Environment and Ecosystem Health

The health of the plants, animals, and ecosystems we share the planet with are key to a Sustainable Future.

Ensuring food security, mitigating zoonotic disease and protecting ecosystem services all depend on resilient and heathy environments, and on our understanding of their interconnectivity. Healthy Futures works together with the Digital Futures platform to support strategies like the Digital Solutions Programme to develop innovative digital service toolkits to synthesise and contextualise economic, societal and environmental data. Healthy Futures supports teams investigating the health of aquatic and terrestrial organisms and works closely with Resilient Futures, Resourceful Futures, and Inclusive and Prosperous Futures to realise the mutual benefits of transitioning to an environmentally sustainable relationship with the natural world.

As a challenge theme focused on healthy and changing environments, Healthy Fuures is well-placed to have a positive impact on the natural world and natural capital resources, with potential impacts on vital ecosystem services increasingly pressured by anthropogenic pollutants, resource extraction, biodiversity loss and climate change. Healthy Futures recognises the inescapable impact of humans on the natural world and supports teams working to encourage sustainable outcomes for both humans and the natural world. Working alongside the other Sustainable Futures themes, Healthy Futures will help guarantee the long-term survival of the environments essential to the natural and human world, enabling healthy lifestyles and healthy ecosystems.