: 6 relating to COVID-19, 5 to influenza, 5 to TB, 27 to food insecurity, 26 to healthcare access, 22 to mental health, 9 to SES, 8 to housing, 7 to cultural continuity, and 3 to community infrastructure. SDHs affecting Indigenous individuals include food insecurity, limited healthcare access, mental health challenges, low SES, suboptimal housing, and limited cultural continuity. These findings are relevant to other Arctic regions. It is crucial to understand how SDHs impact the health of Arctic communities and to utilize this information to inform policy and practice decisions for pandemic prevention, management, and treatment. Many SDHs pose challenges for preventing and managing infectious diseases.

Climate change is altering species’ distributions globally. Increasing frequency of extreme weather and climate events (EWCEs) is one of the hallmarks of climate change. Despite species redistribution being widely studied in response to long-term climatic trends, the contribution of EWCEs to range shifts is not well understood. We outline how EWCEs can trigger rapid and unexpected range boundary fluctuations by impacting dispersal, establishment, and survival. Whether these mechanisms cause temporary or persistent range shifts depends on the spatiotemporal context and exposure to EWCEs. Using the increasing availability of data and statistical tools to examine EWCE impacts at fine spatiotemporal resolutions on species redistribution will be critical for informing conservation management of ecologically, economically, and culturally important species.

Climate change is already leaving a broad footprint of impacts on biodiversity, from an individual caterpillar emerging earlier in spring to dominant plant communities migrating poleward. Despite the various modes of how species are on the move, we primarily document shifting species along only one gradient (e.g., latitude or phenology) and along one dimension (space or time). In this opinion article we present a unifying framework for integrating the study of species on the move over space and time and from micro to macro scales. Future conservation planning and natural resource management will depend on our ability to use this framework to improve understanding, attribution, and prediction of species on the move.

Background: Climate change may alter zoonotic disease patterns in the Arctic, yet knowledge remains limited.

Design: Antibodies to seven zoonotic pathogens were analyzed in 660 unselected human sera drawn from serum banks from Greenland (n = 460) and Northern Sweden (n = 200) (1998-2017), frequency-matched with respect to sex, age, ethnicity and place of living. Greenlandic samples were tested for Francisella tularensis, Brucella melitensis, Brucella abortus, Coxiella burnetii, Rickettsia spp., and Leptospira spp., while Swedish samples also included Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (Bbsl) and tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV).

Results: Leptospira seroprevalence was higher in Greenland 2013 (18 %, 95 % CI 13-24 %) than in Sweden 2012-2017 (4 %, 95 % CI 2-8 %) and increased significantly over time in West Greenland (1998: 2.5 %, 95 % CI 0.8-6 %; 2013: 30 %, 95 % CI 18-45 %, p < 0.001, OR 16.7, 95 % CI 5.7-48.9). Rickettsia seroprevalence remained stable over time (12 %, 95 % CI 5-24 %). Seroprevalence of F. tularensis and B. melitensis/abortus in Greenland 2013 was less than 1 %. In Sweden, seroprevalence was 1 % (95 % CI 0.1-4 %) for B. melitensis/abortus, 2 % (95 % CI 0.1-5 %) for Bbsl, 3 % (95 % CI 1-6 %) for F. tularensis, and 5 % (95 % CI 2-9 %) for TBEV. Antibodies to C. burnetii were not detected in any sample. Two of 81 polar bear samples from East Greenland (2016-2023) were seropositive for Leptospira spp.

Conclusions: This first report on human Leptospira infection in Greenland highlights rising seroprevalence, possibly linked to contaminated water and global warming. Findings emphasize widespread Rickettsia exposure in northern regions and tick-borne pathogens in Sweden, underscoring the need for updated public health data to inform public health planning. .

The risk of zoonotic disease transmission from animals to humans is elevated for people in close contact with domestic and wild animals. About three-quarters of all known human infectious diseases are zoonotic, and potential health impacts of these diseases are higher where infectious disease surveillance and access to health care and public health services are limited. This is especially the case for remote circumarctic regions, where drivers for endemic, emerging, and re-emerging zoonotic diseases include anthropogenic influences, such as pollution by long-range transport of industrial chemicals, climate change, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem alterations. In addition to these, indirect effects including natural changes in food web dynamics, appearance of invasive species and thawing permafrost also affect the risk of zoonotic disease spill-over. In other words, the Arctic represents a changing world where pollution, loss of biodiversity and habitat, and maritime activity are likely driving forward occurrence of infectious diseases. As a broad international consortium with a wide range of expertise, we here describe a selection of case studies highlighting the importance of a One Health approach to zoonoses in the circumarctic, encompassing human health, animal health, and environmental health aspects. The cases highlight critical gaps in monitoring and current knowledge, focusing on environmental stressors and lifestyle factors, and they are examples of current occurrences in the Arctic that inform on critically needed actions to prepare us for the future. Through these presentations, we recommend measures to enhance awareness and management of existing and emerging zoonoses with epidemic and pandemic potential while also focusing on the impacts of various environmental stressors and lifestyle factors on zoonoses in the Arctic.

