Traditional medicine, One Health, integrated health and impact entrepreneurship: bringing health back into harmony with nature

By Thomas EGLI
Founder of the Geneva Forum — Expert contributor to the United Nations Harmony with Nature programme

This article is written in the context of Thomas EGLI’s contribution to the event “Traditional Medicine at the Nexus of Climate, Biodiversity, and Land Restoration (Rio Conventions)”, organized as part of the Health Diplomacy House, by the Health Diplomacy Alliance, on the sidelines of the 2026 WHO General Assembly at the UN, in Geneva (May 2026).

This conference was organized by Mr. Gokul Rajendran (CEO @ Govardhan & GITMA) and brought together the speakers and guests Mr. Gokul Rajendran (CEO @ Govardhan & GITMA), Dr. Naeema Al Qasseer (Global Health & Development Expert & Former WHO Senior Official), Ms. Cristina Romanelli (Programme Officer, Biodiversity, Climate Change and Health, WHO), Mr. Thomas Egli, (Founder @ Geneva Forum and Expert for Harmony with Nature Programme of the United Nations), Dr. Mona El-Sherbini (Asso. Prof. of Infectious Parasitic Disease @ Cairo University, Egypt), with the moderator Mr. Domenico Vito (Founder @ International One Health Conference).

Through traditional medicine, a much broader question arises: how can we bring our health systems, economies, knowledge, funding models and societies back into harmony with nature? Traditional medicine is not merely a care practice inherited from the past. It is one of the places where the interdependence between human health, biodiversity, climate, living soils, Indigenous knowledge, local communities and economic models is most clearly revealed.

Health does not begin in the hospital. It begins in the soil, in water, in forests, in plants, in microbiomes, in social relationships, in the family, at school, in cultures, in living conditions and in the balances of the living world that enable human beings, animals, plants and territories to remain healthy.