importance of research in environmental studies

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Priorities for research on environment, climate and health, a European perspective

• Elina Drakvik 1 , 2 ,
• Manolis Kogevinas   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9605-0461 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ,
• Åke Bergman 1 ,
• Anais Devouge 7 &
• Robert Barouki 7

on behalf of the HERA (Health and Environment Research Agenda) Consortium

Environmental Health volume  21 , Article number:  37 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Climate change, urbanisation, chemical pollution and disruption of ecosystems, including biodiversity loss, affect our health and wellbeing. Research is crucial to be able to respond to the current and future challenges that are often complex and interconnected by nature. The HERA Agenda, summarised in this commentary, identifies six thematic research goals in the environment, climate and health fields. These include research to 1) reduce the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss on health and environment, 2) promote healthy lives in cities and communities, 3) eliminate harmful chemical exposures, 4) improve health impact assessment and implementation research, 5) develop infrastructures, technologies and human resources and 6) promote research on transformational change towards sustainability. Numerous specific recommendations for research topics, i.e., specific research goals, are presented under each major research goal. Several methods were used to define the priorities, including web-based surveys targeting researchers and stakeholder groups as well as a series of online and face-to-face workshops, involving hundreds of researchers and other stakeholders. The results call for an unprecedented effort to support a better understanding of the causes, interlinkages and impacts of environmental stressors on health and the environment. This will require breakdown of silos within policies, research, actors as well as in our institutional arrangements in order to enable more holistic approaches and solutions to emerge. The HERA project has developed a unique and exciting opportunity in Europe to consensuate priorities in research and strengthen research that has direct societal impact.

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Climate change, urbanisation, chemical pollution and disruption of ecosystems, including biodiversity loss, impact our health and quality of life. Research is instrumental to be able to respond to the current and future environmental and health challenges that are so complex and interlinked by nature. The European Commission (EC), in line with policies of the European Union and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [ 1 ], launched a call for proposals to define priorities for research on environment, climate and health [ 2 ]. The Health and Environment Research Agenda (HERA) project, emerging from that call, was developed by a European consortium, and recently submitted its final report entitled “EU research agenda for the environment, climate & health, 2021–2030” [ 3 ], summarised in this commentary. The HERA Agenda highlights several key areas where further research is crucial for the next decade. This article provides a topical contribution to discussion of environmental health priorities and provides opportunities to reflect on future directions of research in this field, especially in the European context.

Process for developing the European research agenda

The approach that the project followed was based on principles of transparency, inclusiveness and mutual learning [ 4 ]. During the course of the project, the HERA Consortium performed extensive reviews of current knowledge, policies and research activities (Fig.  1 ). Web-based surveys targeting research communities and other stakeholder groups were carried out, along with online and face-to-face workshops, which taken together, involved hundreds of participants. Researchers primarily identified major current areas of concern, i.e. air pollution, chemicals, climate, cities, as priorities for research. Other stakeholders mostly identified implementation science and global issues (e.g. climate change, biodiversity loss) as priorities. The stakeholder process and results are described in detail in Paloniemi et al. [ 5 ]. Responses from the surveys and workshops were discussed by the HERA working group that further identified “Gaps in gaps”, namely research areas that are not well developed but that were not identified by the researchers’ survey. Research goals were prioritised by the HERA working group using the following criteria (modified from [ 6 ]): Novelty; Importance to People, Importance to the environment on a planetary scale; Impact on Policy; and, Innovation and Sustainable Development. A consensus-based approach was used for agreeing and refining the research goals along the process, based on the input and expertise of the HERA Consortium members, editorial group and independent scientific advisory board as well as input received through a public consultation.

HERA framework for engaging stakeholders and scientist in the definition of Research goals (RG) for the research agenda

The EU research agenda for the environment, climate & health, 2021–2030

The EU Research Agenda developed by the HERA project covers six major research goals on environment, climate and health. Within each of them, research areas were identified and research needs specified resulting in altogether 30 specific research goals (Table 1 ). Several of the research goals are interlinked e.g. air-pollution is identified as a priority in the global environment (Research Goal 1.6 Global pollution) and the local environment, cities and communities (Research Goal 2.2 Air pollutants in indoor and outdoor environments). Moreover, the Research Agenda addresses research that can contribute to relevant policy objectives promoting health and the environment, especially in the context of the European Green Deal [ 7 ]. The Green Deal aims at achieving climate neutrality, biodiversity preservation, a circular economy and a zero pollution/toxic-free ambition as well as providing a way forward for achieving sustainable food system. The HERA agenda and the identified research needs can hence strengthen the knowledge and evidence-base in these cross-cutting policy areas, directly supporting the implementation of the Green Deal.

The six overarching Research Goals

Research goal 1 “Climate change and biodiversity loss – reduce effects on health and the environment” focuses on global interconnected issues. The consequences of climate change, biodiversity loss, disruption of food chains, emerging infectious diseases and decreased ecosystem services on health are not well understood despite evidence that they have major and persistent effects on life and the environment globally that became evident from the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, more attention is required for addressing pollution, including air pollution, at a global scale. The need to promote research for effective policies on mitigation and adaptation is identified as of paramount importance, as well as investigating co-benefits with air pollution mitigation policies. Overall, the research goal highlights the need for holistic approaches such as One Health and Planetary Health.

Research goal 2 “Cities and communities – promote healthy lives in sustainable and inclusive societies” focuses on problem-based research. Living conditions in urban environments are of key concern as they impact the health and wellbeing of most European citizens. The impacts of environmental factors (e.g. air pollution, noise, digitalisation), may vary in different contexts such as the urban environment workplace or contaminated land. Research should examine the complex relationships in these environments, and evaluate and promote positive interventions.

Research goal 3 “ Chemicals and physical stressors – prevent and eliminate harmful chemical exposures to health” focuses on chemicals, other stressors and environmental media. There are still many unknowns on the hazards and risks related to stressor families including chemicals and mixtures, physical stressors such as radiation (ranging from ionising to light exposure), and the role played by the various environmental media carrying these stressors such as water. Research should cover the tens of thousands of chemicals in daily usage that we have very little health information on and interactions of environmental exposures with other factors such as genes, occupation, political and socioeconomic determinants of health, a theme covered also in RG6 on interdisciplinary research. Regulatory decisions rely heavily on additional knowledge in these specific areas. Research should effectively address the challenges of a zero pollution paradigm and a sustainable future.

Research goal 4 “Improve health impact assessment of environmental factors and promote implementation research” focuses on the need to develop new harmonized methodologies to evaluate the burden of environmental and climate change on health and to identify and assess the health benefits of human environmental interaction. Moreover, research should promote optimal ways to implement science-based decisions and policies as this is a limiting factor in many fields.

Research goal 5 “Develop infrastructures, technologies and human resources for sustainable research on environment, climate change and health” focuses on the need of European research infrastructures to be strengthened and further developed. Infrastructures provide a basis for excellent research. Key proposals are establishing harmonized coordination of ongoing large cohort studies including tens of millions of participants, exposome characterization, laboratory infrastructure, data analysis using the latest data science tools, new methods for exposure assessment (e.g. sensors) and planetary monitoring tools.

Research goal 6 “Promote research on transformational change in environment, climate change and health” focuses on the need of transformational change to address the intertwined environmental, social and health issues and reach critical global goals towards sustainability and equity. Societies will need to adapt to the challenges elicited by environmental stressors and climate change and this will require significant transformation of individual and collective behaviour and of policy making across the sectors and silos. Development of research approaches directed to finding and promoting workable solutions together is necessary for achieving such transformations.

Conclusions—a vision for future research

It is striking how the HERA surveys and stakeholder consultations pointed out such a large number of knowledge gaps, even in areas such as climate change where relevant evidence-based policies are urgently needed. The ambitious political goals set in the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development and the European Green Deal, will need major investments in research and innovation. The HERA Agenda coincides with the reports highlighting the planetary boundaries [ 8 , 9 ], and intertwined environmental pressures, the triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, affecting the health of the planet and of the people [ 10 ]. The Agenda reinforces the opportunity to bring together human health and environment field to work together on integrated and transformative solutions. The focus is on Europe, hence putting less emphasis on major exposures, such as indoor air pollution from biomass, that are much more prevalent in low- and middle-income countries. In fact, there is an urgent need to also develop a global Agenda since most of the problems and solutions discussed in HERA are not limited to Europe. In recent years, increases in the EU allocation to environment and health projects through the Framework Programme budgets and rise in the interest and importance of the field ([ 11 ], see page 65), have not yet managed to close the long-term gap that exists between required research and funding. It is a positive signal that the HERA Agenda has already been applied by the European Commission in recent calls for funding, as for example calls for the indoor environment, or planned calls on planetary health or the interlink of infections and the environment. Nevertheless, the vision for future research underlying this Agenda calls for an unprecedented effort to support a better understanding of the causes, interlinkages and impacts of environmental determinants on health. Integrated and holistic research should support policies and practices to protect and promote human health and well-being while simultaneously improving the critical state of the environment, including climate change mitigation and ecosystem restoration, in Europe and globally. This requires transformational change at societal level to break down the silos in policymaking, research, and institutional arrangements, enabling cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary and holistic approaches and solutions to emerge.

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Acknowledgements

The HERA project was completed with the contributions of hundreds of researchers and stakeholders. HERA participants Robert Barouki (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research-INSERM), Manolis Kogevinas (Barcelona Institute for Global Health -ISGlobal), Åke Bergman (Stockholm University-SU), Elina Drakvik (SU) and Anaïs Devouge (INSERM)—drafted the HERA Agenda, 2021, with extensive contributions from Denis Sarigiannis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki); Delphine Destoumieux-Garzón (The National Center for Scientific Research- CNRS); Franziska Matthies-Wiesler, Annette Peters (Helmholtz Zentrum München);Daniel Zalko (French National Institute for Agricultural Research-INRAE); Cristina Villanueva, Cathryn Tonne, Elisabeth Cardis, Elizabeth Diago-Navarro, Josep M. Antó, Maria Foraster, Mark Nieuwenhuijsen; Kurt Straif (ISGlobal); Karin van Veldhoven, Kristine Belesova, Neil Pearce, Andy Haines (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine); Jana Klánová, Kateřina Šebková, Lukáš Pokorný, Klára Hilscherová (Masaryk University); Sandra Boekhold, Brigit Staatsen, Nina van der Vliet (National Institute for Public Health and The Environment-RIVM); Eeva Furman, Riikka Paloniemi, Aino Rekola, Marianne Aulake (Finnish Environment Institute-SYKE); Vivienne Byers, Alan Gilmer (Technological University of Dublin); Anke Huss, Roel Vermeulen (Utrecht University); Rémy Slama, Michel Samson (INSERM), (Sinaia Netanyahu, Julia Nowacki (WHO). Other contributors to the HERA agenda writing include Maria Albin (Karolinska Institutet), Åke Grönlund (Örebro University), and Jeanne Garric (French ministry of research)

The HERA project was funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825417.

