Research ethics may need to change fundamentally as the world confronts the growing health consequences of climate change. This is the view of a group of international research collaborators including Professor Michael H. Campbell of The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
Professor Campbell is a joint author of a newly published article in Dialogues in Health which argues that the traditional biomedical model used by research ethics committees is no longer sufficient to address the complex relationship between climate change, health and the future of human and non-human life.
The article, From the biomedical model to the climate-sensitive model: A necessary adjustment for research ethics committees, emerged from the R(H)OPE – The Right To An Open Future – project, an international collaboration involving eight partners across six countries and four continents. The project ran from November 2024 to November 2025.
Campbell’s involvement brings a Caribbean perspective to an international examination of how research ethics should respond to climate change. Varsha Persaud and Kristina Bryant also of The UWI Cave Hill, helped coordinate the Caribbean component of the project, while colleagues from the Caribbean Network of Research Ethics Committees and the Bioethics Society of the English-speaking Caribbean participated as stakeholders.
The research takes as its starting point the observation that ethics committees have not yet been fully integrated into the response to climate change. National ethics committees, which issue advisory opinions, and research ethics committees, which review research protocols, have so far issued only a limited number of opinions directly addressing the relationship between health and climate change.
Broader approach needed
The authors argue that climate change requires a broader approach to ethical review because its effects extend beyond the immediate health and welfare of individual research participants.
Their proposed climate-sensitive model places greater emphasis on younger and future generations, while considering health within the wider context of ecosystems. The approach adds intergenerational responsibility to existing considerations of inequalities between people living today.
Among the recommendations emerging from the project are greater climate and health training for research ethics committee members, the inclusion of expertise in climate and health and the ecological costs of research, and stronger dialogue between ethics committees and research teams about how research can be adapted in response to climate change.
The researchers also argue that the ecological cost of research should eventually form part of the ethical assessment of a research protocol.
The paper broadens the discussion further by challenging an exclusively human-centred understanding of health. While research ethics committees have traditionally focused primarily on human health, the authors argue that ethical consideration should also extend to other forms of life and ecosystems.
Right to an Open Future
They call for an approach that moves beyond a short-term, individualistic and anthropocentric perspective, drawing attention to the interconnectedness of human health, other forms of life and the environment.
The proposed framework is anchored in the concept of a “right to an open future” – the idea that ethical decision-making should account not only for present circumstances and inequalities, but also for the conditions that younger and future generations will inherit.
For Campbell, the research adds another dimension to his work in research ethics and climate-related health. His areas of research include global health psychology, environmental mental health and bioethics, while he has also been involved in research ethics review and education.
The paper’s conclusion calls for the biomedical model to be enriched by making it more sensitive to the links between climate change and health. It argues that national and research ethics committees have an important role in ensuring that responses to climate change are ethically informed.
The authors ultimately contend that preserving the ethical conditions for human relationships and relationships with other forms of life is central to protecting the right to an open future.
The article, published in Dialogues in Health, lists Campbell among 10 international authors representing institutions and organisations in Belgium, Barbados, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Côte d’Ivoire and Bangladesh.
