Climate and health research lose out in CSIRO shake-up

Australia’s top science agency will scrap two national research programmes on health and climate change as part of a cost-cutting reorganisation.

The CSIRO has told staff it will abolish research divisions and cut the number of research flagships from 11 to nine.

Under the new structure, the Climate Adaptation and Preventative Health research flagships will be merged with other national projects at the end of June. This effectively downgrades their status, as the CSIRO National Flagships programme was set up in 2003 to work on major national challenges.