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Drakvik, E., Kogevinas, M., Bergman, Å. et al. Priorities for research on environment, climate and health, a European perspective. Environ Health 21 , 37 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-022-00848-w

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The Relevance of Environmental Research for Development Studies

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A major motive of Development Studies is to understand the root causes of poverty and its reproduction and how social inequalities emerge and are stabilized. Most research on social inequalities today largely ignores the environmental dimension of changes in human development. Recent environmental research shows that the cumulative environmental impacts of human activity are likely to make the earth uninhabitable for the human species. Future strategies for ensuring human prosperity at global level will thus require considerable investment in research that improves understanding of the social practices, rules and institutions, and power relations that define human use of nature and the dynamics of its transformation. Social environmental research thus offers insights that are crucial for Development Studies in the twenty-first century.

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Scholz, I. (2019). The Relevance of Environmental Research for Development Studies. In: Baud, I., Basile, E., Kontinen, T., von Itter, S. (eds) Building Development Studies for the New Millennium. EADI Global Development Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04052-9_15

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Why Environmental Studies is Important?

Our environment plays a critical role in the survival of several living organisms. In simple words, we can define the environment as our surroundings with several biotic and abiotic components. Thus, it is clear that environmental studies are vital for spreading awareness and finding ways to protect it.

It refers to a systematic study of the environment and its physical, biological, social, cultural, and natural factors.

You can say environmental studies are all about learning how we should protect our environment with sustainable strategies.

It is contradictory to environmental science, which mainly focuses on the scientific component of environmental issues.

Environmental Studies explains the causes, effects, and solutions for environmental problems. Human activities, such as pollution and deforestation , have seriously impacted the environment, just as Earthquakes and tsunamis do on the environment.

Table of Contents

• 1 Why Do We Need Environmental Studies?
• 2.1 To understand the impacts of development:
• 2.2 To understand environmental problems:
• 2.3 Keep special care on ways to conserve biodiversity:
• 2.4 To utilize natural resources efficiently:
• 3 Conclusion

Why Do We Need Environmental Studies?

• Pollution, Growing population , deforestation, depletion of natural resources, and other disasters are behind environmental concerns. An individual or government cannot maintain environmental sustainability alone. We all should have a contribution to its protection from damage.
• For the proper guidance on the values, skills, knowledge, and tools to work against the challenges, both formal and informal environmental education methods are needed.
• To prepare the present generation for environmental protection, we need environmental studies.
• With the continuous diminishing of the earth’s resources, it is for sure that something has to be done.
• Now the time has come when every citizen of the world has to be aware and actively participate in protecting this beautiful environment.

Importance of Environmental Studies:

To understand the impacts of development:

Environmental Studies assists in understanding the current environmental problems by providing knowledge of physical, chemical, social, and biological processes. It is not a hidden fact that development resulting in Urbanization; Industrial growth has a negative impact on the environment.

With the rise in development globally, there is a great pace in the exploitation of resources. Humans use the lands and woods to make their businesses grow, but they are not thinking of the consequences.

Humans have to understand the importance of the environment, which has provided the world to live freely; This can not be achieved just by educating students or educated persons. Every human has to come forward to get the knowledge.

Before the onset of modern civilization, the natural environment’s overall health and efficiency were not bad. But now the environment has started degrading .

Furthermore, we can learn about the requirements and benefits of the decentralization of several industries by studying environmental science. This aims to achieve all this sustainably without disturbing the flow.

To understand environmental problems:

Disasters such as climate change, acid rains, floods , and tsunamis also involve human interference. Humans have to understand their mistakes and find the solutions to correct them and protect the environment.

Just stopping the development is not the solution, but minimizing the use of resources can be the solution.

Various critical environmental issues include global warming, acid rain , ozone depletion, pollution, etc. can also be recognized and solved, resulting in global problems.

Environmentalists all over the world are constantly seeking a sustainable solution. So, combined efforts from the world are needed to face these problems. There is a need for the careful use of natural resources to establish sustainability.

We need to create awareness by learning about several ecological problems :

• Most of the environmental issues take place as a result of irresponsibility and unawareness of the effects.
• Several activities can be conducted in educational institutes to provide an idea about the harmful effects of environmental damage and how we can reverse the effects.
• Awareness programs can spread awareness among students mostly against the use of plastics or environmental pollution and their contribution to such ecological damages.

Environmental studies aim to educate people with the necessary environmental skills to create awareness. With the increase in development, the competition is also increasing in the industries.

But If these competitors are aware of the environmental problems, they can work according to the mindset of protecting the environment. They can even use this to defeat their competitors in marketing by promoting their way of working for the environment.

In a digital world where everything is going digital, we have more options on how to reach more people. Thus, we can spread awareness by creating content and making campaigns on social media and other similar platforms. Many NGOs are coming forward to make locals aware of environmental problems and solutions. These efforts will definitely add some improvements to the environmental conditions.

If Humans become aware of the environmental issues and become serious about it, then the environment will not get affected.

Keep special care on ways to conserve biodiversity:

Biodiversity is the pillar that allows ecosystems to function and humans to survive. Another essential part of environmental education is the study of biodiversity. Biodiversity serves as a backbone to maintain ecological sustainability on earth. Without biodiversity, we could not imagine life on earth.

This can be conserved by:

• Using organic foods .
• Avoiding useless drainage of water on your property.
• Using sustainable seafood.
• By Conserving our natural resources .
• Through the use of natural goods and methods for pest control.
• By conserving water and reducing irrigation.
• Studying and grasping more about evolutionary relationships between several species in an ecosystem and its major components.
• By giving priority to eco-friendly products.

To utilize natural resources efficiently:

Natural resources such as air, water, oil, and minerals are getting depleted day by day. Lack of management skills leads to a loss of natural resources.

Every individual should learn about the importance of these resources. We should also consider appropriate action plans in our day to day lives so that we can sustain our nature and its resources effortlessly.

Non-renewable sources of energy are the major source of the world’s pollution . The use of renewable sources, like solar energy, wind energy , etc., has to be encouraged as these are effective in the fight against global warming.

We can effectively utilize our natural resources by the following steps:

• We should add value to our natural assets.
• Using the right tools to explore resources. Incorporating appropriate tools and techniques for discovering resources and limiting exploitation.
• For grasping the phenotypic characters of organisms.

Environmental studies help us to understand the importance of our environment. To live sustainably and find the best way of utilizing our natural resources, we must study it.

Further, we can understand the behavioural and phylogenetic relationships between several organisms and their species and helps to maintain balance in the food chain and food webs of the ecosystem.

In India, University Grant Commission (UGC) has made environmental studies a common discipline for all departments to increase awareness among youngsters. Now everyone has to live with an aim in their life to protect our environment and use the available resources effectively.

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The role of research in environmental science and health

Affiliation.

• 1 Department of Biochemistry, University of Texas Health Center at Tyler 75708-3154, USA.
• PMID: 10531806

Research plays a crucial central role between physicians and regulatory agencies in assessing the potential risks posed by an ever-increasing variety of environmental pollutants. The explosion in our understanding of biology and the development of the powerful tools of molecular biology during the last 50 years have provided us with a unique opportunity to apply this knowledge to predict the dangers of these pollutants and to act to protect the public where appropriate. To realize this vision requires multidisciplinary cooperation, continued research funding, and improved scientific literacy among the public. In this article, we do not attempt to review all the literature relating the role that research has played in environmental health and science, but rather we hope to provide the reader with a broad overview of the role that research has played in the past, emphasizing our own area of expertise (the respiratory system) and the role that research should play as our increasingly complex society moves into the 21st century.

• Environmental Health*
• Environmental Medicine*
• Environmental Pollution*
• Forecasting
• Interprofessional Relations
• Research / trends

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National Research Council (US) Committee on Environmental Epidemiology; National Research Council (US) Commission on Life Sciences. Environmental Epidemiology: Volume 2: Use of the Gray Literature and Other Data in Environmental Epidemiology. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1997.

Environmental Epidemiology: Volume 2: Use of the Gray Literature and Other Data in Environmental Epidemiology.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

2 Environmental-Epidemiology Studies: Their Design and Conduct

This chapter discusses the origins of epidemiologic study and summarizes common analytic techniques. After a brief discussion of study designs and the types of information they produce, this chapter notes several difficulties for studies of environmental epidemiology, including the problems of studying small numbers of persons or rare diseases. We recommend that research on study designs focus on the improvement of statistical power or probability of detecting an effect. Finally, we review principles for inferring causation in epidemiology.

• Origins of Epidemiology

Although early epidemiologic studies often focused on infectious diseases and death, epidemiology today has a much broader application, as ''the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states and events in specified populations and the application of this study to the control of health problems" (Tyler and Last, 1991, p. 12). Traditionally, epidemiology has been linked with disease prevention, in that its results can indicate risk factors that can be modified in order to control or eliminate certain diseases.

As chapter 1 indicates, environmental epidemiology is a logical extension of the field, expanding the range of concerns to include biologic, physical, or chemical factors that may be related to patterns of health and disease in populations. In general, environmental epidemiology is an observational rather than an experimental science; scientific deductions are drawn from patterns of occurrence. Its principal aim is to identify risk factors that can be averted or reduced so as to prevent or reduce the risk of future disease and promote public health.