Over recent decades, our understanding of climate change has accelerated greatly, but unfortunately, observable impacts have increased in tandem. Both mitigation and adaptation have not progressed at the level or scale warranted by our collective knowledge on climate change. More effective approaches to engage people on current and future anthropogenic climate change effects are urgently needed. Here, we show how species whose distributions are shifting in response to climate change, that is, ‘species-on-the-move’, present an opportunity to engage people with climate change by linking to human values, and our deep connections with the places in which we live, in a locally relevant yet globally coherent narrative. Species-on-the-move can impact ecosystem structure and function, food security, human health, livelihoods, culture and even the climate itself through feedback to the climate system, presenting a wide variety of potential pathways for people to understand that climate change affects them personally as individuals. Citizen science focussed on documenting changes in biodiversity is one approach to foster a deeper engagement on climate change. However, other possible avenues, which may offer potential to engage people currently unconnected with nature, include arts, games or collaborations with rural agriculture (e.g. new occurrences of pest species) or fisheries organisations (e.g. shifting stocks) or healthcare providers (e.g. changing distributions of disease vectors). Through the importance we place on the aspects of life impacted by the redistribution of species around us, species-on-the-move offer emotional pathways to connect with people on the complex issue of climate change in profound ways that have the potential to engender interest and action on climate change. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Some of the climate-sensitive infections (CSIs) affecting humans are zoonotic vector-borne diseases, such as Lyme borreliosis (BOR) and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), mostly linked to various species of ticks as vectors. Due to climate change, the geographical distribution of tick species, their hosts, and the prevalence of pathogens are likely to change. A recent increase in human incidences of these CSIs in the Nordic regions might indicate an expansion of the range of ticks and hosts, with vegetation changes acting as potential predictors linked to habitat suitability. In this paper, we study districts in Fennoscandia and Russia where incidences of BOR and TBE have steadily increased over the 1995–2015 period (defined as ’Well Increasing districts’). This selection is taken as a proxy for increasing the prevalence of tick-borne pathogens due to increased habitat suitability for ticks and hosts, thus simplifying the multiple factors that explain incidence variations. This approach allows vegetation types and strengths of correlation specific to the WI districts to be differentiated and compared with associations found over all districts. Land cover types and their changes found to be associated with increasing human disease incidence are described, indicating zones with potential future higher risk of these diseases. Combining vegetation cover and climate variables in regression models shows the interplay of biotic and abiotic factors linked to CSI incidences and identifies some differences between BOR and TBE. Regression model projections up until 2070 under different climate scenarios depict possible CSI progressions within the studied area and are consistent with the observed changes over the past 20 years.

Climate change in the Arctic affects both environmental, animal, and human health, as well as human wellbeing and societal development. Women and men, and girls and boys are affected differently. Sex-disaggregated data collection is increasingly carried out as a routine in human health research and in healthcare analysis. This study involved a literature review and used a case study design to analyze gender differences in the roles and responsibilities of men and women residing in the Arctic. The theoretical background for gender-analysis is here described together with examples from the Russian Arctic and a literature search. We conclude that a broader gender-analysis of sex-disaggregated data followed by actions is a question of human rights and also of economic benefits for societies at large and of the quality of services as in the health care.

As introduced in the preceding chapter of this book, the CLINF Nordic Centre of Excellence (NCoE) addresses the broad scenario of warming northern landscapes transforming into warmer biomes, that may attract vector organisms such as ticks, mosquitoes, and rodents. These have the potential of carrying new zoonotic infections onto humans and husbandry animals of the North. With Far-North societies being generally dependent on their husbandry animals, i.e. by terms of economy, status, and tradition, an altered exposure towards infectious diseases may strike at the very heart of northern cultures. When added to other direct or indirect societal effects of climate change, such as the direct effects of altered human exposure, the resulting holistic approach to health is called OneHealth. CLINF is devoted to inquiring into the OneHealth effects of a warming North. Addressing such a broad topic requires an interdisciplinary science approach, in combination with an elaborative plan for how to engage bilaterally with stakeholders at scales ranging from the local to the international. The following chapter outlines the CLINF endeavour, from typical OneHealth problem identification and formulation, through principles of integrated projects design into the outlines of the finally implemented NCoE, and further on to the resulting discoveries and lessons learned. The chapter may be perceived as a case-study of integrated projects design, and as an example to study for others that find themselves in the situation of designing a large integrated science project.