Researchers join international environmental stewardship collaboration
With support from the National Science Foundation, researchers will help build a global network of community-driven observatories.
Eranga Galappaththi, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography.
College of Natural Resources and Environment researchers are joining a global effort to study how the environment impacts public health through a nearly $1 million National Science Foundation grant.
The project supports U.S. researchers selected by the Belmont Forum, a 55-country consortium addressing environment-related health risks.
“This project helps us understand how environmental and societal stresses create complex health crises in Indigenous communities, which are often early indicators of broader societal challenges,” said Eranga Galappaththi, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and lead on the project. “Building on our existing partnerships directly with Indigenous communities, we co-create solutions that strengthen health and food systems resilience locally and globally. The knowledge and strategies developed will help inform U.S. and international policies to better protect vulnerable populations and improve public health in the face of environmental emergencies and most importantly, minimize future social challenges.”
The Belmont Forum, a coalition of funding agencies, supports transdisciplinary global environmental research. Each country funds its own researchers, avoiding cross-border funding complications and enabling more efficient multinational collaboration.
The Indigenous Peoples Observatory Network will focus on climate-health emergencies, which are crises where environmental, health, and economic stressors collide to strain health systems. These emergencies are driven by extreme weather, biodiversity loss, land degradation, food insecurity, and emerging diseases. Many communities already face growing health risks from rapid environmental change and limited health care access.
From left: Sithuni Jayasekara and Hannah Garbutt are participating in a Coastal-Vedda village ceremony held in the heart of the forest in Sri Lanka. This ceremony seeks blessings from a deity known for protecting villages from wild elephants and safeguarding their livelihoods. Every participant, including Sithuni and Hannah, is wearing specially prepared turmeric to symbolize cleanliness. Photo courtesy of Eranga Galappaththi.
Galappaththi’s team members will examine how environmental change affects health across three areas: decision-making and adaptation, food and environmental security, and ecosystem and community risks. The researchers aim to uncover key environmental-health connections and inform global strategies.
They will study these crises in real time with partners in Uganda, Sri Lanka, India, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. Through community-driven observatories, they will document how environmental and social factors interact to shape health outcomes and daily life.
Their goal is to deepen understanding, develop scalable solutions, and guide adaptation strategies.
The Indigenous Peoples Observatory Network initiative aims to build an international network by combining global and local knowledge, piloting solutions, and connecting food systems to health. This network will support health risk policies grounded in field data and community insight.
