**4. Climate change and pandemics: A call to action**

Climate change with its forest fires, floods and droughts, as well the colonization of pristine forests by humans is causing the depletion of wild animal reservoir species, transforming zoonotic into anthroponotic pathogens with the emergence of super plagues, a real menace to mankind. Almost all of the most impactful human plagues in history are either zoonotic or originated as zoonoses before adapting to the human host. As mentioned, it is the Editors' hope to see this COVID-19 pandemic subside; however, this is just one of those plagues that have evolved and managed to adapt to humans. As a matter of fact, there are likely many similar coming plagues, and it is just a matter of time before the next one enters our reality. One potentially impactful action we can undertake to more effectively face this treat can be the creation of an integrated human, animal, and environmental international health surveillance system that can provide early detection of emerging diseases outbreaks, nutritional vulnerabilities, and non-communicable disease patterns. Some might suggest that this falls under the domains of the World Health Organization (WHO) or even the United States (and other similar) Centers for Disease Control (CDC). However, the response should not be limited to the traditionally understood "experts" and should be much more "grassroots" in character. If we have learned anything from the events of the past few years, especially with the political agendas, concerns of "fake news," conspiracy theories, religious/cultural beliefs, distrust in the scientific methods, and the roles of industry—the one overarching take-home message is that there is clearly a lot of room for improvement in our response as rapidly evolving global concerns emerge [7–9]. Such global monitoring paradigm can help facilitate the reduction of various impacts of climate change, implementing a rational use of water and land, and preserving biodiversity. In turn, the aforesaid initiatives can translate into downstream benefits that could be expected to ameliorate the impacts of climate change on human, animal, and environmental health and well-being.
