One health in the new pandemic agreement. Why the one health provisions are not enough to prevent the next pandemic

Global Health Law has recently been updated, as on 20 May 2025 the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA) finally adopted a new international legal instrument, i.e. the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement. The new text, inter alia, recognizes One Health as an holistic approach according to which human health is necessarily interconnected to and interdependent with that of animals and ecosystems. This is due to the growing interactions between humans and animals in the last few years, which have allowed pathogens (e.g. HIV, Sars-Cov, MERS-Cov, Ebola, SARS-COV-2, M-pox) to evolve and transmit between species, ending up infecting humans as well. The origin of Covid-19, as a global disease (probably) originated from mammals sold at a seafood market (most likely bats, pangolins or raccoon dogs), clearly demonstrates the need of One Health provisions in a global health binding instrument. However, the new norms fall short of expectations, as they lack solid mechanisms to facilitate the implementation of the Agreement and fail to establish a deep coordination between other Multilateral Environmental and Food Conventions, as well. In the end, I argue how some measures, including a data sharing platform on national environmental high-risk zones and an updated list of best practices suggested by the WHO on zoonoses, could (at least partially) help the overall implementation of the Agreement.