Study examines climate change's impact on health

Suggests women suffer psychologically four times more than men when afflicted by disasters

ISLAMABAD:

During a seminar on the psychological impacts of climate change on women, speakers underscored that women were four times more severely impacted by heatwaves than men, leading to increased climate anxiety among women. They highlighted that this was a serious issue affecting their health post disasters which necessitated policymakers' attention.

The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) organised a seminar titled "Climate Anxiety and its Impact on Women: Addressing the Silent Crisis" that provided an open platform for women hailing from different fields and backgrounds to share their insights on the study done on climate anxiety prevalence in Pakistan.

SDPI Deputy Executive Director, Dr Shafqat Munir, said that climate anxiety in the context of women showed that they faced anxiety twice once as they suffered the impact themselves, and then again for every other family member who was impacted by a disaster. Dr Shafqat mentioned that the study would provide baseline data for further rollout of the research in rural areas.

While presenting the study's key findings, SDPI Associate Research Fellow, Zainab Naeem, said, "In 2020, the country realised that the region was facing the highest temperatures compared to the preceding years. However, recent projections indicate that the rising temperature might cross human bearable thresholds in the long run."

"Climate Change has increased heatwave and floods' intensity with extreme prevalence of anxiety disorders that are directly link mental disorders to climate change. In 2019, mental disorders affected 301 million people around the globe," she said.

She added that women, youngsters and children from impoverished communities were more prone to bear the impacts of climate disasters, whereas people with mental illness were three times more prone to risk of death than people without mental illness.

"One percent increase in suicides with an approximate one-degree increase in temperature above local ambient threshold revealed that hotter cities were more violent than cooler cities," Zainab said.

The objective of the study was to assess the linkage of climate change with the mental health of the masses. An online survey was carried out, which received 500 responses. The respondents hailed from different occupations comprising 65% females and 35% males from age cohorts expanding from 18 to 60 years.

"38.3% of the respondents claimed that heat almost directly impacted them, whereas 43.3% experienced psychological symptoms post extreme climate events. 91.5% of them read or watch climate news regularly," said Zainab.

Team Lead at the Living Indus Initiative, Humaira Jahanzeb, said the study presented shared useful findings and recommendations that should be shared with the policymakers, relevant ministries and departments for effective intervention.

"We cannot ignore the impacts of climate change on people whether they are in rural or urban centres. Food insecurity, employment opportunities, and health crisis in the aftermath of climate change are interlinked and demand stakeholder engagement," she added.