Our Changing World

Author:Fatima Bhabha

Changes to our ecosystem both in rural and urban areas relating to natural occurrences, climate change and man made changes, bring about stressors to humans with increased negative consequences. Preliminary research shows the impact that these environmental changes have on the mental and physical wellbeing of people. It is becoming increasingly apparent that changes to the environment are affecting the way people feel and think. There is certainly evidence that climate change and its impact on the environment affects the mental wellbeing of people. This in turn will have an impact on the workplace and our human resources.

Solastalgia- What is it?

A fairly recent concept called solastalgia, a neologism created by an environmental philosopher at the University of Newcastle’s School of Environmental and Life Sciences, Glenn Albrecht (healthearth, 2009), describes a person’s sense of loss or melancholy, loss of control and powerlessness, pain and sorrow as a result of one’s inability to derive solace from one’s home environment. This is brought about as a result of a person’s negatively perceived changes to his or her environment. It describes a feeling similar to that of being homesick even though you are still at home, due to the fact that your environment is being gradually desolated and changed. In other words, it can be described as sadness as a result of experiencing changes in the environment. Albrecht’s concept was derived from his studies of communities affected by open cast coal mining and having to deal with power station pollution as well as studies of drought-affected communities.

According to Albrecht (article by Sanjay Khanna, 2008: What Does Climate Change Do to Our Heads?), solastalgia “is most often the result of chronic environmental stress; it is the lived experience of gradually losing the solace a once stable home environment provided. It is therefore appropriate to diagnose solastalgia in the face of slow and insidious forces such as climate change or mining.”  The question can then be posed, can the concept of solastalgia be generalised to other environments like urban spaces and workplaces that are being impacted either directly or indirectly by climate change?

Global Warming & Health

According to  the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2009: Global climate change and health: An old story writ large), climatologists predict that global warming will continue to increase along with changes to weather patterns, precipitation and climatic variability during this century and beyond. Furthermore, the WHO states that “the global scale of climate change differs fundamentally from the many other familiar environmental concerns that refer to localized toxicological or microbiological hazards. Indeed climate change signifies that, today, we are altering Earth’s biophysical and ecological systems at the planetary scale.” These environmental changes and fluctuations can bring about human diseases, such as cardiovascular mortality, respiratory illnesses from heat waves, transmission of infectious diseases, and malnutrition related to disturbance of food producing ecosystems. In addition, population displacement, land loss, economic disruptions and civil strife may become more evident in future.

Climate change and its effects

A gathering of the world’s climate specialists in Copenhagen recently highlighted that people today are, and will be, facing these devastating consequences of global warming, not in some distant future but in this lifetime. They indicate that unless people act immediately to change or reverse the carbon emissions that are released into the earth’s atmosphere, a point of “no return” will be faced in a short space of time. The question remains whether or not it is already too late.  If so, then the need to adapt to the changing face of the world may be required in a considerably shorter time than most people would have thought necessary as the following points demonstrate:

• Employment

Specifically in terms of work-related activities, climate change is likely to impact on employment. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have published a training manual titled ‘Climate Change, it’s Consequences on Employment and Trade Union Action’, where the impact of climate change and related adaptation and mitigation issues and their consequences on employment are addressed. According to the UNEP, the effects of climate change on the economy may seem unavoidable and that it is likely that almost every sector of the economy will be affected in some way or another, with some sectors experiencing a much greater impact than others. Industries that provide goods or services that use electricity, heating, cooling, and agricultural practices are responsible for emitting greenhouse gases and are more than likely going to face the greatest transformations if they are to keep the effects of climate change at safe levels.

• Agricultural production

Climate change will affect agricultural production due to the reduction of productive areas as a result of limited water resources. This will impact on the annual crop yields and reduced suitable areas for production. In addition, the various sectors that support the production areas like the transport services, rural stores, clinics etc, will also be affected, resulting in greater job losses. This in turn will lead to an increase in migration of workers from rural areas to urban areas to seek employment.

• Rise in sea level

Furthermore, UNEP state that the projected sea-level rise in coastal areas, and an increased risk of floods “will affect urban employment and increase stress to transport and infrastructure, many of which are already under pressure because of unplanned urbanisation and lack of public services”.(UNEP, 2008)

• Mental Health

Discussions of the impact of environmental changes have focused to a large extent on physical and socio-economic consequences and less has been done to address the interrelatedness of mental health to the ecosystems within which people live and work. In other words, what would the challenges of the psychological impact of climate change be on people and their workplace? Concepts such as solastalgia could perhaps provide a means of understanding the impact of current and anticipated environmental changes on the human psyche. In Albrecht’s words: “The experience of solastalgia might well be ancient and ubiquitous and under the impact of relentless environmental change, ecosystem distress and climate chaos, it may well become much more common”. (Albrecht, 2009)

While more research is necessary to fully understand the effects that adaptation measures would have on employment, such strategies would in all likelihood improve societies’ and economies’ capacity to react and adapt to climate change.  Furthermore, by recognising the interrelatedness of mental health and ecosystem health, these adaptation strategies can be implemented in a way that will allow various sectors of economy and human resources to prepare for global environmental changes from an ecosystem, environmental, political, socio-economic as well as a mental health perspective.

References:

1) Khanna, S (2008). What Does Climate Change Do To Our Heads? Retrieved April, 2009, from http//www.worldchanging.com

2) World Health Organisation (2009). Global Climate Change and Health: an old story writ large. Retrieved April, 2009, from http// www.who.int/globalchange/climate/en/chapter1

3) United Nations Environment Programme (2008). Climate Change, its Consequences on Employment and Trade Union Action. Retrieved April, 2009, from http//www.unep.org/labour_environment

4) Albrecht,G (2009). Healthearth blog. Retrieved April, 2009,from http://healthearth.blogspot.com/

Tagged as: adaptation, change, human ressources, stress, wellbeing, workplace