Towards an expanded scope of research ethics committees: Integrating environmental and climate ethics
ModulesTowards an expanded scope of research ethics committees: Integrating environmental and climate ethics
Enable REC members to recognize when environmental and climate considerations are ethically relevant and integrate them proportionately into existing ethics review processes without creating a new layer of ethics review.
By the end, learners should be able to:
- Recognise why environmental and climate considerations are relevant to research ethics.
- Identify when these considerations should enter REC review.
- Use a simple reflection approach to address them within existing review processes.
What is this about?
Why should RECs consider the environment?
RECs were historically developed primarily around the protection of human participants. However, research can also have environmental, climate, societal, distributive, and long-term implications.
European and international research ethics frameworks increasingly recognise these considerations as part of responsible research. The challenge is therefore not to create new ethical principles, but to apply existing principles more consistently to environmental and climate issues.
Environmental and climate ethics expand the scope of ethical reflection, not necessarily the amount of ethics bureaucracy.What does “expanding the scope” mean?
RE4GREEN does not propose turning RECs into environmental regulators or creating new approval procedures. Instead, RECs should be able to recognise environmentally relevant ethical issues and consider them within existing review processes, supported where necessary by appropriate expertise, guidance, and institutional resources.
Environmental & Climate Ethics: Quick Reflection Tool
This voluntary reflection tool helps Research Ethics Committees (RECs) consider environmental and climate issues within existing ethics review processes. It complements current ethics procedures and does not introduce an additional layer of review.
During ethics review, consider:
- Relevance – Could the research have direct or indirect environmental or climate impacts?
- Purpose – Could the research contribute to environmental harm, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, pollution, emissions, or unequal environmental burdens?
- Methods – Are the methods resource-intensive, and have lower-impact alternatives been considered?
- Practices – Are energy, water, materials, waste, and the project’s carbon footprint appropriately considered?
- Risk & DNSH – Have environmental risks been identified, justified, minimised, and accompanied by credible mitigation measures?
- Justice & Inclusion – Could environmental burdens fall disproportionately on particular communities or future generations, and have affected stakeholders been considered?
- Oversight – Is additional documentation, monitoring, mitigation, or environmental expertise needed?
The tool is intended to support proportionate ethical reflection. RECs can adapt these questions to their disciplinary, institutional, and national contexts.
Explore the full RE4GREEN Guide
The full guide provides the background, conceptual framework, detailed Environmental & Climate Ethics Review Reflection Tool, and further resources for REC practice. In order to Explore the full RE4GREEN Guide open the Flipbook below
TOWARD AN EXPANDED SCOPE OF RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEES: INTEGRATING ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE ETHICS
List of Resources
List of Resources:
| Resource | Type of resource | Origin/issuing body | Primary target audience | Scope, focus & relevance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethics Review Checklist for Use of Gene Drive | Ethics review checklist | iRECS (Horizon Europe project, Grant agreement ID: 101058587) | RECs, ethics reviewers | Provides a structured, REC-facing checklist addressing ecological risks, long-term ecosystem impacts, uncertainty, reversibility, and governance of environmental harm. Offers one of the clearest operationalisations of environmental ethics within formal ethics review processes. |
| TechEthos D5.4 Criteria for Ethical Review by RECs in Emerging Technology Research | Analytical report with recomm endations | TechEthos (Horizon 2020 project, Grant agreement ID: 101006249) | RECs, policymakers, ethics organisations | Analyses structural and substantive challenges faced by RECs when reviewing emerging technologies, including climate engineering. Highlights difficulties in assessing long-term societal and environmental harms and calls for REC-specific guidance and capacity-building. |
| Checklist – JRF Ethics Committee | Ethics self assessmen t checklist | Johannes-Rau Forschungsge meinschaft (JRF) – Ethics Committee (Germany) | Researchers (indirectly RECs) | Prompts researcher reflection on ethical, societal, and environmental aspects of research, including sustainability considerations. |
| How to Complete Your Ethics Self Assessment (Part 7: Environment & Safety) | Guidance document / ethics self assessmen t tool | European Commission (Horizon Europe) | Horizon Europe applicants; researchers; ethics reviewers; | Mandatory ethics self-assessment guidance for Horizon Europe applicants. Part 7 operationalises environmental and safety considerations. |
| Environmental Sustainability as an Ethical Issue in Intensive Care Research | Peer reviewed academic article | Springer (medical ethics & clinical research literature) | Clinicians, researchers, ethics scholars | Frames environmental sustainability and climate impacts as ethical issues in medical research, strengthening the normative basis for integrating environmental considerations into ethics discourse, but does not provide governance mechanisms or REC review tools. |
| DFG Sustainability Guide for Research Processes | Guidance / best practice document | Deutsche Forschungsge meinschaft (DFG) | Researchers, research institutions, funders | Provides practical recommendations to reduce environmental footprints across the research lifecycle (e.g. energy use, mobility, procurement). Strong on sustainability practice, but largely disconnected from ethics review procedures or explicit REC mandates. |
