1 Introduction

The Mott MacDonald Professional Excellence and Innovation Fund has provided a grant to an initiative to work across different sections of the company on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). An early stage is to learn more about the Environmental Aspects of AMR.

1.1 Background

AMR is a recognised global threat: addressing the threat requires responses in many sectors, including water and sanitation, food production, education, social, environment, waste management, health facilities and facilities management. There is a current surge in interest in AMR: for example, the UK launched its new strategy at Davos earlier this year.

The Health Practice has been awarded funding from the MM Innovation Fund to take forward our thinking on AMR in a number of sectors beyond human health, including agriculture, water and the environment.  This work builds on International Health’s large Fleming Fund project, which works to strengthen AMR surveillance in 24 low- and middle-income countries, as well as four considerably smaller contracts about AMR.

The overall purpose of this initiative is to support the growth of the business by winning new work because Mott MacDonald will be able to show that we not only understand the multisectoral nature of AMR, but that we are also actively addressing the challenge. We will achieve this by reaching out to targeted parts of the company (according to their relevance to AMR) and encouraging them to develop thought leadership activities related to AMR in their sector, which they can then discuss with clients and promote in bids. This initial mapping work represents one of those initial pieces of thought leadership.

1.2 Objectives

1. Identify the key source, pathway and receptor elements of AMR in the environment, based on a rapid literature review. Comment on the evidence about the extent of different aspects of the problem. 2. Identify projects/key staff in the environment sector who are working in areas relevant to the findings. The focus for this study has been on AMR and antimicrobial residues. However, it is noted that other drivers, notably metals, may also be significant.