• Types of Studies in Environmental Epidemiology

Environmental-epidemiologic studies can be classified broadly into 2 categories that are not mutually exclusive: descriptive and analytic. Typically, descriptive studies are most useful for generating hypotheses and analytic studies most useful for testing hypotheses, though each type of study can be used for both purposes. Whether a study is hypothesis-testing or hypothesis-generating depends more on the sequence of past studies and the present state of knowledge (i.e., whether a hypothesis currently under evaluation was suggested by a previous study) than on the study design. Recent innovations in descriptive studies sometimes permit refined assessments of dose-response relations and etiologic factors.

Descriptive Studies

Descriptive studies include case reports, surveillance systems, ecologic studies, and cluster studies (WHO, 1983).

Case Reports

A case report is a descriptive study of a single individual or small group in which the study of an association between an observed effect and a specific environmental exposure is based on detailed clinical evaluations and histories of the individual(s). These reports require few financial or personnel resources other than those of clinical medicine, and they may indicate whether additional study of a larger group of persons with similar health problems and exposures should be undertaken. However, the value of case reports is often limited because they lack a context of the disease in unexposed persons, variables such as time and dose of exposure are generally not known, and controls are absent. They are most likely to be useful when the disease is uncommon and when it is caused exclusively or almost exclusively by a single kind of exposure. In spite of these limitations, many known human environmental toxicants (e.g., methyl mercury, asbestos, tobacco smoke, and radon) first came to attention in case reports and series developed by astute clinicians, pathologists, and health workers. Public-health agencies must often investigate clusters of cases that are reported to them by private physicians and others. While case reports may not lead to identification of new causes of disease, they are more likely to point to specific hypotheses and to biologically meaningful associations if either the disease or the exposure is relatively rare.

Surveillance Systems

These systems provide broad-scale information on specified populations for which epidemiologic analyses can be conducted. Surveillance systems are generally designed to attain complete or nearly complete coverage of every identified instance of certain defined conditions in a defined population. Thus, they can be used to estimate the background incidence and prevalence of adverse effects, and trends can be analyzed across time and between populations or geographic areas.

Surveillance systems can identify increases or decreases in the occurrence of deaths from specific diseases and thus suggest or test hypotheses related to environmental exposures. For example, observations of a decline in age-adjusted stomach-cancer rates over time in the United States have stimulated the development of hypotheses about changes in dietary habits in the population as a whole, as well as about changes in the use of food preservatives and refrigeration (Howson et al., 1986) that might explain these trends. Similarly, after postmenopausal estrogen use fell in the United States, rates of endometrial carcinoma declined in women over age 65, lending support to an inference drawn from case-control studies that postmenopausal estrogen use increased the risk of endometrial cancer (Austin and Roe, 1982). In another instance, surveillance data from the National Center for Health Statistics suggested that a fall in blood-lead levels in US children was linked to a drop in gasoline-lead levels (Annest et al., 1983).

As public-health agencies have expanded the scope of surveillance systems (see chapter 5 ), it has become feasible to study the relationships between disease patterns and variations in environmental factors. Surveillance systems are expected to become increasingly common because the quality of their data is rising, statistical methods are improving, and costs are declining. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has devised several surveillance systems to monitor the health of persons believed to have incurred exposure to such substances as trichloroethylene and dioxin. No results are yet available from those systems. If these exposure registries are to produce valuable results, they will need to include sufficient numbers of persons over a long enough period for diseases of interest to manifest themselves in numbers sufficient to demonstrate that some problem exists or that the problem is unlikely to exist and be large enough to cause serious concern.

Ecologic Studies

Ecologic studies explore the statistical connection between disease and estimated exposures in population groups rather than individuals. They combine data from vital records, hospital discharges, or disease registries with grouped data or estimates of exposure, such as factory emissions in a given geographic area, proximity to waste sites, or air or water pollution levels. Observed associations may provide support for further investigations. Ecologic studies suffer from serious weaknesses: they assign group exposure levels to all members of the group, fail to control for individual confounding factors, use necessarily crude estimates of exposure, and may not capture the relevant exposure at the time of disease induction. Although some population groups in ecologic studies may appear similar to "cohorts" (see below), they lack the individual data that permit their analysis in a cohort study. The "ecologic fallacy" refers to drawing inferences incorrectly from data on groups or about individuals in the groups.

Several advances have facilitated an increase in the number of ecologic studies, including the development of surveillance systems, improved environmental-exposure databases (e.g., by ASTDR), and increased availability of sophisticated tools, such as geographic information systems. The value of ecologic studies may be strengthened as methods for estimating exposure are improved. Where valid proxies for gradations of exposure and relevant confounding variables can be devised, the ecologic fallacy may be reduced or overcome.

Ecologic investigations have provided important clues about causal associations even though these studies can be difficult to interpret. For example, fluoride was first found to prevent dental caries on the basis of observed correlations between geographic variations in natural levels of fluoride and rates of tooth decay (Dean et al., 1942). Similarly, rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer among immigrants have been correlated with those of their newly acquired compatriots, suggesting that changes in dietary and other factors are involved. Further refinements in the parameters of interest in ecologic studies might permit these studies to generate more-precise indications of associations between risk factors and disease (Greenland, 1990).

Studies of health problems in relation to fixed sources of environmental exposure have often relied on either labor-intensive techniques, such as personal interviews, or much more general classifications, such as ZIP code or town of residence. The latter approach has the obvious problems of errors in classification of actual residence and of including people in the exposed category who live far from the site and have little opportunity for exposure. This difficulty has been partially overcome by including better geographic-location information as part of state and federal lists of potential sources of environmental exposure (e.g., Superfund sites) and by public availability of more-complete coding of geographic information in US census data.

This additional information, along with the availability of improved mapping software, has greatly improved our ability to link health data, such as cancer incidence with residence near a source of environmental exposure. With good geographic coding, disease cases and controls can be readily and quickly located in relation to an environmental source so that various measures of distance and direction can be studied. Data on the number and characteristics of people living in the area can also be obtained from census data.

Cluster Studies

A cluster study is a descriptive study of the population in a geographic area, occupational setting, or other small group in which the rate of a specific adverse effect is much higher than expected. Further, the group is often defined after the fact; that is, the "cluster" comes to attention, and the group is then defined so as to include it. Thus, clusters usually have the drawbacks of small samples. Cluster studies suffer from a major tautology: the data that inspire a hypothesized relation between a given exposure and a specific health outcome tend to be used to test this hypothesis, and then exposure and risk-factor data may be generated for persons defined to be in the study group and, usually, in some control group. For example, a reported cluster of cardiac birth defects that occur near a hazardous-waste site may be "tested" by comparing the measured rates of these defects in the same given geographic area with those from outside the same area. This is a highly unreliable approach methodologically and statistically, as the sample being studied has not been randomly selected. Nonetheless, the approach can be useful when the relative risk is extremely high, and it can be useful in developing hypotheses for study with other data. Many occupational hazards were first identified because clusters of disease were detected in specific workplaces, and other environmental diseases may also be ascertainable through cluster analysis.

Analytic Studies

In contrast to descriptive studies, analytic studies are based on more individually detailed data from individuals that can be used to control for confounding, and they are usually more costly and labor-intensive. Information from medical records, clinical or laboratory investigations, questionnaire results, or direct measures or estimates of exposures may allow analytic studies to explore hypotheses about suspected causes of disease or identify and measure risk factors that increase the chance that a given disease will occur. Analytic studies may also be a source of additional specific hypotheses, often leading to a sequence of studies, the more recent being designed to attempt to refute hypotheses raised by earlier studies.

The classic designs of analytical studies are case-control and cohort studies. In addition, 2 "hybrid" designs—nested case-control studies and case-cohort studies—can be based on identified cohorts.

Case-Control Studies

Case-control studies compare exposures of individuals who have a specific adverse effect or disease with exposures of controls who do not have the effect or disease; controls generally come from the same population from which the cases were derived. There is an extensive literature on the design of case-control studies, including selection of controls, correction for confounding, statistical methods for analysis, and presentation of measures of effect, usually the odds ratio (Schlesselman, 1982). These studies generally depend on the collection of retrospective data. They may suffer from recall bias, i.e., the tendency of people who have a disease to remember putative causes more readily than those without a given disease. However, it is often possible in a case-control study to collect histories of exposure to many different factors and control for confounding more efficiently than in a large cohort study, where the costs of collecting substantial exposure data from all the members of the cohort may be prohibitive. It is likely that case-control studies will be conducted with increasing frequency as new ways of characterizing exposure through the use of biologic markers are developed (see chapter 3 ), mirroring the development that has occurred in the last 2 decades in other areas of epidemiology.

Cohort Studies

These studies identify a group of persons called a cohort, or sometimes several cohorts with differing kinds of the exposures of interest. Sometimes, a control group has zero exposure. The cohort study evaluates associations between the exposure(s) and 1 or more health outcomes in the cohort(s). In a cohort study, individuals with differing exposures to a suspected risk factor are identified and then observed for the occurrence of certain health effects over some period, commonly years rather than weeks or months. The occurrence rates of the disease of interest are measured and related to estimated exposure levels.

Cohort studies are of 2 kinds—retrospective and prospective—each with advantages and disadvantages. The retrospective (or historical) cohort study relates a complete set of outcomes already observed in a defined population to exposures that occurred earlier; data on both exposure and outcomes must be available at the time the study is undertaken. Prospective cohort studies, in which current exposure is directly measured and individuals are then followed, have a potential for more-accurate measurements but may suffer from loss of subjects to followup or bias in ascertainment of end points. Also, it may be necessary to wait for many years or even for the time of followup to exceed the latent period between exposure and effect or for sufficient outcome events to occur.

Cohort studies can utilize questionnaires or laboratory tests to measure both exposure and outcome. One advantage over case-control studies is that multiple outcomes can be evaluated simultaneously in relation to the exposure data. However, the power to test associations will depend on the frequencies of the different outcomes considered, which in turn depend on the number of persons followed (see discussion below on power considerations).

