Teaching climate-resilient farming to young people in rural Global South communities and encouraging them to stay in school could help ward off mental health problems triggered by worsening climate change impacts, according to new research in Africa.
Hardship caused by severe drought, floods and storms is taking a dramatic toll on young people’s emotional wellbeing in climate-hit countries, with the effects going far beyond climate anxiety, found the groundbreaking study focused on teens in rural Madagascar.
“The fears that they go through are in the present tense, not the future tense,” said Samuel Solomon, a psychology professor at University College London (UCL) and co-author of the study conducted in remote villages in the south of the island nation off Africa’s southeast coast.
Madagascar, which is classified by the United Nations as one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, is repeatedly affected by drought, extreme heat and cyclones, exacerbating hunger and setting back development in a nation where about three-quarters of people are poor.
Age of “climate whiplash” puts residents of Africa’s fast-growing cities in danger
The situation in the south is particularly dire due to changes in the climate, “with fertile land turning into desert and water sources depleting”, said the study, conducted among 83 participants with an average age of 15 in six communities.
The study – one of the first to measure the mental health effects of climate change on young people in the Global South – found “extremely high” levels of depression, anxiety and climate worry.
Its authors linked that in part to the huge impact of climate disasters on household resources. Over the previous year, 90% of the respondents had seen their families running out of food and nearly 70% had gone a day without eating.
Adapting agriculture
At the same time, the loss of coping mechanisms – particularly attending school – made matters worse, the research found.
“Before, despite difficulty we continued to go to school but now we stopped because our parents have no income,” one girl said in the study, which was funded by a British development aid grant and published in the Journal of Climate Change and Health.
Besides policies designed to keep children in education, the report said young people in subsistence farming communities should be trained on how to adapt their agricultural practices to climate change.
Loss and damage fund proposes helping governments first, local communities later
Such strategies apply to tackling youth mental health in climate-vulnerable nations in particular, Isabelle Mareschal, UCL professor of visual cognition, said by phone from Madagascar.
“It’s great to develop policies that are relevant to developed countries where people can get involved in activism, but in developing countries … the kind of solutions needed will be very different and will need to involve local voices,” Mareschal said.
Strengthening food and water security would also reduce the mental health strain of climate impacts, the study said.
Decision-makers ‘fail young people’
Around the world, calls are growing for policymakers to pay more attention to the effects of climate change on people’s emotional wellbeing.
According to the World Health Organization, only 3% of countries’ climate action plans include mental health support.
Brazil’s Belém races to make room for COP30 influx
During a panel about climate anxiety at November’s COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan, Emma Lawrance, policy lead at the Connecting Climate Minds initiative, said policymakers need to be more aware of how youth are suffering.
“Decision-makers are failing young people,” Lawrance said, adding that empowering them to take action and participate in the process of building a better future would help.
Climate activism is often prescribed for people who are struggling to deal with a warming planet, but that is rarely an option for young people in poor, rural communities, the authors of the Madagascar study noted.
Activism and awareness-raising
Youth living in urban areas in the Global South, however, are increasingly joining forces on climate action, often motivated by personal experiences of climate-related disasters.
In Nigeria, Ayomide Olude, 26, said her growing anxiety about climate change drove her to join SustyVibes, a group which organises events where young people can share their concerns.
The Nigerian organisation is part of Connecting Climate Minds, a Wellcome Trust-funded global initiative that links people across regions to improve understanding of the impact of climate change on mental health.
Today, Olude also helps organise climate awareness training for Nigerian mental health professionals.
Congolese teenager Emmanuel Jidisa said his albinism has made him acutely aware of climate issues since he was a child – and more recently, his family lost everything when devastating floods hit the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2022, killing at least 141 people.
Today, Jidisa works with the UN children’s agency UNICEF to visit schools and encourage pupils to take eco-friendly actions.
Tech-based solutions
For others, such as 26-year-old Mongolian climate campaigner Bilgudei Gankhulug, working on an innovative tech-based solution – an app aimed at nomadic herders – has helped him come to terms with his own climate-linked losses.
In 2009, when he was nine, Gankhulug’s family had to abandon their nomadic lifestyle after losing 90% of their livestock to the dzud, a severe winter weather phenomenon. The death of his horse left him devastated, Gankhulug recalled.
Despite his grief and being displaced twice, he has drawn on his family’s experiences to develop the Otorchin app, which helps herders find better pastures, track their livestock to avoid them getting lost and access weather forecasts.
Like Gankhulug, Jidisa said he had found solace in doing something practical to fight climate change. “Everyone now has to get involved,” Jidisa said. “The biggest changes begin when people directly affected by the situation act.”
