Tim Downs is a specialist in environmental science and engineering with over 30 years field experience designing and managing collaborative projects in the UK, the United States, Latin America and Africa. His research focus is on how humans change the environment, how those changes impact their health, wellbeing, and the ecosystems they inhabit, and how to mitigate impacts. He is especially interested in issues of environmental and climate justice: the uneven distribution of positive and negative impacts across populations and landscapes. In a diversity of settings—New England, Mexico, East and West Africa—he works with affected communities, NGOs, governmental agencies, public sector providers, the media, the private sector and donors, applying multi-stakeholder, interdisciplinary capacity-building co-creation within and across sectors: health, energy, water supply & sanitation, food & agriculture, land-use, transportation, urban planning, climate-change adaptation & mitigation, biodiversity conservation & ecosystem stewardship.
Since May 2022, Downs has served as Principal Investigator on the project “Co-creating Research and Education Capacities to Understand, Visualize and Mitigate Climate-Change Impact Cascades and Inequities in Central Mexico” (2023-2026), funded by the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Partnerships for International Research and Education Program (NSF/PIRE). The project represents a unique opportunity to tell a fascinating human-environment-technology story with global existential significance.
In January 2024, six Clark students and Downs are heading to Central Mexico to live and work alongside local people for six months – to better understand how climate change is impacting water, health, livelihoods, food and agriculture, and ecosystems. By pooling diverse types of knowledge and ways of knowing – Indigenous, experiential, academic/disciplinary, and professional – they seek to co-create a Regional Climate Change Atlas that maps social, ecological and climate conditions, as well as impacts. They are also committed to revealing who is most impacted and vulnerable, and how to strengthen their capacity to anticipate and respond – the all-important climate justice issue.
They will also be trying to understand how projected changes to weather and climate will manifest in the future, under different scenarios of climate change and development. One scenario – call it “business-as-usual” – continues development without regard to climate change, and thus represents the worst-case. The other takes climate change seriously and visions transformations to energy and water systems, and the design of cities to be climate-responsive and sustainable. The project will be simulating these two scenarios using Virtual/eXtended Reality (V/XR) to raise public awareness of just how much is at stake – and that a more hopeful future is within reach if we work together to realize Clark’s motto: “Challenge Convention/Change our World”.
The project will also be working to innovate in the public education space: the Clark group will be working with faculty and student peers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to carry out field research and take courses together. In addition, the Clark-UNAM Team will be collaborating with local middle/high-school students and teachers to make weather/climate stations using 3D printers, deploy them, gather data and interpret them. Clark and UNAM signed a Collaboration Convention in June 2023 to signal their shared commitment to a new model of long-term collaboration in education, research and advocacy centered on climate change, water, health and social justice.
For more, see: https://clarknow.clarku.edu/2022/12/08/water-is-life-three-year-nsf-study-in-mexico-brings-multi-pronged-approach-to-climate-impacts/
In summer 2018, Prof. Downs rode his motorcycle 6000 miles to join the Grannies Respond Caravan in protest of draconian family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico Border. He then raised money to send 7 IDCE students to volunteer helping heroic immigrant and asylum-seeker relief efforts in McAllen, TX. He and Profs. Anita Fábos and Sarah Mitchell, together with veteran social justice activist and student mentor Megan Martínez, co-authored a paper chronicling this impactful field research-meets-activism student experience (Glier et al., 2020).
Since 2015, Downs has been collaborating with colleagues at Boston University School of Public Health and local residents to explore the vulnerability of the shallow aquifer system in Holliston, Mass. to contamination by natural Manganese (Mn) and industrial chemicals. They are also looking into potential health risks to young children that may be the result of early life-stage exposures, including in-utero. Exemplifying engaged collaborative research in partnership with affected communities, and co-authored with 9 students, the paper: “Integrated Assessment of Shallow-Aquifer Vulnerability to Multiple Contaminants and Drinking-Water Exposure Pathways in Holliston, Massachusetts” was published 2018 in open-access journal Water and is available online at: http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/10/1/23/html
Downs was a Co-PI with UMass Medical School on the “National Children’s Study (NCS) project for Worcester County” (2008-2012), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also served as PI on the project “Strengthening Vulnerable Communities in the Worcester Built Environment (2005-2009), funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
Downs’s research and teaching are integrated. Half of his portfolio is foundational environmental science classes, and half team-based practicums. As examples of practicums, in his Spring 2022 “Sustainable Development Assessment & Planning” class (IDCE332/EN242) student teams critically evaluated the assessment and planning processes for 7 cases including a copper mining project, dams and reservoirs (3), a women’s empowerment project, a coastal climate resilience effort and a regional greenway project. In Spring 2022, team practicums in his “Cities, Regions, Climate Change & Health” class (IDCE365/EN265) included Hong Kong, Jakarta, Uttarakhand (Hindu Kush Himalaya), and New Orleans.
