Explore answers to some of the commonly asked questions about us, what we do and how we do it.
If you have any further inquiries beyond what is listed below, do not hesitate to reach out to us!

Anthropogenic are the human behavioural drivers of the ecological crises we face in the world e.g. pollution or environmental change caused or influenced directly or indirectly by human activity.


Overshoot refers to the human consumption of natural resources at rates faster than they can be replenished, and entropic waste production over and above the Earth’s assimilative and processing capacity. Overshoot is a symptom of a deeper, more subversive modern crisis of human behaviour, and is framed as ‘the Human Behavioural Crisis’ and recognized as a critical intervention point for tackling ecological overshoot.


Ecological overshoot refers to the unprecedented number of existential threats faced by humans and other species due to anthropogenic impacts exceeding our planet’s boundaries (i.e. climate change, dangerous territory with instability in the known realms of biosphere integrity, land system changes and novel entities like plastics and synthetic toxins, freshwater change, and biogeochemical flows). All of these threats are symptoms of anthropogenic ecological overshoot and pose an increasingly catastrophic risk to all complex life on Earth, given the dynamic closed and interconnected nature of Earth’s systems.

We recognize that the climate change issue is sown in neglect and ignorance but reaped in devastation. Its intractable, hidden, and inextricably linked complexities are evident across key sectors of our economy, and there’s no single solution to addressing the many ecological challenges created by climate change effects. But as it is with the range of colours produced when light passes through a glass prism, Spectrum positions itself as the lens through which the broad range of interrelated climate issues are filtered, packaged and prioritised to be addressed through high-impact and targeted catalytic interventions.

Success: As a member of the Kenya National Taskforce on Climate-Health, supported the development of the first-ever Kenya Climate Change and Health Strategy 2023-2027, setting the pace for the rest of Africa in defining the right taxonomies and pathways for the regional Climate Health agenda.


Ongoing: We are orchestrating catalytic progress in climate action by demonstrating how current interventions are largely physical, resource-intensive, slow-moving, and focused on addressing the symptoms of ecological overshoot (like climate change) rather than the distal cause (maladaptive human behaviours).


As an independent problem-solver, we are dot-connecting across researchers, government, industry, and communities to identify and resolve the highest-priority bottlenecks or risks through a health-centric and nature-positive lens. We argue that even in the best-case scenarios, symptom-level interventions are unlikely to avoid catastrophe or achieve more than ephemeral progress.


Our current areas of focus include: –

  • Helping develop a data-access paradigm to baseline health-related carbon footprints and unlock a virtuous cycle of deployment-driven learning and growing policy support.
  • Coordinating community-wide efforts to develop rigorous and dynamic health decarbonization quantification standards (NB: we do not intend to become a standards body. Instead, we plan to help seek out and/or aid in the development of appropriate standards and keep it up to date).
  • Collaborating on key research priorities to deliver evidence that reduces uncertainties and mitigates risks.
  • Coordinating multi-actor efforts to overcome collective action problems holding back progress.
  • Building holistic ecosystem infrastructure needed for health-conscious, safe, and thriving sectors as well as functioning and sustainable greener markets and economies.

Our 15 years of experience in Market-shaping interventions in global health provide a powerful lesson in our efforts to model for the struggle to decarbonize healthcare and other key sectors of the economy and attain climate resilience. Our efforts in global public health, medicines access and markets have shown that some promising but nascent fields (e.g. Climate Change and Health) can get caught up in market distortions or bottlenecks (e.g. the “chicken and egg” dynamic in which buyers wait until costs come down with scale, but manufacturers won’t scale up production without guaranteed buyer demand). We believe interventions or solution builders and market shapers can collaborate to unstick these bottlenecks, helping the nascent climate health market overcome its initial distortions and challenges.

We help existing and new transdisciplinary fields and approaches to develop in a more health-centric, high-rigor, science-first, and catalytic way:


  • Where the science behind an intervention is deep, robust, and clear, Spectrum’s work focuses on helping to develop the market (e.g. coordinating among consumers and producers to establish a healthy and greener marketplace) or helping build social license to deploy at increasing scale.
  • Where the science is still developing, Spectrum will work with social scientists, engineers, civil societies, and community groups to accelerate their work (e.g. identifying gaps and helping to direct focus, data, and resources towards closing those gaps).
  • Where there are pre-existing or fast-growing commercial activities while science gaps remain, Spectrum will try to help both sides in tandem (e.g. helping ensure high rigour in the business case for re-balancing commercial viability versus sustainability, and helping ensure deployments or commercial activity are feeding quality data back to the scientific community).
  • Where scientific developments indicate that a given approach is unsound, unscalable, or too risky, Spectrum will seek to flag such as undesirable and one that markets should not pursue.

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If you are interested in climate change and health related issues, reach out to us.

Karen - Nairobi, Kenya


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