Heatwaves, floods, and wildfires have caused extensive damage to human livelihoods during the past decades. Millions of people worldwide are being displaced due to climate change. But the impact these disasters will have on mental health and conversations around psychological consequences have only recently come to the forefront.
“Everything changes when you start getting aware of climate change issues and how they affect our planet. You start developing climate anxiety symptoms as you become indecisive of making big life decisions such as which career to choose, to have children or not to,” said Hanae Kraid, a student at Mohammed VI University.
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines climate anxiety as a “chronic fear of environmental doom”. It is not a mental health disease but rather a rational response to deep-seated uncertainty and, in the most advanced cases, it can affect a person’s daily functioning.
While anyone can feel anxious about climate change, young people ages 16-25 are particularly vulnerable, according to an investigation recently published in The Lancet medical journal.
In the first large-scale observation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally, nine researchers from universities in the US, UK, and Finland came together and surveyed 10,000 people between the ages of 16 and 25 in Australia, Brazil, France, Finland, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK, and the US.
More than half of respondents (54%) said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their functioning on a day-to-day basis.
Close to 60% of the respondents admitted being extremely worried about climate change, with over 50% saying they felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty.
“In an attempt to make climate change issues seem less daunting and frustrating so as to ease the climate anxiety, many young people opt for pushing the question away and completely ignore it and this is never the right solution in my opinion,” said Hanae in an interview with Hespress Eng.
The APA said that the psychological responses to climate change, such as conflict avoidance, fatalism, fear, helplessness, and resignation are growing.
Soufiane Ait Ameur, a renewable energy engineering student, said these responses are “holding us back from identifying the causes of the problem for what they are,” as well as preventing us from working on solutions and fostering our own psychological resilience.”
Based on his professional experience in renewable energy, Soufiane monitors the energy audit of his household, focusing on finding new ways to reduce his energy consumption in daily life.
The energy student says that easy measures such as switching the lights off and unplugging the unused electronic devices enable him to reduce his carbon footprint.
As much as he believes in fighting climate change through an eco-friendly daily life routine, Soufiane has no faith in World leaders’ summits toward climate change issues.
“The empty promises are the same and the inaction is the same! As Greta Thunberg said: world leader’s talk on climate change is blah blah blah,” stated Ait Ameur.
Along Soufiane and Thunberg, other young climate activists protested the climate summit negotiations in Glasgow as they called for solutions and implementations instead of promises and pledges.
COP26, which had been billed as humanity’s last and best chance to prevent the worst climate crises, has ended by the summit’s President Alok Sharma announcement of a last-minute change to the pact, by China and India, softening the language of the first draft, as he struggled to hold back his tears.
Hanae, who represented during the COP an ambitious program of launching the first green summit to implement climate commitment in African universities, still holds out hope on the outcomings of the international climate summits.
“They are the moment when the countries that are most vulnerable share the stage with the countries that have the historical responsibility to respond to the climate change’s issues. It’s through these climate summits that countries will be pushed to take action,” said Hanae.
Even after changing the language of Glasgow’s summit final draft, the resolutions of COP26 wouldn’t be possible without the climate activism pressure and the voices of young protesters who stormed the streets of big cities urging the world leaders to take actions.
COP26 asked international governments to provide tighter deadlines for updating their plans to reduce emissions.
The text also emphasizes the need to mobilize climate finance “from all sources to reach the level needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, including significantly increasing support for developing country Parties, beyond USD100 billion per year.”
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