Planetary Health and Relational Wellbeing: Adivasi Lifeworlds in India is a PDAG engagement that centres Adivasi environmental knowledge, relational wellbeing and lived experience within debates on planetary health. Working in Jharkhand and Kerala, the research draws on archival research, life histories, indigenous storytelling and collaborative knowledge production to move beyond a narrow description of environmental knowledge and examine how policy, institutions and lived realities interact.

Undertaken with the British Academy, the engagement works across Santal, Ho, Paniya and Irula communities, and is being translated into research, exhibition and public-engagement outputs. It reflects PDAG's approach of combining grounded evidence with an understanding of implementation constraints, institutional incentives and the experiences of people most affected by policy decisions.

The emphasis across the engagement is not only on producing research, but on making the evidence usable for decision-makers. This meant identifying the practical questions behind the assignment, testing assumptions against field and community evidence, and translating findings into clear implications for policy, programme design and public communication. Where relevant, local findings were connected to wider policy debates on planetary health, so that recommendations remained attentive to context rather than defaulting to one-size-fits-all solutions.

The project sits within PDAG's Climate & Resilience practice area, part of a wider body of work on how public systems can respond more effectively to complex social and economic change. The resulting research gives partners a stronger basis for understanding the relationship between Adivasi environmental knowledge and planetary health, and for recognising gaps in existing approaches to indigenous knowledge and environmental policy.