Recent publications (* student coauthors, ** community coauthors)
Articles:
Friedman, A., Boselli, E., Ogneva-Himmelberger, Y., Heiger-Bernays, W. Brochu, P., Burgess, M., Schildroth, S., Denehy, A., Downs, T., Papautsky, I., Claus Henn, B. (2023). “Manganese Concentrations in Residential Tap Water Samples from a Community-Initiated Case Study in Massachusetts”. Special Issue: Regulated and Emerging Chemicals in Drinking Water: Exposure and Health Research. J. of Exposure Sci. & Environ. Epidem. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-023-00563-9
Manley, E.*, Ogneva-Himmelberger, Y., Ruelle, M., Hanumantha, R.*, Mazari-Hiriart, M. and Downs, T.J. (2022). “Land-use/cover change in the México-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region 1993-2018”. J. Applied Geography. Vol. 147 (102785). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2022.102785
Downs, T.J., Ruelle, M., Brissett, N., Hanumantha, R.*, Mazari-Hiriart, M., Krueger, R., and Carr, E. (2022). “An Integrative Collaborative Project Approach to Climate-Change Resilience and Urban/Regional Sustainability for the Mexico City Region”. Open Journal of Civil Engineering. Accepted 02/22. DOI: 10.4236/ojce.2022.121008
Friedman, A., Anglen Bauer, J., Austin, C., Downs, T.J., Tripodis, Y., Heiger-Bernays, W., White, R.F., Arora, M. and Claus Henn, B. (2021). “Multiple metals in children’s deciduous teeth: results from a community-initiated pilot study”. J. of Exposure Sci. & Environ. Epidem.; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-021-00400-x
Glier, H.*, Gregory, E.*, Staples, T. *, Martínez, M.**, Fábos, A., Mitchell, S.E.D., and Downs, T.J. [senior author] (2020). “Understanding stakeholder positionalities and relationships to reimagine asylum at the US–Mexico border: Observations from McAllen, TX”. J. Human Geography. doi.org/10.1177/1942778620979317.
Book chapters:
Downs T.J., Hanumantha R.K.*, Ogneva-Himmelberger Y., Ruelle M., Brissett N., Mazari-Hiriart M. (2023). “Integrative Collaborative Design of Research-Based Climate-Change Resilience Engineering Education: Insights from México-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region”. Science, Engineering, and Sustainable Development. Krueger, R., Telliel Y., Soboyejo W. (Eds). De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110757507-008
Downs T.J., Hanumantha R.K.*, Ogneva-Himmelberger Y., Ruelle M., Mazari-Hiriart M. (2023). “Illustrating Climate-Change Resilience Engineering: Conceptual Design of Water Supply & Wastewater/Stormwater System for the México-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region”. Science, Engineering, and Sustainable Development. Krueger, R., Telliel Y., Soboyejo W. (Eds). De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110757507-009
Downs T.J., Ogneva-Himmelberger Y., Ruelle M., Hanumantha R.K.*, Mazari-Hiriart M., Guzmán C., Ramírez-Aguilar M., Santos-Burgoa C. (2022). “Health as a Socio-Technical Enterprise Anchored in Social-Ecological Justice & Stakeholder Collaboration: Insights from México-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region”. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Handbook of Human and Planetary Health. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09879-6_15
Downs T.J., Ross L., Mucciarone D.*, Calvache M.C.*, Taylor O. and Goble R. (2019). “Participatory Testing and Reporting in an Environmental-Justice Community of Worcester, Massachusetts: A Pilot Project.” Top 10 Contributions on Environmental Health. Chapter 02. Avid Science. [re-published in new forum]
Downs T.J., Carr E., Goble R. (2017). “Addressing Risk Conundrums in Sustainable Development”. In: Risk Conundrums: Solving Unsolvable Problems. Kasperson, R. (Editor). Earthscan/Routledge. 276 pages.
Downs T.J. and Mazari-Hiriart M. (2017). “Addressing Risk Conundrums in Megacity Development: Mexico City”. In: Risk Conundrums: Solving Unsolvable Problems. Kasperson, R. (Editor). Earthscan/Routledge. 276 pages.