Barbara Rose Johnston has been affiliated with the Center for Political Ecology since 1991. An environmental anthropologist, her action-research explores environmental crisis and human rights abuse, seeking acknowledgment and implementation of the right to a healthy environment, environmental equity, and the right to reparation and remedy. She has served as chair of the Society for Applied Anthropology's Human Rights and Environment Committee, Director the SfAA and US EPA's Environmental Anthropology Cooperative Agreement, and is an emeritus chair of the American Anthropological Association's Ethics Committee and the Committee for Human Rights.
Her research and publications have prompted scientific and public policy advisory appointments in international, national, and community-based forums. As an advisor to the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal, she conducted research on the biomedical, social, cultural, and environmental impacts of the United States nuclear weapons testing program and the history and consequences of a classified human radiation experimentation program, served with Holly Barker as an expert witness in Nuclear Claims Tribunal proceedings, and provided documents, briefings and other contributions to a 2012 United Nations Special Rapporteur investigation on continuing environmental contamination and related human rights abuse. As a member of the UNESCO expert panel on water and cultural diversity, she contributed to international conferences and public policy processes, and served as editor-in-chief for the interdisciplinary textbook on Water, Cultural Diversity and Global Environmental Change, produced through a partnership between UNESCO International Hydrological Programme, United Nations University Traditional Knowledge Initiative and the Center for Political Ecology. Her work on reparation and the right to remedy for Chixoy dam-affected communities in Guatemala continues to influence national and international public policy.