The Net Positive Centre has spent its first year exploring how to create truly interdisciplinary research at the intersection of climate change and health. Addressing these complex challenges requires more than just bringing different disciplines together; it demands genuine integration of knowledge, methods, and perspectives. Climate change and health are deeply interconnected, influenced by environmental, social, economic, and political factors, making collaboration across natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and community experience essential. Professor Catherine Butler emphasizes that effective research on such issues requires escaping the limitations of conventional, discipline-bound approaches.
The Net Positive Centre goes beyond the “net zero” carbon agenda by aiming to develop solutions that deliver positive outcomes for health, equity, the environment, and biodiversity. Its vision focuses on creating net-positive solutions that address climate change mitigation and adaptation while generating benefits across multiple societal and ecological dimensions. The Centre’s approach is underpinned by foundational principles that guide its work, highlighting the importance of relationships, the role of the arts, and active engagement as central, rather than peripheral, to interdisciplinary research.
Early lessons from the Centre show that meaningful interdisciplinarity requires intentional design from the outset, a commitment to sustainability and equity, equal valuation of all forms of knowledge—including lived experience and humanities alongside science—and sufficient patience and resources to build trust and community. It also demands openness to challenging conventional ways of working and fostering collaboration across academic, policy, industrial, artistic, and community stakeholders.
The Centre emphasizes that siloed working is no longer acceptable for addressing urgent societal challenges like climate change and health. By creating spaces where care, openness, and dialogue are prioritized, the Net Positive Centre seeks to facilitate effective collaboration and knowledge co-creation. Its work demonstrates that interdisciplinarity is not just an ideal but a practical necessity for generating solutions that are socially, environmentally, and scientifically robust.
The insights and experiences from the Centre’s first year are documented in Environmental Scientist’s September 2025 edition, under the theme “Interweaving Disciplines,” offering a detailed view of the principles, practices, and vision guiding this pioneering work.
