We live in a time of rapid, global, and long-lasting environmental and technological changes. On the one hand, technological innovation is a major driver of environmental degradation, as illustrated by the pollution caused by agricultural pesticides, ozone layer depletion caused by chlorofluorocarbons, greenhouse gas emissions caused by fossil fuel combustion, and the radioactive waste of nuclear power plants. On the other hand, environmental and climate technologies such as renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency technologies can contribute to mitigating the environmental impacts of economic activities. The relationship between research and innovation and environmental change is therefore a complex one, especially since technological innovations have the potential to advance one environmental goal at the expense of another. 

The environmental and climate crises make it clear that the environment needs to become a subject of concern in research ethics frameworks. Historically, research ethics guidelines have primarily been developed in the field of biomedical research, aimed at the protection of human participants. They have also been extended to participants in social sciences research and the protection of animals. However, it remains difficult for research ethics frameworks to account for impacts on the climate or biodiversity over short, medium, and longer timescales. It is therefore challenging to integrate the findings of environmental and climate ethics into research ethics given their different methodological and value assumptions. 

With this in mind, the objective of this literature review is to identify crosscutting concepts within environmental ethics, climate ethics, and research ethics, in the context of research and innovation. Mapping these concepts is important for the development of a research integrity and ethics framework that can adequately support research and innovation in service of a just green transition. There is a plurality of concepts within climate ethics and environmental ethics, some of which intersect with established concepts within research ethics, such as integrity, responsibility, harm, and rights. At the same time, there are also gaps between these sets of literature that have developed separately. This is the case of concepts within climate ethics and environmental ethics that do not have well-established analogous concepts within research ethics, but which are relevant for a just green transition, such as global justice, intergenerational justice, interspecies justice, and planetary justice. 

In this presentation, we will therefore present the main findings of this literature review, focusing both on the existing synergies and tensions between environmental ethics, climate ethics, and research ethics.