Tim Downs is an environmental scientist and engineer with over 30 years experience designing and managing collaborative projects at the nexus of water, health, environment and (more recently) climate change, working in the UK, the US, Latin America and Africa. He builds on his early work (2001, 2007, 2008) that helped establish a foundation for the co-creation paradigm of sustainability: existing knowledge and social-technical capacities (incl Indigenous) are pooled, then new ones co-created, by diverse stakeholder collaborations – placing local communities front and center. His research focus is on how humans change the environment, how those changes impact water, human health and wellbeing, and ecosystems, and how to mitigate impacts – using water and health as ‘gateways’ into social-ecological complexity. 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 within and across sectors: health, energy, water supply & sanitation, food & agriculture, land-use, transportation, urban planning, climate-change adaptation & mitigation, biodiversity conservation & ecosystem stewardship.
From 2023-2026, 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” ($1.5M), funded by the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Partnerships for International Research and Education Program (NSF/PIRE). The project represents a unique opportunity to test the co-creation paradigm. With research-based, experiential learning for students and community-centered work at its core, to date, 8 Clark students have lived and worked alongside local people for six months (January – June, 2024 and 2025) – to better understand how climate change is impacting water, health, livelihoods, food and agriculture, and ecosystems. The three pilot communities are: Miravalle, Iztapalapa, Mexico City; Tlahuac, Mexico City; and Valle de Bravo, State of Mexico. Deliverables include the first water balance model for the Mexico-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region, considering climate-change scenarios SSP2-45, 5-85, and land use/cover change under rapid urbanization (Hanumantha et al., 2026), as well as 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. Another tangible benefit has been the co-creation of 3D-printed weather stations and mosquito traps, donated to local communities, so they have their own monitoring capacity.
For an American Geophysical Union short film on the project. see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_wy42O6D6I
The Clark group is working with faculty peers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to carry out field research and take courses together; they 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:
Hanumantha, R.*, Ogneva-Himmelberger, Y., Ruelle, M., Mazari-Hiriart, M., Frey, K., Downs, T.J. [senior author, project designer] (2026). A Spatially Explicit Water Balance Model for Assessing Recharge Sensitivity to Climate and Land Cover Change in Central Mexico. Hydrological Processes 40(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.70473
Friedman, A., Boselli, E., Ogneva-Himmelberger, Y., Heiger-Bernays, W. Brochu, P., Burgess, M., Schildroth, S., Denehy, A., Downs, T.J., 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
Book chapters:
Downs T.J. Training Sustainable Development Practitioners to Interrogate and Dismantle Systemic Racism as a Co-Creative Enterprise (2025). Towards a Community of Antiracist Praxis in Higher Education Transformative Principles, Practices, and Resources for the Classroom. Park, J., Ross, L. (Eds). Routledge. ISBN 9781032750316. 258 Pages
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