Impact of Global Environmental Change on Food/Nutrition and Water in Relation to Human Health

Global environmental change threatens human health on an unprecedented scale, both through direct effects such as extreme weather events and indirectly, through scarcity of safe water and nutritious food. The threats to the health of humans and the planet's ecosystems are exacerbated by demographic changes, including population growth, and increasing consumption.

In March 2012, the Wellcome Trust convened an international workshop with University College London and the University of Washington to discuss the research community's responses to the major challenges posed by global environmental change to human health and wellbeing.

The report of this workshop discusses potential significant research and translation gaps in the areas of water and food and key cross-cutting barriers that must be overcome in conducting and using this research.

This workshop was convened under the Trust's strategic challenge: connecting environment, nutrition and health.

Findings

The report calls for the research and policy community to adopt a bold approach in their research that encompasses the following features:

Establish true interdisciplinary research partnerships bringing together a powerful range of disciplines, including environmental, health and social scientists.
Consider systems as a whole to ensure that research takes into account the complexities of human and ecosystem interactions.
Maximise the value of data, through open access integrated systems with common data-sharing policies.
Use the most appropriate methodologies to assess causality and evaluate interventions.
Focus on the most vulnerable populations and engage communities and research users to ensure that findings are relevant.

Download the report [PDF 290KB]

Browse our short gallery of photographs from the workshop.