Why “Net Positive” is the way ahead in climate change and health - Professor Tim Taylor

Climate change is likely to cause significant threats to human health – the recent UKHSA report on the Health Effects of Climate Change goes into significant detail on the risks to our population. So why have we chosen to name our new UKRI funded centre the “Centre for Net Positive Health and Climate Solutions” or the Net Positive Centre for short?  

In the UK context, “net zero” objectives for climate change mitigation dominate the policy landscape. The objective to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 from the UK government have affected local authorities, large businesses and universities – many of which have developed net zero strategies and are taking steps to measure their carbon footprints.  

When establishing a new research centre on health and climate change, we realised there is an opportunity to not just focus on zeroing net greenhouse gas emissions, but to also to potentially deliver against other societal aims at the same time. Net positive solutions would be ones that maximise health benefits or minimise the negative health outcomes from climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. They would benefit the environment in other ways than greenhouse gas emissions – reducing air pollution and other threats to health. They would reduce health inequalities across multiple dimensions – socioeconomic, age, gender, disability and race.  

We want to stimulate discussion and investigation of options to adapt to climate change as well as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How we frame solutions is an important part of their acceptability – and we want to investigate how framing climate change through a public health lens may stimulate action. 

Thinking in a net positive way includes taking early steps to design for positive health outcomes in interventions. This might take the form of enabling recreation on and around sea walls, allowing the population to benefit from accessing green and blue spaces. It might be framed around designing net zero housing in a way that promotes indoor air quality and encourages wildlife. Or around working with farmers to help them adopt greener practices in response to climate threats to crops and livelihoods.   

The Net Positive Centre is also designed to be having a wider positive impact on research and innovation activities – with funding, training, networking and a “researcher in residence” programme to facilitate interaction between researchers and those on the ground trying to deliver solutions to climate change (be they in business, in government agencies or community groups).  

It is important that as researchers we reflect on our own practices. We have tried to design the Net Positive Centre in a way that it is reducing carbon impacts (through e.g. low carbon travel, the design of the Centre’s website), improving health and wellbeing of staff, building up early career researchers and stimulating interaction in different ways between researchers of vastly different disciplines. Over the coming months and years, we will be linking researchers from classics, computer science, economics, social sciences, epidemiology and climate science. This is a challenge, and we will be drawing on different methods to facilitate these interactions (including arts based approaches).  

It is my hope as Director of the Net Positive Centre that many will join with us on the journey of creating net positive solutions to the climate change and health challenges that we face. Only through working together and thinking in new ways will we find the pathway to a healthy, just and sustainable future