How open science and shared data can help tackle global challenges: The Crete Declaration

The global community is facing a number of urgent challenges, such as emerging diseases, epidemics, antimicrobial resistance, food safety, water scarcity, environmental contamination, and severe changes in biodiversity. All of them are intensified by the widespread impact of climate change. These interconnected threats demand "a fundamental shift towards systemic, integrated solutions," a systemic change of perspective in risk management, and a long-term, action-focused strategic vision, point out representatives of Europe’s leading biodiversity, ecology and engineering communities, coordinated by the LifeWatch European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). 

Together, the partners offer a unified, systemic response to these critical challenges. In the Crete Declaration, published in a policy brief in the open-science journal Research Ideas and Outcomes, they outline how scientific cooperation can be transformed into actionable policy and robust innovation.

This Declaration marks a foundational commitment by Europe’s large-scale research (e-)infrastructures, organisations, and collaborative projects focused on the biosphere to jointly advance the One Health approach. 

Recognising the "intimate and inseparable link between the health of people, animals and plants and how they interact within ecosystems," the signatories aim to significantly strengthen Europe’s resilience and global leadership by sharing data and expertise, developing innovative solutions, and promoting evidence-based policies.

They argue that research infrastructures across Europe are uniquely positioned to provide solutions “that are firmly grounded in robust science and evidence-based insights into the functioning of our living environment.”

A key message the team would like to get across is that “[p]olicies anchored in reliable data are robust and, when rooted in societal participation, they will become more feasible, impactful and widely adopted."

In addition, research infrastructures can provide unified data and service integration through collaboration and co-creation with users and stakeholders. To this end, it is essential to embrace and support open science as a driver for scientific and social innovation.

To address the most urgent One Health challenges, the signatories aim to:

·         Promote multidisciplinary and cross-domain research;

·         Unite their complementary strengths to provide information for EU and national policies with robust scientific evidence;

·         Support and advance open innovation through shared resources that enable technological and societal responses to human-induced and natural stressors;

·         Accelerate the uptake of emerging methods, with a special focus on the responsible use of artificial intelligence in One Health applications.

To realise this vision, the parties commit to strengthening strategic collaboration. Another critical commitment is to advance data integration and FAIR Principles for open science by ensuring equitable access to data resources, software, workflows, standards, and protocols across domains.

To support open innovation in critical areas such as conservation, sustainable food systems, and water security, the signatories will establish a "trusted, inclusive platform for stakeholder engagement."

Finally, they commit to providing integrated scientific knowledge to inform the policy and public, supporting effective, evidence-based policy-making and engaging citizens.

The Declaration was developed during a special assembly held in Crete in June 2025, hosted by the Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research.

The signatories invite all European stakeholders committed to One Health—including policymakers, Science Clusters, and the private sector—to endorse this Declaration and join efforts towards a federated and coordinated approach to One Health research and innovation in Europe.

The policy brief containing the Crete Declaration is the latest contribution to the LifeWatch ERIC Strategic Working Plan Outcomes open-science collection in the Research Ideas and Outcomes journal, a one-stop access point to the most important deliverables by the research infrastructure consortium.

Original source:

Arvanitidis C, Ameixa O, Basset A, Chatzinikolaou E, Coman C, Companys B, De Leo F, Deneudt K, Drago F, Eriksson J, Ferrari T, Georgiev T, Giuliano G, Gruber S, Habermann J, Heil K, Hubbard T, Huertas Olivares C, Kotoulas G, Koureas D, Manola N, Marrocco V, Pade N, Portugal Melo A, Provenzale A, Psomopoulos F, Raes N, Robinson S, Ruch P, Schaap D, Stanica A, Stavropoulos T, Teixeira H, van Tienderen P, Tsigenopoulos C, Waterhouse R, Aprea G, Boër M, Casino A, Delauney L, Ewbank J, Mirtl M, Pavlic-Zupanc J, Penev L, Piera J, Pitta P, Puillat I, Richter D, Stepanyan D, Ussi A, Węsławski J, Zuquim G (2025) The Crete Declaration: Uniting Science for One Health. Research Ideas and Outcomes 11: e176120. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.11.e176120