One type of cohort study seeks to correlate time trends in outcome measures and environmental exposures. Such studies can be divided into 3 broad classes: those in which the outcome is estimated or measured relatively few times, those in which outcome variables are linked to episodic variations in exposure, and those in which long-term time trends in measures or estimates of health outcomes are linked with variations in monitored or estimated exposures. The first class is seen in some cardiovascular studies in which determinations of health status are made annually. Outcome measures are often continuous, as well as dichotomous. Other examples are those that correlate the development of chronic bronchitis with exposure to air pollution and prospective cohort studies that follow children's lead exposure and cognitive development from conception or birth. The second broad class examines changes in response to exposures that are episodic or of short duration. Studies that link peaks in air pollution to patterns of asthma fall into this category. The third broad class is similar to time-series studies often conducted in the social sciences. In such studies, both exposure and outcome measures are collected, perhaps on a daily basis, for periods of months or even years. Short-term fluctuations in those outcomes are correlated with short-term variations in environmental exposures. For instance, studies of changes in peak respiratory flow, respiratory symptoms, hospital admission, and daily mortality can be linked to changes in environmental air pollution. In most of these studies, the multifactorial nature of the outcome means that the explanatory power of each environmental variable is generally small. This has necessitated relatively large samples and careful modeling to avoid potential confounding.

Nested Case-control Studies

These studies are similar to ordinary cohort studies except that only a sample of controls (persons free of the disease) are studied in detail. They generally use old cases in a defined cohort that has been followed long enough for sufficient outcome events to have occurred but only a random sample of cohort members who were eligible to become cases but had not developed the disease or died at the time the corresponding cases were diagnosed. Controls are often matched to cases on 1 or more potential confounders (e.g., age, sex, and smoking status) that the investigator does not wish to study. An individual selected as a control may become a case if the disease of interest develops. Nested case-control studies can be designed to have almost as much statistical power as the cohort study from which they are derived because of tighter experimental control, and they can be used to derive better inferences on exposure-disease associations. These studies may also be substantially more economical if the determination of exposure of the controls can be limited to a sample.

Case-cohort Studies

In this design, a random sample of the total cohort is drawn and taken to represent the exposure experience of the cohort. When the cohort has been followed long enough to accrue sufficient cases for analysis, the exposure experience of this subcohort is compared with that of the cases (who arise from the total cohort and might or might not be individuals in the subcohort who become cases). This design also provides economies in obtaining exposure data compared with a cohort study, but surveillance of the total cohort is still needed to identify the cases that occur.

• Special Considerations

Many epidemiologic studies explore the relation between risk factors and health outcomes, often examining the relation between a single exposure and a single factor or disease. In environmental epidemiology, however, both exposures and outcomes are usually multiple. Many of the risk factors of interest derive from large-scale data sets on environmental pollution that involve continuous variables, as well as a variety of clinical health indicators. Much of cancer epidemiology has focused on studying specific anatomic sites of cancer and delineating important contributors to specific types of cancer, such as the link between occupational exposure to benzene and leukemia or that between asbestos and mesothelioma. Similarly, much of cardiovascular epidemiology has involved prospective cohort studies that concentrate on identifying a few specific risk factors.

Cross-Sectional Designs

Many environmental-epidemiology studies are cross-sectional. In such designs, the relations between contemporaneous assessments of outcome and exposure are studied; this can give rise to difficulties in determining the temporal aspects of an association. Often the exposure variable is measured continuously but with substantial error. The outcome is generally multifactorial, requiring a large number of covariates, and can include a wide range of health effects for which standard nomenclature, coding, and test systems do not exist. Examples of such outcomes include neurologic outcomes used in studies of lead toxicity, outcomes of some pulmonary-function tests, and diaries of activity level. Environmental epidemiology often relies extensively on a complex of study designs, such as cross-sectional designs that meld both analytic and descriptive studies, and often considers multiple health outcomes as well as multiple exposure variables.

Molecular-Epidemiology Studies

Recent advances in molecular biology provide new ways to identify and measure markers of exposure or outcome, such as DNA adducts or oncogenes, that are identified through molecular biology. Such data can be used in any of the epidemiologic methods, so such studies have been designated "molecular epidemiology" by molecular biologists. The committee addresses the utility of biologic markers of exposure further in chapter 3 and biologic markers of outcome in chapter 4 . However, the committee notes that the application of molecular biology to humans as distinct from experimental animals does not in itself justify the term "molecular epidemiology." For a study to be classed as molecular epidemiology, it is essential that valid epidemiologic techniques and study designs be used, including the selection of study subjects from a defined population. This field can develop only if epidemiologists and molecular biologists collaborate in the design and conduct of such studies. In the absence of adequate implementation of both aspects, the term molecular epidemiology should not be used.

Considerations of the Power of Study Designs

Before any study is undertaken, sound epidemiologic practice requires careful consideration of statistical power, that is, the probability that a given research study will be able to detect a true positive effect if it exists. A study's power depends on many factors, including the increases in risk of exposed persons for the outcome under study, the size of the population to be surveyed, and, for cohort studies, the duration of followup. The higher the expected relative risk (RR), the smaller the population that needs to be surveyed. Conversely, the larger the population studied, the smaller the RR that can be detected. Most environmental pollution includes relatively low levels of exposure to complexes of poorly defined materials. Thus, an environmental pollutant is likely to be associated with relatively small risks, though it could affect large numbers of people.

At any given level of statistical significance, there is a relation among study power, sample size, prevalence of exposure, and expected rate of a given outcome. In general, studies of larger numbers of persons over longer periods are more likely to yield positive results than those involving smaller populations for shorter periods. However, even large studies with long followup will result in uncertain findings if exposure is poorly measured or misclassified (see chapter 3 ). The sample size needed to achieve a given study power is also related to whether exposure is measured as a dichotomous or continuous variable, to the variability in distribution of the exposure, and to the effects of confounders and errors in the measure of exposure. In general, larger samples are needed when exposure measures are not continuous, when the effects of confounders and errors of measurement cannot be taken into account, and when the adverse outcome is a rare event (Greenland, 1983; McKeown-Eyssen and Thomas, 1985; Lubin et al., 1988; Lubin and Gail, 1990). Finally, all statistical-power calculations depend on the critical assumption that bias in both exposure and outcome can be ignored; this assumption may be rarely true in practice.

Statistical-significance testing is used to assess the likelihood that positive results of any given study represent a "real" association. However, no matter which statistical tests are employed, common research designs all produce studies with fixed, known chances of making a type I error, that is, of finding a positive result when one does not really exist. This probability is called alpha and is generally determined by a statistician at the time the protocol is drafted. It is commonly set at 5%.

Of equal importance for environmental epidemiology is a consideration of the probability that a failure to find an effect is a false negative, or type II error. This often occurs when small numbers of persons are studied and when relatively low risks are involved. Statistical tests cannot determine whether or not an error has been made but can indicate the probability that an error could occur, called beta, if the effect is of some hypothetical size specified by the investigator. The power to detect an effect of that size, defined as 1-beta, depends on the alpha level of significance testing and the unknown relative risk. Tables have been devised to help determine the number of observations required to have specified power to detect an effect of specified size if an association exists (Fleiss, 1981). For any specific size of effect, the power of a study increases as the study size increases.

Many episodes of environmental contamination involve low relative risks and small numbers of people, so environmental-epidemiology studies often lack sufficient power to detect important effects. This makes the development of innovative techniques to combine results an important priority for the field.

P values are measures of random uncertainty alone and are dominated by sample size and other power considerations. In observational epidemiology, the primary sources of uncertainty about whether an effect is present are confounding, selection bias, and similar problems. In contrast, measures of the size of a possible effect, such as regression coefficients or odds ratios, may be less sensitive to sample size. If associations are due primarily to confounding, investigators may report considerable variation in measures of effect across different studies and populations. Hence, in modern epidemiology these measures of effect, and confidence intervals for them, are given greater attention than P values. Consistency in these measures across studies with differences in exposures to potential confounders can provide valuable clues about whether observed associations indicate cause-effect relationships.

A very severe problem in environmental epidemiology is known as ''multiple comparisons." If the probability of an error with 1 comparison (P value or confidence bounds) is kept at the traditional value of 5%, a research study that includes more than 1 such comparison has a higher chance of making at least 1 error. While statistical methods exist to remove this effect, they have an unintended and often devastating effect on statistical power. This matter is dealt with in many statistical texts, so we do not expand on it here.

• Causal Inference in Epidemiology

The previous volume elaborated on criteria relevant to drawing inferences from epidemiologic studies (see NRC, 1991, for general guidance on these studies). They are summarized here as follows.

Strength of Association

The strength of association measures the size of the risk that is correlated with a causal agent (exposure). It is typically expressed as the risk of an exposed person's incurring a disease compared with that of a non-exposed person. The most-common comparison measures are the standard mortality ratio (SMR), the odds ratio (OR), and the relative risk (RR). The larger the ratio (SMR, OR, or RR), the stronger the association between the inferred link of exposure to disease for exposed individuals. For example, an RR of 1.4 for lung cancer after exposure to environmental tobacco smoke indicates that exposed persons are 40% more likely to develop lung cancer than are non-exposed persons. The strength of association must often be considered in relation to the population at risk and intensity of the exposure. For example, an RR of 4 that affects a small population may have a much smaller public-health impact than does an RR of 1.2 that affects much larger numbers. Epidemiologists are sometimes concerned with attributable risk, which is a measure of the rate of disease above the background rate that can be attributed to exposure. This is more difficult to detect, study, and estimate in environmental epidemiology because it is difficult to determine a baseline rate. Problems with using strength of association as the principal criterion for causality include the fact that misclassification and other biases can profoundly change the strength of association.

Specificity of Association

Specificity suggests that the suspected causal agent induces a single disease. While this may apply to a few associations between exposure and disease (e.g., vinyl chloride and angiosarcoma of the liver), single diseases (e.g., lung cancer) can have many causes, and single agents can cause many effects (e.g., lead at high-enough levels can cause increased blood pressure, neurologic symptoms, reproductive effects, and kidney damage). Specificity can be diminished by inappropriate or inaccurate grouping of diseases in a way that obscures a real effect (e.g., grouping some rare forms of cancer with other cancers).

Consistency of Association

The observed relation between exposure and disease is seen rather regularly in independently conducted studies; the value of consistency is enhanced if the studies are of different types and in different populations. For example, a study of the association between lung cancer and passive smoking may produce an RR of only 2.0 or less, but this elevated risk has now been reported in over 30 studies carried out in 6 countries (NRC, 1986). Because of the variety in study protocols and populations, claims of bias in all the studies have little credibility. Studies not having statistically significant results can be combined with similar studies, as long as they all use sound methods. Studies that meet the standards for good epidemiologic practice can be grouped for meta-analysis, which allows for statistical pooling of different studies.

