Environment and Sustainability in Research Ethics Review: Roles, Responsibilities and Practical Approaches
ModulesEnvironment and Sustainability in Research Ethics Review: Roles, Responsibilities and Practical Approaches
Enable REC members to recognise when environmental and climate considerations are ethically relevant, integrate them into existing ethics review processes, and reflect on the institutional responsibilities and support required. The module supports reflection within existing 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.
- Discuss possible arrangements for assessing environmental and climate considerations, including the roles of RECs and other bodies, and identify the expertise, resources and coordination needed.
What is this about?
Why should RECs consider the environment?
Research Ethics Committees (RECs) were historically developed primarily around the protection of human participants. This remains central to their work. However, research can also have environmental, climate, societal, and long-term implications that extend beyond those directly participating in a study.
Considering these wider effects builds on familiar ethical responsibilities: avoiding harm, considering how benefits and burdens are distributed, and reflecting on the consequences of research. It invites us to ask who—or what—may be affected, including communities, ecosystems, and future generations.
Familiar principles, broader considerations
| Avoiding harm | Justice | Responsibility |
| Could research cause preventable harm to the environment or human health? | Who benefits from the research, and who bears its environmental burdens? | Have longer-term consequences and feasible ways to reduce harm been considered? |
Recognised in international ethical guidance
These wider responsibilities are also reflected in international ethical guidance. The 2024 Declaration of Helsinki, for example, explicitly recognises that medical research should avoid or minimise environmental harm and strive for environmental sustainability. This places environmental considerations within an established ethical framework for medical research involving human participants.
Read the Declaration of Helsinki, paragraph 11.
What might this mean for the studies that come before a research ethics committee?
Imagine a study with sound consent procedures and minimal direct risks to participants. Its methods, however, generate hazardous waste, and the proposal does not explain how nearby communities or ecosystems will be protected. Looking beyond the immediate participants helps us recognise ethical questions that might otherwise remain outside the review.
What would you want to ask before giving an ethical opinion?
Take a moment to identify three questions.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
Environmental Sustainability in Health Research Ethics Review: Towards International Leadership, Governance, And Coordination
This policy brief focuses on health-related research. It calls for stronger international coordination, clearer institutional responsibilities, and greater capacity among ethics review bodies. It also asks whether existing health-related RECs or complementary governance arrangements are best placed to address sustainability issues.
How does this connect to your work?
If you work in health-related research, consider how these questions relate to your committee or institution. If you work outside health-related research, which of the challenges described in the brief also arise in your field? What might require a different approach?
Reflecting on the support needed
The brief’s third recommendation focuses on capacity:
Recommendation 3: Strengthen the capacity of ethics review bodies.
If health-related RECs are expected to evaluate environmental sustainability, they will require additional support. This includes:
• professional training;
• practical review tools;
• access to environmental expertise;
• examples of good practice.
Thinking about your own committee, institution, or field, reflect on:
- What knowledge, resources, or expertise do you currently lack but would need to address environmental sustainability in ethics review?
- What is one action you could take to build the knowledge or access the resources and expertise you are missing?
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. |
