The Crete Declaration: Can open science and shared data tackle global challenges?
How can humanity confront the rising tide of global threats such as emerging diseases, antimicrobial resistance, food insecurity, water scarcity and the alarming loss of biodiversity? And how can we respond when all these issues are made worse by one overarching force: climate change? To explore these questions, a diverse group of scientists and organisations from across Europe came together to chart a path forward. Their collaboration resulted in The Crete Declaration: Uniting Science for One Health, a four-page document, coordinated by LifeWatch ERIC.
The Declaration brings together scientists and practitioners from across Europe, including BMD’s project coordinator Niels Raes (Naturalis Biodiversity Center), and partners Robert Waterhouse (SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics), Christos Arvanitidis (LifeWatch ERIC), Lyubomir Penev and Teodor Georgiev (Pensoft Publishers).
The declaration outlines a clear vision for implementing One Health across Europe, detailing concrete commitments by research infrastructures and stakeholders to advance scientific innovation, provide evidence-based insights, and guide effective policy-making for complex health and environmental challenges.
“All projects and research infrastructures contribute part of the larger
puzzle that we need to solve. The adoption of FAIR data principles and workflows
enable data interoperability and integration that will make this possible.”
Niels Raes, Naturalis Biodiversity Center
The Crete Declaration is more than a call to action. It is a promise. The authors set out their shared vision and commit to putting it into practice by promoting strategic collaboration, following the FAIR Principles for Open Science, supporting Open Innovation among stakeholder groups and engaging both policymakers and the public.
It welcomes all European stakeholders, including policymakers, scientists, small and medium-sized enterprises and the private sector, to support its principles and join the collective effort towards a truly integrated One Health approach.