Group | Ecosystem Services, Climate & Health

The Ecosystem Services, Climate & Health group investigates the importance of ecosystem services for human health and wellbeing, with particular attention to water and sanitation for poor populations in the developing world. Our working hypothesis is that appropriate ways to manage rapid demographic and ecological transformations (e.g. urbanization and climate change) must be found in order to maintain valuable ecosystem services, particularly in urban contexts, which in turn will protect and promote the health of human populations and alleviate poverty.

Our Research Focus

Past and ongoing studies in West Africa, South Africa, Latin America and Asia pursue a broadly applicable ecosystem health approach, and include various stakeholders and local communities to find setting-specific solutions for a wide range of public health challenges: wastes recovery and reuse, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, better schoolchildren health and nutrition. 

Our Expertise

The group is composed of multidisciplinary competences ranging from sanitary engineering to environmental epidemiology and including geographers, social scientists, biologists and public health experts. The project teams are using multidisciplinary approaches to understand health risks associated with water, sanitation and hygiene, interlinks between WASH, diarrhea, intestinal parasitic infections, malaria, schistosomiasis and nutrition, reduction of vulnerabilities and increasing resilience of communities and systems to climate change effects.