Temporality

The exposure should precede the development of symptoms or diseases of interest by an appropriate interval. The time between exposure and disease should be consistent with biologic understanding of the time from exposure to the observed disease. For example, tobacco typically causes lung cancer 25 years or more after the beginning of regular exposure, though a few cases have been observed within 10 years of first exposure (Doll and Peto, 1978).

Biologic Gradient of Relation Between Estimated Exposure and Disease

In general, a greater exposure should cause a stronger (though not always proportional) effect. For example, smoking more cigarettes increases the risk of lung cancer. Typically, dose equals the concentration integrated over time. In some cases, however, dosing patterns can be more important than the overall dose in the relation between dose and response. Also, the timing of the exposure can be critical in the dose-response relation.

Effects of Removal of a Suspected Cause

If a causal relation exists, removing the causal agent should reduce or eliminate the effect; if the effect is irreversible in individuals already exposed, this reduction may not be apparent until the exposed generation is largely removed from the study population by death or in some other way (e.g., limitation to persons under age 65). If different causes are related to a single disease, then the principle applies only to the specific causal factor removed.

Biologic Plausibility

The relation between the suspected causal agent and suspected effect should make sense, given the current understanding of human biology. Animal studies or other experimental evidence can strengthen or weaken the biologic plausibility of the relation by demonstrating mechanisms of disease or determining whether the association between exposure and disease holds in experimental situations. However, lack of a known mechanism does not invalidate a causal association. For many diseases, the underlying mechanisms are unknown.

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• Published: 16 March 2011

Managing the environmental impact of research

• David C Pencheon 1  

Trials volume  12 , Article number:  80 ( 2011 ) Cite this article

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The environmental impact of research increasingly needs to be taken into account in design and execution. This makes good financial sense. However, it is especially in the research world as one of the key reasons for doing health research is to improve our knowledge to improve health. Specifically, doing research in a more sustainable way allows us to generate more knowledge with the same resource. Research not only needs to be done increasingly sustainably, but the content of the research needs to direct how we promote health and deliver healthcare in more sustainable ways.

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Introduction

Research is about reducing uncertainty so that we understand how the world works and how we can do things better: more effectively, more efficiently, and more safely. Reducing waste of any sort of resource is both an important reason for doing research and an important part of the process of conducting the research. Addressing the former is not an excuse for ignoring the latter. Research itself should therefore not be done wastefully, no matter how important we think the results might be. We should elicit maximum knowledge and understanding for the least possible investment of resource. Living in an increasingly resource constrained world only makes this more imperative. This is not just due to the current economic climate, but because of the more fundamental need for environmental and social sustainability in all we do. Research to understand how we reduce the footprint of trials is therefore especially welcome to start embedding this imperative into the practice and culture of research more widely.

Subaiya et al's research [ 1 ] is therefore symbolic and pioneering research and hugely important as we create a sustainable and lower carbon world. Health professionals, especially health researchers, should not consider themselves immune from either the research challenges or the research opportunities of taking the environmental impact of doing research. It is therefore increasingly important that environmental issues are systematically addressed when research is commissioned, funded, performed, disseminated and acted upon. Why?

Firstly, sustainable and low carbon research is relatively new territory, so the case needs to be made that this is important, necessary, possible, and stills delivers what we need. Studying a phenomenon is no excuse for ignoring the way it is studied. The crucial place of the research published today is that it lays some foundations for the methodologies that will be increasingly expected and routine. However these methodologies need to be continually refined in order to communicate more clearly, the costs and benefits of conducting the right research in the right way. Unless we clarify the methods for costing research more holistically, we will be ignoring the opportunities, obligations and duty we have to embed sustainability as a core part of research governance. Measures such as "Potential health gain per tonne of carbon expended" or "Patient recruited per tonne of CO 2 e" need to be tested and will become increasingly routine.

Secondly, it is important than health related research takes a lead in doing this more routinely and systematically. It would be wrong if certain disciplines thought that the importance of the potential results of research excused a blind approach to the financial, environmental and social cost of actually conducting the research. The product cannot be divorced from the process. No person, organisation or sector is immune from the challenges of a resource constrained world. Indeed, the health and health care world has much to gain from taking this seriously, and being seen to do so. Perhaps the most important reason why health researchers should take the lead is that there are just so many health co-benefits to be exploited. What is good for the health of people today is good for the health of the systems that will support us all tomorrow. Take two obvious examples. More physical activity leads to both less obesity and to a less fossil fuel dependent society. Eating less meat uses global resources more efficiently and fairly and also provides less saturated fat in our individual diets.

Thirdly, the research community has an opportunity to set an important example. A more holistic and enlightened view to the process of conducting research must be visible: just as we were reluctant to curb our smoking habits until doctors do so, similarly, society at large is unlikely to take sustainability and climate change seriously until health professionals, especially researchers, funders and journals, do the same. Fortunately, there are good examples of journals such as the British Medical Journal and the Lancet doing exactly that [ 2 , 3 ]. The recent publication by NIHR of carbon guidelines on sustainable research highlighted in Subaiya's article is similarly welcome.

Lastly, the academic community has a real opportunity and duty to question and study not just what we research but how we research. Trial methodology is an obvious place to start. Scrutiny and governance of research is often pioneered in this area, so it is natural that sustainable trials should become an increasingly important part of the research culture.

The future is bright only if we address our current obligations seriously and systematically. The research world is starting to do exactly that. We need to know what research to do to understand how to live more sustainably and more fairly, and we need to know how to investigate this so that the research community is part of the solution, not part of the problem. Research commissioners, funders, and doers all need to step up to the mark and design systems of sharing best practice and encouraging them to be systematically adopted and improved without increasing the bureaucracy of research. Subaiya et al's article is a welcome step on an important journey for us all. This is happening on our watch and will be our legacy.

There are specific issues that need to be addressed about the environmental impacts of doing research. Most importantly is how we measure consistently and validly how we do this - what is included and what is not - and what units are measured. Secondly, to make valid comparisons, we need to have a consistent metrics to value the process (e.g. recruitment), and outcome (e.g. life years saved) of research.

Subaiya et al's article continues this important debate.

Research funders, research commissioners, and research governance systems will want to agree how best to incorporate the environmental cost well as the financial cost into the process of commissioning research.

Subaiya S, Hogg E, Roberts I: Reducing the environmental impact of trials: a comparison of the carbon footprint of the CRASH-1 and CRASH-2 clinical trials. Trials. 2011, 12: 31-

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Sustainable Trials Study Group: Towards sustainable clinical trials. BMJ. 2007, 334: 671-673. 10.1136/bmj.39140.623137.BE.

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David Pencheon is Director of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit in England whose role is to shape policy to help create a healthcare system which is financially, socially, and environmentally sustainable.

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First-of-its-kind study definitively shows that conservation actions are effective at halting and reversing biodiversity loss

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A new study published online today, April 25, in the scientific journal Science provides the strongest evidence to date that not only is nature conservation successful, but that scaling conservation interventions up would be transformational for halting and reversing biodiversity loss—a crisis that can lead to ecosystem collapses and a planet less able to support life—and reducing the effects of climate change.

The findings of this first-ever comprehensive meta-analysis of the impact of conservation action are crucial as more than 44,000 species are documented as being at risk of extinction , with tremendous consequences for the ecosystems that stabilize the climate and that provide billions of people around the world with clean water, livelihoods, homes, and cultural preservation, among other ecosystem services. Governments recently adopted new global targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, making it even more critical to understand whether conservation interventions are working.

“If you look only at the trend of species declines, it would be easy to think that we’re failing to protect biodiversity, but you would not be looking at the full picture,” said Penny Langhammer, lead author of the study and executive vice president of Re:wild. “What we show with this paper is that conservation is, in fact, working to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. It is clear that conservation must be prioritized and receive significant additional resources and political support globally, while we simultaneously address the systemic drivers of biodiversity loss, such as unsustainable consumption and production.”

Although many studies look at individual conservation projects and interventions and their impact compared with no action taken, these papers have never been pulled into a single analysis to see how and whether conservation action is working overall. The co-authors conducted the first-ever meta-analysis of 186 studies, including 665 trials, that looked at the impact of a wide range of conservation interventions globally, and over time, compared to what would have happened without those interventions. The studies covered over a century of conservation action and evaluated actions targeting different levels of biodiversity—species, ecosystems, and genetic diversity.

The meta-analysis found that conservation actions—including the establishment and management of protected areas, the eradication and control of invasive species, the sustainable management of ecosystems, habitat loss reduction, and restoration—improved the state of biodiversity or slowed its decline in the majority of cases (66%) compared with no action taken at all. And when conservation interventions work, the paper’s co-authors found that they are highly effective .

For example:

• Management of invasive and problematic native predators on two of Florida’s barrier islands, Cayo Costa and North Captiva, resulted in an immediate and substantial improvement in nesting success by loggerhead turtles and least terns, especially compared with other barrier islands where no predator management was applied.
• In the Congo Basin, deforestation was 74% lower in logging concessions under a Forest Management Plan (FMP) compared with concessions without an FMP.
• Protected areas and Indigenous lands were shown to significantly reduce both deforestation rate and fire density in the Brazilian Amazon. Deforestation was 1.7 to 20 times higher and human-caused fires occurred four to nine times more frequently outside the reserve perimeters compared with inside.
• Captive breeding and release boosted the natural population of Chinook salmon in the Salmon River basin of central Idaho with minimal negative impacts on the wild population. On average, fish taken into the hatchery produced 4.7 times more adult offspring and 1.3 times more adult second generation offspring than naturally reproducing fish.

“Our study shows that when conservation actions work, they really work. In other words, they often lead to outcomes for biodiversity that are not just a little bit better than doing nothing at all, but many times greater,” said Jake Bicknell, co-author of the paper and a conservation scientist at DICE, University of Kent. “For instance, putting measures in place to boost the population size of an endangered species has often seen their numbers increase substantially. This effect has been mirrored across a large proportion of the case studies we looked at.”

