COP28 and overcoming climate anxiety
8th December 2023
Currently, national governments and members of civil society are gathered in Dubai to attend the United Nations (UN) annual climate change conference, or ‘COP28’. This global gathering is an opportunity for nations to convene and negotiate coordinated action on the climate crisis.
As the impacts of the climate crisis are increasingly felt across the world, COP28 is an opportunity for global decision makers to commit to taking decisive climate action. Importantly, COP28 includes an official health programme for the first time, part of which was a Health Day on the 3rd of December, which made clear that the climate crisis is a health crisis. That means that it is a mental health crisis.
SAMH recognised this interconnection in our response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on proposals for a new Human Rights Bill, which included plans to establish the right to a healthy environment in Scotland.
The environments in which we live and work, and our relationship to them, form part of the wider context of our lives. They therefore have significant impact on our mental health and wellbeing, particularly as these environments start to change because of increased heat, more frequent extreme weather events, and higher levels of pollution.
Observing these environmental changes, and their impact on life on Earth, can be coupled with feeling of hopelessness, anger, grief, sadness and fear. These are all part of the emotional spectrum of ‘eco-anxiety’, or ‘climate anxiety’.
Another key date in the COP calendar is today, Friday the 8th of December, which is Youth, Children, Education and Skills Day. While feelings of anxiety relating to climate change are not exclusive to children and young people, they are disproportionately felt by them. A 2021 study found that 60% of young people were very or extremely worried about the climate crisis and 75% agreed that “the future is frightening”. [1]
SAMH colleague, Iona Macwhirter-Harley, works in SAMH’s Children and Youth People team. The team was set up in 2018 in response to our concerns that children and young people were being failed by the current mental health system. They now deliver support and training across the country, and in various settings including in schools and in partnership with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
One such programme is our capacity-building ‘Let’s Connect’ project, which delivers mental health training to young people, and those that look after them. On climate anxiety in young people, Iona reflects that the future is a huge stressor for children. Although she finds that young people usually mention things in their immediate lives as the key sources of stress – such as schoolwork or family problems – this makes it all the more striking when young people talk about their anxieties around climate change, an issue which in Scotland is largely outwith their day-to-day life.
Iona’s advice for any young people who might be struggling with climate change anxiety, or the adults in their lives, is to:
- Focus on what you can control. While it can be overwhelming to think about the bigger picture, try to turn these worries into motivation to make small changes in your own life – this can feel empowering and help you to take back some of that control.
- Try to be active, rather than passive – see how you can make a difference and use difficult feelings to energise you into action and mobilise others. This can range from everyday choices, like buying second-hand or making more sustainable transport choices; to bigger decisions, like joining a campaigning group on the issue, or in the choices you make about what you want to study or do for a job.
- Make your social media work for you. While social media can be detrimental to mental health, it can also be a powerful tool in understanding the experiences of others around the world, particularly in the context of the climate crisis and connecting and organising with other activists to take climate action at all levels.
At SAMH, we recognise the mental health challenges, including climate anxiety, that children and young people are facing. We’re planning to focus even more on children and young people’s mental health, and you can expect to hear more from us on this in 2024.
