Collaborative on Health and the Environment :: Cumulative Impacts Working Group

This Working Group receives information about and participates in the Cumulative Impacts Project. This is a project of CHE with the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN), along with an advisory group of environmental health and justice advocates, scientists, scholars, and agency staff members.

“Cumulative impacts” refers to the total harm to human health and the environment that results from combinations of assaults and stressors over time. The Cumulative Impacts Project is dedicated to promoting science, law, and policy that will reduce cumulative impacts.

Our laws and decision-making structures have either ignored cumulative impacts or called for addressing them without saying how. This is beginning to change, however. The Cumulative Impacts Project aims to move that conversation forward by pooling information on cumulative impacts in three spheres:

Ecosystems—local, planetary, climate change
Communities—environmental justice and vulnerable populations 
Human health—multiple factors in disease and disability

These three spheres represent different aspects of the problem of cumulative impacts and leverage points for addressing it. They also overlap and affect each other. Together they call for new precautionary decision structures and initiatives aimed at reducing total environmental impacts.

The Cumulative Impacts Project website collects the latest science, emerging best practices, analytical tools, and legal shifts that can reduce cumulative harm to our planet, our communities, and ourselves. This information is being collected on the Cumulative Impacts Project website which launched in May 2011.
Visit the website

The Cumulative Impacts Working Group conducts monthly conference calls about a project or issue related to cumulative impacts on human health and the environment, often with one presenter followed by discussion. We hope you will join us!

Contact the Cumulative Impacts Project to learn more, suggest resources for the website, and add your ideas.

Past Calls

September 20, 2011 --

Cumulative Impacts Working Group call: Emerging Trends in the Field of Cumulative Impacts
Background Information / Resources
Listen to the MP3 recording

October 3, 2011 --
Cumulative Impacts Working Group call: No Borders: Communities Living and Working With ASARCO, a discussion with Lin Nelson and Anne Fischel
Background Information / Resources
Listen to the MP3 recording

December 1, 2011 --

Cumulative Impacts Working Group call: Assessing and Addressing Cumulative Impacts in Communities
Background Information / Resources
Call Blog
Listen to the MP3 recording

December 15, 2011 --

Cumulative Impacts Working Group call: Community Benefits Agreements: Tools for Improving Public Health
Background Information / Resources
Call Blog
Listen to the MP3 recording

January 12, 2012 --

Cumulative Impacts Working Group call: Analyzing and Addressing Cumulative Impacts Using an Ecological and Complexity Model
Background Information / Resources
Call Blog
Listen to the MP3 recording

February 16, 2012 --

Cumulative Impacts Working Group call: Climate Change Vulnerability and Cumulative Impacts
Background Information / Resources
Call Blog
Listen to the MP3 recording