Even in the minority of cases where conservation actions did not succeed in recovering or slowing the decline of the species or ecosystems that they were targeting compared with taking no action, conservationists benefited from the knowledge gained and were able to refine their methods. For example, in India the physical removal of invasive algae caused the spread of the algae elsewhere because the process broke the algae into many pieces, enabling their dispersal. Conservationists could now implement a different strategy to remove the algae that is more likely to be successful.

This might also explain why the co-authors found a correlation between more recent conservation interventions and positive outcomes for biodiversity— conservation is likely getting more effective over time . Other potential reasons for this correlation include an increase in funding and more targeted interventions.

In some other cases where the conservation action did not succeed in benefiting the target biodiversity compared with no action at all, other native species benefitted unintentionally instead. For example, seahorse abundance was lower in protected sites because marine protected areas increase the abundance of seahorse predators, including octopus.

“It would be too easy to lose any sense of optimism in the face of ongoing biodiversity declines,” said study co-author and Associate Professor Joseph Bull , from the University of Oxford’s Department of Biology. “However, our results clearly show that there is room for hope. Conservation interventions seemed to be an improvement on inaction most of the time; and when they were not, the losses were comparatively limited."

More than half of the world’s GDP, almost $44 trillion , is moderately or highly dependent on nature. According to previous studies, a comprehensive global conservation program would require an investment of between US$178 billion and US$524 billion , focused primarily in countries with particularly high levels of biodiversity. To put this in perspective, in 2022, global fossil fuel handouts--which are destructive to nature—were US$7 trillion . This is 13 times the highest amount needed annually to protect and restore the planet. Today more than US$121 billion is invested annually into conservation worldwide , and previous studies have found the cost-benefit ratio of an effective global program for the conservation of the wild is at least 1:100 .

“Conservation action works—this is what the science clearly shows us,” said Claude Gascon, co-author and director of strategy and operations at the Global Environment Facility. “It is also evident that to ensure that positive effects last, we need to invest more in nature and continue doing so in a sustained way. This study comes at a critical time where the world has agreed on ambitious and needed global biodiversity targets that will require conservation action at an entirely new scale. Achieving this is not only possible, it is well within our grasp as long as it is appropriately prioritized.”

The paper also argues that there must be more investment specifically in the effective management of protected areas, which remain the cornerstone for many conservation actions. Consistent with other studies, this study finds that protected areas work very well on the whole . And what other studies have shown is that when protected areas are not working, it is typically the result of a lack of effective management and adequate resourcing. Protected areas will be even more effective at reducing biodiversity loss if they are well-resourced and well-managed.

Moving forward, the study’s co-authors call for more and rigorous studies that look at the impact of conservation action versus inaction for a wider range of conservation interventions, such as those that look at the effectiveness of pollution control, climate change adaptation, and the sustainable use of species, and in more countries.

“For more than 75 years, IUCN has advanced the importance of sharing conservation practice globally,” said Grethel Aguilar, IUCN director general. “This paper has analyzed conservation outcomes at a level as rigorous as in applied disciplines like medicine and engineering—showing genuine impact and thus guiding the transformative change needed to safeguard nature at scale around the world. It shows that nature conservation truly works, from the species to the ecosystem levels across all continents. This analysis, led by Re:wild in collaboration with many IUCN Members, Commission experts, and staff, stands to usher in a new era in conservation practice.”

This work was conceived and funded through the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) by the Global Environment Facility.

Lindsay Renick Mayer

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Devin Murphy

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The paper ‘The positive impact of conservation action’ has been published in Science:  https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adj6598  

Additional quotes

Thomas Brooks, co-author and chief scientist, IUCN

“This paper is not only extremely important in providing robust evidence of the impact of

conservation actions. It is also extremely timely in informing crucial international policy processes, including the establishment of a 20-year vision for IUCN, the development of an IPBES assessment of biodiversity monitoring, and the delivery of the action targets toward the outcome goals of the new Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.”

Stuart Butchart, co-author and chief scientist, BirdLife International

“Recognising that the loss and degradation of nature is having consequences for societies worldwide, governments recently adopted a suite of goals and targets for biodiversity conservation. This new analysis is the best evidence to date that conservation interventions make a difference, slowing the loss of species’ populations and habitats and enabling them to recover. It provides strong support for scaling up investments in nature in order to meet the commitments that countries have signed up to.”

Jamie Carr, co-author and researcher in climate change and biodiversity governance, Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, University of York, UK “This work represents a huge effort on the part of many conservation professionals, all of whom are committed to reversing the loss of the world's biodiversity. It is encouraging to find that the past work of other conservationists has had a positive impact on nature, and I sincerely hope that our findings inspire those working now and in the future to ramp up their efforts."

Piero Genovesi, ISPRA, co-author and chair, IUCN SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group

“Species and ecosystems are facing a dramatic crisis, and the Biodiversity Plan of the United Nations is an urgent global call to action. This paper shows that eradication, control and management of invasive alien species have the largest impact in terms of conservation, and can help reverse the current trends of biodiversity loss, potentially saving hundreds of species from extinction. It is essential that governments and donors support the struggle against invasive alien species if we want to meet the agreed biodiversity targets by 2030.”

Mike Hoffmann, co-author and head of wildlife recovery, Zoological Society of London

“The major advance of this study is its sheer weight of evidence. We can point to specific examples, such as how captive breeding and reintroductions have facilitated the return of scimitar-horned oryx to the wild in Chad, but these can feel a bit exceptional. This study draws on more than 650 published cases to show that conservation wins are not rare. Conservation mostly works—unfortunately, it is also mostly significantly under-resourced.”

Madhu Rao, chair, IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas “With less than six years remaining to achieve ambitious biodiversity targets by 2030, there is a great sense of urgency for effective conservation action. We can take proven methods to conserve nature, such as protected areas, and scale them up for real conservation impact. This research clearly demonstrates that conservation actions are successful. We just need to take them to scale.”

Jon Paul Rodriguez, chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission

“Anyone involved in the field of conservation will have witnessed the power of nature to regenerate and grow, given a chance to do so. From fishery exclusion zones, to ecological restoration on land, and animal, fungi and plant recovery efforts, there are numerous examples of halting and reversing biodiversity declines. Langhammer and colleagues synthesize knowledge on the impact of conservation action, and demonstrate that evidence-based conservation efforts indeed work in the majority of cases, not just in a few hand-picked examples. Much more money is spent on destroying nature than on protection and recovery. The authors show that tipping the balance in favor of nature is likely to help us deliver the world's ambitious biodiversity conservation targets.”

Gernot Segelbacher, co-author, professor and co-chair of Conservation Genetic Specialist Group, University Freiburg

“Conservation matters! While we so often hear about species declining or going extinct, this study shows that we can make a difference.”

Stephen Woodley, co-author, ecologist and vice chair for science and biodiversity, IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas

“The world needs hope that conservation action can work to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.  This paper demonstrates that a range of conservation actions are highly effective. We just need to do more of them.”

Re:wild protects and restores the wild. We have a singular and powerful focus: the wild as the most effective solution to the interconnected climate, biodiversity and human wellbeing crises. Founded by a group of renowned conservation scientists together with Leonardo DiCaprio, Re:wild is a force multiplier that brings together Indigenous peoples, local communities, influential leaders, nongovernmental organizations, governments, companies and the public to protect and rewild at the scale and speed we need. Learn more at rewild.org .

University of Oxford

Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the eighth year running, and ​number 3 in the QS World Rankings 2024. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer. Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.

Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE)

The Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) is a research centre at the University of Kent. Its teaching and research is designed to break down the barriers between the natural and social sciences and produce real-world impact. Its mission is to conserve biodiversity and the ecological processes that support ecosystems and people, by developing capacity and improving conservation management and policy through high-impact research.  

University of Kent

The University of Kent in England is renowned internationally for the quality of its teaching and research, with many of its academic schools and centres being among the best in their disciplines across the arts and humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Its campuses at Canterbury and Medway welcome more than 17,000 students from over 150 countries. The University of Kent is individually and collectively in the pursuit of progress, with a student-focused approach which is supportive, challenging and rewarding, and interdisciplinary research driven by collaboration to create positive impact. We are proud to be a values-driven university and work hard to ensure that our students are at the heart of all we do. We are committed to offering one of the best education and student experiences in the UK, undertaking research and innovation of the highest standard, and being a civic university that serves and contributes to our communities.

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

IUCN is a membership Union composed of both government and civil society organisations. It harnesses the experience, resources and reach of its more than 1,400 Member organisations and the input of more than 16,000 experts. IUCN is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA)

The World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) is the world's premier network of protected and conserved areas expertise. The Commission has over 2500 members spanning 140 countries who provide strategic advice to policymakers and work to strengthen capacity and investment for protected areas establishment and management.

Arizona State University

Arizona State University has developed a new model for the American Research University, creating an institution that is committed to access, excellence and impact. ASU measures itself by those it includes, not by those it excludes. As the prototype for a New American University, ASU pursues research that contributes to the public good, and ASU assumes major responsibility for the economic, social and cultural vitality of the communities that surround it. www.asu.edu

BirdLife International

BirdLife International is the world's largest nature conservation Partnership: a global family of 122 national NGOs covering all continents, landscapes and seascapes. BirdLife is driven by its belief that local people, working for nature in their own places but connected nationally and internationally through the global Partnership, are the key to sustaining all life on this planet. This unique local-to-global approach delivers high impact and long-term conservation for the benefit of nature and people.

Global Environment Facility (GEF)

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a multilateral family of funds dedicated to confronting biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution, and supporting land and ocean health. Its financing enables developing countries to address complex challenges and work towards international environmental goals. The partnership includes 186 member governments as well as civil society, Indigenous Peoples, women, and youth, with a focus on integration and inclusivity. Over the past three decades, the GEF has provided nearly $25 billion in financing and mobilized another $138 billion for thousands of priority projects and programs. The family of funds includes the Global Environment Facility Trust Fund, Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), Nagoya Protocol Implementation Fund (NPIF), and Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency Trust Fund (CBIT).

Zoological Society of London (ZSL)

Founded in 1826, ZSL is an international conservation charity, driven by science, working to restore wildlife in the UK and around the world; by protecting critical species, restoring ecosystems, helping people and wildlife live together and inspiring support for nature. Through our leading conservation zoos, London and Whipsnade, we bring people closer to nature and use our expertise to protect wildlife today, while inspiring a lifelong love of animals in the conservationists of tomorrow. Visit www.zsl.org for more information.   

