Integrating action and policy on health, biodiversity, and climate in Papua New Guinea (PNG)

Professor Alan Stewart and colleagues from the Schools of Life Sciences, Media, Arts and Humanities and Brighton and Sussex Medical School have received SSRP funding to scale up their sustainability research by developing bids for bigger platform grants.

Project description

Our previous SSRP work in Papua New Guinea (PNG) established a clinic for medically neglected indigenous communities, resulting in a 50% conservation area expansion, protecting 150 km2 of biodiverse rainforest (sequestering >1.5 million tonnes of carbon). We now plan to scale-up this successful approach across conservation areas in five PNG provinces, and work with the regional UNEP body to generate Oceania-wide policies to promote similar on-the-ground synergic action for SDGs on health, biodiversity, and climate. This project will enable us to prepare and submit (within project-period) two platform grants totalling c.£4.1 million, and produce two supporting publications.

Application 1 will be for c.£3 million to DEFRA Darwin Extra (mid-Sept 2024), and follows concerted effort over two-years collecting reviewer required baseline ecological and health data. This is now in-hand, though some still requires analysis (which this project will enable). Application 2 will be for c.£1.1 million (end-Feb 2025) to a private funder (Old Dart Foundation) who have approached us interested in supporting expansion of our PNG planetary health work and who have an established interest in skin diseases (a target of our prior project).

Publication 1 will report in-hand data on improvements to health, conservation attitudes, and biodiversity following our introduction of medical services at Wanang. Publication 2 will produce a new research tool to better understand a neglected fungal skin disease affecting our partner communities. This project will support scale-up of our proven approach to synergistic action, making Sussex the global leader in integrating medicine and conservation.

Social and cultural outcomes and impact

Rural PNG society is extremely culturally diverse, having >800 languages. Our experience from Wanang suggests that the healthcare support our platform grants would provide to communities will indirectly help to maintain the integrity of linguistic and cultural diversity by fostering continued community cohesion and reducing internal migration to towns. In addition, the generation of a new research tool in a PNG language (publication 2) will not only enable valuable health data collection, but also support development of local research culture beyond the default of the ex-colonial language (i.e. English).

Academic outcomes and impact

These impacts may include, but are not limited to, contributing to the understanding and development of policy issues, and/or capacity building in relation to specific developmental challenges. Following our six SSRP articles published so far (plus two under review), this project will enable the following academic outputs (detailed above):

Following our six SSRP articles published so far (plus two under review), this project will enable the following academic outputs (detailed above):

Publication 1. Synergistic improvements to community health, conservation attitudes, and biodiversity following medical service introduction into an indigenous-led conservation collaboration. Target: The Lancet Planetary Health (IF=25.7).

Publication 2. PNG Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI): Tok Pisin translation and protocol. Target: BMJ Open (IF=2.9).

REF2029 Impact Case Study (ICS). We’ve met with impact team members to discuss publication 1 and how to incorporate evidence collection into the platform grant workplans to enable ICS submission following our highly-graded REF2021 ICS.

Timeline 

Start date: August 2024

End date: March 2025