An international commission of more than 20 experts, including Professor André Marquand from Radboudumc, today calls on governments, city authorities and research funders to make brain and mental health a standard measure of environmental, urban and climate policy. The goal for the next decade: no major environmental intervention should be planned or evaluated without considering its effects on mental health. The report is published today in Nature Mental Health.
The Earth Brain Health Commission finds that climate and weather extremes, air and noise pollution, urban stressors, biodiversity loss and widening social inequality are associated with increased risks of anxiety, depression, trauma-related disorders and cognitive decline. These exposures rarely occur in isolation. They cluster in the same places and populations, and act together through biological, psychological and social pathways across the life course, from prenatal development through old age.
Geographical gap
Crucially, the commission concludes that the main barriers to action are organizational and financial rather than a lack of evidence. The cohorts, observation systems, analytical methods and policy tools needed to act already exist - but are maintained separately, while mental health is rarely measured where environmental decisions are made. The commission therefore frames its recommendations as concrete commitments.
The report is equally clear about what remains uncertain. Much of the evidence is still correlational, with the strength of findings varying across different exposures and populations. The causal pathways linking environmental changes to their effects are only partly understood. There is also a major geographical gap: much of the available data comes from high-income countries, while the most rapid environmental and urban transformations are taking place elsewhere.
Urban greening
‘Environmental change is not only an ecological or economic problem. It reaches the brain’, said Professor Gunter Schumann, who chaired the commission. ‘The question is no longer whether the environment matters for mental health, but which specific exposures matter, for whom, at what stage of life, and which of them we can change. Our pledge is deliberately concrete: within ten years, a government deciding whether to invest in a cooling program, flood defenses or a clean-air zone should be able to look at its own data and know what that decision means for the mental health of the people it serves.’
The burden falls unevenly. Children, older adults, people with disabilities, displaced populations and communities in low- and middle-income countries often face greater exposure while having fewer resources to adapt. The Commission warns that interventions designed without attention to equity can deepen these inequalities: measures such as urban greening and cooling tend to reach better-resourced communities first, leaving those most at risk further behind.
Commitment
The commission’s response is to direct action where the need is greatest and to set a concrete commitment for research: at least 30 per cent of the research it recommends should be led by low- and middle-income countries and affected-community partners. It also calls for communities to help design interventions from the outset, before funding is released.
The commission brought together specialists in epidemiology, neuroscience, psychiatry, environmental and climate science, geography, social science, public health, ethics and digital innovation, from institutions in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.
About the publication
This research has been published in Nature Mental Health: The Earth–Brain–Health Commission Report. G Schumann, J Luterbacher, A Marquand, C Gross, X Hunt, B Stahl, L Brandt, B Chen, D Dinakaran, JS Ji, T Jia, S Karl, F Lazaridou, L Salminen, M Tian, R Barciela, V Benegal, A Bernard, S Desrivières, J Feng, P Gong, A Heinz, J Li, A Meyer-Lindenberg, K Pickett, A Salles, J Salomon, S Shetty, P Thompson. DOI: 10.1038/s44220-026-00737-y.
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