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The Importance of Quantitative Methods in Environmental Science and Sustainability Measurement

March 23, 2017

Home  /  News  /  The Importance of Quantitative Methods in Environmental Science and Sustainability Measurement

Environmental science is a continuously evolving academic field that seeks to help us gain a progressively better understanding of our natural world and develop effective solutions for important sustainability issues. Challenging the status quo to address environmental problems requires solid evidence to persuade decision makers of the necessity of change. This makes quantitative literacy essential for sustainability professionals to interpret scientific data and implement management procedures.

With our world facing increasingly complex environmental issues, quantitative techniques reduce the numerous uncertainties by providing a reliable representation of reality, enabling us to proceed toward potential solutions with greater confidence. A wide range of statistical tools and approaches are now available for sustainability scientists to measure environmental indicators and inform responsible policy-making.

How Quantitative Methods Provide Context for Environmental Science and Sustainability

Environmental science brings a transdisciplinary systems approach to analyzing sustainability concerns. As the intrinsic concept of sustainability can be interpreted according to diverse values and definitions, quantitative methods based on rigorous scientific research are crucial for establishing an evidence-based consensus on pertinent issues that provide a foundation for meaningful policy implementation.

Statistical evidence is often necessary to defend conservation conclusions

Descriptive and inferential statistical evidence provides a strong foundation for defending conclusions to various audiences. Applying an appropriate range of data sources and quantitative models can produce logical inferences to estimate the probability of future results while quantifying the extent of uncertainty, limits, and future research needs. Given the urgency of environmental issues like climate change and the prevalence of skeptics, effectively summarizing and communicating irrefutable results of complex statistical analyses can make the difference in developing successful courses of action.

How an M.S. in Sustainability Integrates Quantitative Methods

In an M.S. in Sustainability , such as natural resource management, students acquire the fundamental quantitative literacy to correctly evaluate and interpret ecological literature. They learn how to design effective studies, integrate quantitative models, and apply advanced statistical approaches.

For example, Bayesian methods are used to enable scientists to systematically factor in various forms of prior evidence while observing how conclusions change with the new information. This allows a quicker reaction to emerging conditions. Bayesian statistical inference has successfully been applied in conservation biology, addressing many of the problems inherent in standard hypothesis testing while including important factors causing uncertainty. It provides an alternate framework for decision-making that permits more options and better conclusions.

Statistical Models Mitigate Environmental Science and Sustainability Uncertainty

The principles of statistics and probability, multivariate analysis, and spatial analysis methods provide a common ground for scientists, engineers, and other environmental professionals to communicate with each other. Despite the sophistication of the latest mathematical models, the enormous complexity of interactions between environmental systems introduces some level of uncertainty into all predictions.

The quantitative methods acquired in a Sustainability Master’s online combine information from various sources to create more informed predictions, while importantly providing the scientific reasoning to accurately describe what is known and what is not. This quantification of uncertainty makes it impossible to dismiss climate and conservation models, therefore providing a clearer impetus for change.

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What is Earth Day, when is it and what has it achieved?

• Published 22 April
• UK climate change protests

Millions of people across the globe are gathering to mark Earth Day and celebrate the environmental movement.

The event began in 1970 in the United States, and is now marked around the world.

What is Earth Day and when is it?

Earth Day is a global event which aims to highlight the importance of protecting the environment.

It takes place every year on 22 April.

It was set up in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, a US senator and environmentalist, and Denis Hayes, a graduate student at Harvard University.

Both had growing concerns about environmental damage in the US, such as that caused by a large oil spill in 1969 in Santa Barbara, California.

They came up with Earth Day as a way to engage the public and push green issues to the national agenda.

The first Earth Day saw 20 million people across the US take to the streets.

It became a global event in 1990, and now involves over one billion people of all ages in nearly 200 countries, according to organisers.

"Celebrating Earth Day is often the first environmental action for a lot of people," says Earthday.org president, Kathleen Rogers.

• A simple guide to climate change
• How the largest environmental movement in history was born

What is happening for Earth Day 2024?

The 2024 theme, "Planet vs. Plastics", aims to raise awareness of the harms of plastic pollution for human and planetary health.

Previous events have covered a range of environmental issues, from climate change and clean energy to protecting species and the benefits of tree planting.

This year's focus comes ahead of an historic UN treaty on plastics , which is expected to be agreed by the end of 2024.

More than 50 countries, including the UK, have called for an end to plastic pollution by 2040 .

But the organisers of Earth Day want to go further, and are calling for a 60% reduction in the production of all plastics by 2040.

Organisers have suggested that people could volunteer for a clean-up event or learn more about the damage done by plastic pollution.

You can find out what's happening near you via this map , or organise your own event.

• Four things you can do about your carbon footprint
• How to talk to your parents about climate change
• The turtle video that sparked a plastic straw revolution

What has Earth Day achieved?

Within a few years of the first Earth Day in 1970, the US Environmental Protection Agency had been set up, and several environmental laws - such as the Clean Air Act - had been established or significantly strengthened.

More recent events have included planting hundreds of millions of trees, supporting farmers with sustainable agriculture practices, and starting climate literacy projects around the world.

Some observers also cite the importance of Earth Day in pushing environmental issues back up national and international agendas.

"With a host of issues driving our environmental challenges down society's priority list, events like Earth Day remind us of the long-term cost of short-termism," says Yvo de Boer, former UN climate chief.

In 2016, Earth Day was symbolically chosen for the official signing of the landmark Paris climate accord, which had been agreed in late 2015.

It was the first time that countries of the world had collectively agreed targets to try to limit global warming.

• What is the Paris climate agreement?

What do critics say about Earth Day?

Some critics warn that these achievements give a false sense of progress.

Many environmental indicators - from global temperatures to species extinctions - are changing rapidly due to human activities. Efforts to date have fallen far short of halting or reversing these trends.

Some individuals and companies have also been accused of using Earth Day as an opportunity to misleadingly promote their environmental credentials, without making the real changes that are needed.

This is known as "greenwashing".

For example, campaigner Greta Thunberg tweeted in 2022 that Earth Day "has turned into an opportunity for people in power to post their 'love' for the planet, while at the same time destroying it at maximum speed".

"We all know greenwashing is happening and it is infuriating," Earth Day organiser Ms Rogers told BBC News.

"It's not an issue we've caused, but we know Earth Day is used cynically by some businesses to [mis]use the ethos of sustainability for their own gain."

"Governments need to take robust action and crack down on any business or industry lying to consumers."

• Coca-Cola and Nestle accused of misleading eco claims
• Airline adverts banned over 'greenwashing' claims
• Seven ways to spot businesses greenwashing

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Meet the 2024 Outstanding Achievements in Environmental Science & Technology Award Winners: Asia Pacific Region

• Apr 17, 2024
• 10 min read

This annual award recognizes change makers whose research and service contributions have substantially supported improvements in human health and/or the environment. Read our exclusive interviews with this year's winners below.

Environmental Science & Technology , Environmental Science & Technology Letters , and the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry (ENVR) are delighted to announce the joint winners of the 2024 Outstanding Achievements in Environmental Science & Technology Award.

This award recognizes contributions to the fields of research that have substantially contributed to improvements in human health and/or the environment. These improvements include, but are not limited to, new public policies, devices, or treatment systems widely adopted by governments, industry, or researchers.

2024 marks the award's fourth year, and this year we are excited to recognize two outstanding researchers based in the Asia Pacific Region.

Congratulations to Professor Jun Ma from Harbin Institute of Technology, People’s Republic of China, and Professor Han-Qing Yu from the University of Science & Technology of China, People’s Republic of China, on this significant achievement.

Read our exclusive interviews with the 2024 award winners below.

Professor Jun Ma

Describe your current area of research (or areas of interest).

In my current area of research, I am focused on advancing sustainable urban water systems with a strong emphasis on green and low-carbon technologies. The overarching goal is to develop innovative solutions that not only combat water pollution but also contribute to environmental sustainability. Within the realm of sustainable urban water systems, my work extends to source recovery of waste. This entails developing strategies to reclaim valuable resources from wastewater and other sources, aligning with the principles of circular economy and resource efficiency.

The integration of green and low-carbon technologies is a cornerstone of my research approach. I strive to pioneer cost-effective and high-efficiency water treatment technologies that not only safeguard public health but also minimize the environmental impact. Through the exploration of oxidation, adsorption, and catalytic properties of in-situ formed Mn and Fe species (IN-Mn/Fe), I aim to develop low-cost and easy-to-operate technologies centered on micro-nano interfaces, applicable across the entire water loop from drinking water purification to advanced wastewater treatment and reuse.

Ultimately, my research is driven by a commitment to addressing water crises globally, ensuring public health, and contributing to a sustainable and resilient future through the development and implementation of cutting-edge technologies in the field of water science and technology.

What have been some of the key influences that have shaped how your career has developed ?

Fundamental research and practical engineering practice have been the dual pillars shaping the trajectory of my career in water science and technology. The synergy between these two realms has significantly influenced my approach and contributed to the success of my endeavors.

Fundamental research has been a cornerstone of my career development. Through extensive exploration of the oxidation, adsorption, and catalytic properties of in-situ formed Mn and Fe species (IN-Mn/Fe), I have been able to uncover critical features that enable diverse applications in water treatment. This foundational knowledge has provided the basis for developing innovative and effective technologies that address complex water challenges, from algae removal to heavy metal and organic pollutant removal.

Simultaneously, my involvement in practical engineering practice has played a pivotal role in shaping the real-world impact of my research. This hands-on experience has not only validated the efficacy of my research findings but has also allowed for the development of cost-effective and easy-to-operate solutions that can be globally applied in water systems.

The integration of fundamental research and practical engineering practice has proven instrumental in my ability to address water crises and ensure public health. Whether directing major emergency responses to river pollution incidents or pioneering catalytic ozonation technology, the combination of theoretical understanding and practical application has been crucial in developing comprehensive and sustainable solutions.

Overall, my career has been shaped by a commitment to balancing cutting-edge research with hands-on engagement in practical engineering, ensuring that the innovations emerging from my work are not only scientifically sound but also practically viable and impactful in addressing the complex challenges within the field of water science and technology.

What do you consider some of the most important highlights from your career so far?

Several highlights from my career underscore the significance of building sustainable water treatment systems and developing green, low-cost, and economic water treatment technologies. These achievements represent key milestones in my commitment to addressing water challenges and promoting environmental sustainability:

One of the most important highlights in my career is the development and implementation of sustainable urban water treatment systems. By integrating green and low-carbon technologies, I have addressed several water crises and ensured public health for millions. For instance, I directed the major emergency response to the Songhua River pollution on the China-Russia border, and also resolved a 2010 thallium pollution crisis and a 2006 blue-green algae outbreak in China.

Specifically, I have focused on the exploration of green and low-cost water purification technologies leveraging Mn and Fe intermediates, in-situ formed oxidizing species, and their nanoscale effects. Technologies including potassium permanganate/ferrate-based oxidation, catalytic ozonation, persulfate activation, and their combined applications are developed by my team. These low-cost and easy-to-operate technologies have been widely applied in the removal of organic compounds and heavy metals, odor and algae control, enhanced coagulation, disinfection by-product control, advanced wastewater treatment and alternative water resource utilization. The impact of my work extends beyond theoretical research, with the practical application of developed technologies globally. These innovations cover the entire water loop, from drinking water purification to advanced wastewater treatment and reuse.

What is your advice for young investigators?

For young investigators entering the field, my advice is rooted in a holistic approach that encompasses both fundamental study and active engagement in engineering practice. Here are some key insights.

Focus on Fundamental Study : Emphasize a strong foundation in fundamental research. Invest time in understanding the underlying principles of your field, as this knowledge will serve as the bedrock for meaningful and innovative contributions. Strive for depth in your area of expertise. Specialization in a specific domain allows for a more nuanced understanding and the potential for groundbreaking discoveries.

Engage in Engineering Practice : Actively participate in engineering practice to bridge the gap between theory and application. Practical experience enhances your ability to translate research findings into real-world solutions with tangible impact. Collaborate with industry professionals and practitioners to gain insights into the practical challenges and opportunities within your field.

No Fear of Failure : Embrace a mindset that welcomes challenges and failures as valuable learning experiences. Innovation often arises from setbacks, and resilience is a key trait for success in any research or engineering endeavor. Be willing to take calculated risks in your research pursuits. Bold ideas and experimentation can lead to breakthroughs that contribute significantly to your field.

Consider Academic Influence : Actively seek opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange within the academic community. Attend conferences, participate in workshops, and engage with peers and mentors to broaden your perspective and stay abreast of the latest developments.

Teaching as a Form of Impact : Recognize the impact of teaching and mentorship. Sharing your knowledge with others not only contributes to the growth of your field but also allows you to refine your own understanding through the process of explaining complex concepts to others.

Engineering Influence : Understand the practical implications of your research on engineering solutions. Strive to align your work with real-world challenges and contribute to the development of technologies that address pressing issues in your field.

Social Influence and Responsibility : Acknowledge the broader societal implications of your work. Consider the ethical and social dimensions of your research and how it can positively contribute to the well-being of communities and the environment. Engage with the public, policymakers, and stakeholders to communicate the importance of your research and its potential societal benefits.

Overall, a successful career for a young investigator involves a delicate balance between rigorous fundamental study, active participation in engineering practice, and the ability to navigate the academic, teaching, engineering, and social influences that shape the broader context of research and innovation. By maintaining curiosity, resilience, and a commitment to positive impact, young investigators can forge a path of meaningful contributions in their chosen field.

Professor Han-Qing Yu

My research group has been dedicated to the development of heterogeneous catalytic technologies towards sustainable water management. My current research interests are mainly in heterogeneous catalytic degradation of recalcitrant organic pollutants by using chemical oxidation, electrocatalytic or photocatalytic technologies. Heterogeneous catalysis is a fascinating process that is broadly involved in diverse fields such as chemical engineering, material synthesis, biomedicine and environmental remediation. Despite the significant importance and great promise of the heterogeneous catalytic decontamination technologies for low-carbon water treatment and cycling, their practical application at the current stage still faces many economic and technical constrains including intensive energy/chemical consumption and secondary pollution.Therefore, we hope to further innovate the decontamination theory, material design and treatment processes, aiming to revolutionize the catalytic decontamination paradigm and put it into practical application.

What have been some of the key influences that have shaped how your career has developed?

I was born and grown in a small town near Chaohu Lake, the fifth largest freshwater lake in China. Since my childhood, I have witnessed severe pollution and frequent outbreaks of algal blooms in the lake, and recognized the huge damage and health risks caused by pollution. During my study, I gradually realized that enhancing management alone cannot solve the problem, we also need effective and affordable technologies for reducing pollutants at the source. Therefore, I decided to pursue environment research and make my contribution to environmental water protection.

The important highlight and achievement in my career is that I cultivated many outstanding young talents. During the past two decades, as a postgraduate supervisor, I have been taking great time and efforts in guiding the students in their study, research and career development. To date, I have cultivated over 100 environmental professionals who have become leaders or pivotal researchers in their individual fields, and many have become professors like me. We are glad to make out contribution in jointly promoting the new advances in environmental technology and sustainable water management.

There was once a famous football team, AFC Wimbledon, in England. In each game, the player who got the ball at the backcourt always gave a long kick to the frontcourt, and in many times this worked well. Doing research is somewhat like playing football. There are many uncertainties ahead, but creating opportunities and taking fast action are always very important for reaching the final success. So, when you are facing something new or uncertain in your research and you are hesitating about your choices, my advice is, don’t worry, just kick it off, and see what will happen!

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• 01 May 2024

Why it’s essential to study sex and gender, even as tensions rise

You have full access to this article via your institution.

In 2023, students protested against a new policy in Texas, where parents would be notified if their child asks to be identified as transgender. Credit: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle/Getty

This week, Nature is launching a collection of opinion articles on sex and gender in research. Further articles will be published in the coming months. The series will highlight the necessity and challenges of studying a topic that is both hugely under-researched and, increasingly, the focus of arguments worldwide — many of which are neither healthy nor constructive.

Some scientists have been warned off studying sex differences by colleagues. Others, who are already working on sex or gender-related topics, are hesitant to publish their views. Such a climate of fear and reticence serves no one. To find a way forward we need more knowledge, not less.

Collection: Sex and gender in science

Nearly 20 researchers from diverse fields, including neuroscience, psychology, immunology and cancer, have contributed to the series, which provides a snapshot of where scholars studying sex and gender are aligned — and where they are not. In time, we hope this collection will help to shape research, and provide a reference point for moderating often-intemperate debates.

In practice, people use sex and gender to mean different things. But researchers studying animals typically use sex to refer to male and female individuals , as defined by various anatomical and other biological features. In studies involving humans, participants are generally asked to identify their own sex and/or gender category. Here, gender usually encompasses social and environmental factors , including gender roles, expectations and identity.

For as long as scientific inquiry has existed, people have mainly studied men or male animals. Even as recently as 2009, only 26% of studies using animals included both female and male individuals, according to a review of 10 fields in the biological sciences 1 . This bias has had serious consequences. Between 1997 and 2000, for instance, eight prescription drugs were removed from the US market, because clinical testing had not revealed women’s greater risk of developing health problems after taking the drugs.

Male–female comparisons are powerful in biomedical research — don’t abandon them

The tide, however, is turning. Many journals, including those in the Nature Portfolio , and funders, such as the US National Institutes of Health, have developed guidelines and mandates to encourage scientists to consider sex and, where appropriate, gender in their work.

These efforts are reaping benefits 2 . Studies, for example, are showing that a person’s sex and/or gender can influence their risk of disease and chances of survival when it comes to many common causes of death — including cardiovascular conditions and cancer.

Despite this, many researchers remain unconvinced that the inclusion of sex and gender information is important in their field. Others, who are already doing so, have told Nature that they’re afraid of how their work is perceived and of how it could be misunderstood, or misused.

Podcast: Sex and gender discussions don't need to be toxic

Because researchers who are exploring the effects of sex and gender come from many disciplines, there will be disagreements. An often-raised and valid concern, for example, is that when researchers compare responses between female and male animals, or between men and women, they exclude those whose sex and/or gender doesn’t fall into a binary categorization scheme. Another is that variability between individuals of the same sex could be more important than that between sexes.

Sometimes sense does seem to get lost in the debates. That the term sex refers to a lot of interacting factors, which are not fully understood, does not invalidate its usefulness as a concept 3 . That some people misinterpret and misuse findings concerning differences between sexes, particularly in relation to the human brain , should not mean denying that any differences exist.

Tempering the debate

Many of the questions being raised, however, are important to ask, especially given concerns about how best to investigate biological differences between groups of humans , and the continued — and, in some regions, worsening — marginalization of people whose sex and/or gender identity doesn’t fall into narrowly defined norms. Often, such questions and concerns can be addressed through research. For example, studies might find that variability between individuals of the same sex in diet, or body weight, say, are more important predictors of how likely they are to develop anaemia than whether they are male or female.

We need more-nuanced approaches to exploring sex and gender in research

The problem, then is not the discussions alone: science exists to examine and interrogate disagreements. Rather, the problem is that debates — and work on sex and gender, in general — are being used to polarize opinions about gender identity. As Arthur Arnold, a biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues describe in their Comment article , last September, legislation banning gender-affirming medical care for people under 18 years old was introduced in Texas on the basis of claims that everyone belongs to one of two gender groups, and that this reality is settled by science. It isn’t. Scientists are reluctant to study sex and gender, not just because of concerns about the complexity and costs of the research, but also because of current tensions.

But it is crucial that scholars do not refrain from considering the effects of sex and gender if such analyses are relevant to their field. Improved knowledge will help to resolve concerns and allow a scholarly consensus to be reached, where possible. Where disagreements persist, our hope is that Nature ’s collection of opinion articles will equip researchers with the tools needed to help them persuade others that going back to assuming that male individuals represent everyone is no longer an option.

Nature 629 , 7-8 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01207-0

Beery, A. K. & Zucker, I. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 35 , 565–572 (2011).

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Velocci, B. Cell 187 , 1343–1346 (2024).

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