A mess of a mental health flavoured climate crisis, vulnerability during emergency and the power of community

00:00:00: We know that mental health cannot be separated from the conditions in which life itself is sustained.

00:00:07: And just to give you some examples, I love giving example so they're tangible.

00:00:11: Climate change isn't about environment right?

00:00:14: It's a crisis of safety and continuity or belonging all very foundational to mental help.

00:00:22: Farmers facing crop failure experiencing chronic stress debt despair urban communities who live in heatwaves, deal with irritability sleep disruption increase in intimate partner violence floods and displacement leads to grief trauma loss of identity unemployment which has a relationship with mental illness.

00:00:50: And Of course young people are feeling fear an uncertainty about the future.

00:01:11: Hey there my carbon-based cuties.

00:01:14: It's your energetic Empress, Tiffany Kagura Mogo.

00:01:17: and welcome to another episode of What Is This Hot Mess?

00:01:22: a podcast that sits down with fire feminists from across the globe To talk about The fact That The world is hot trash

00:01:30: right

00:01:30: now.

00:01:32: Anyone Who Knows Means Knows I'm Not A Climate Change Girlie.

00:01:35: Like i said in the previous Episode With Ruth ,I Know Recycling Is A Thing And That Trees Are wildly important, and I love the moon which is totally a core part of world being better place.

00:01:47: But i'm also the sort who could not track how photosynthesis happened during basic biology .I can still see myself sitting there staring at that blank page those ten marks slipping through my fingers during middle school exam.

00:02:01: But despite all this, I have the confidence of a mediocre white man.

00:02:06: So i soldier on to episode two in this little cluster of climate change.

00:02:12: If you haven't listened to episode one with Ruth go back and listen immediately.

00:02:17: respect us please.

00:02:19: Go back and Listen.

00:02:20: just do it.

00:02:21: It's wisdom And You get To learn about Ubuntu.

00:02:25: but On

00:02:26: to our new guest.

00:02:27: so I told Raj About my Climate Crisis.

00:02:31: See what I did there because i didn't know about the climate.

00:02:34: so it's a anyway whatever, whatever.

00:02:36: It's a joke!

00:02:37: It lands... Anyway..I told Raj about my climate crisis and they were like you know what?

00:02:41: I got

00:02:42: you!!

00:02:42: I was like Raj.

00:02:44: honey much as I adore you and I will flirt with you for free You've got to stay in your lane.

00:02:52: but little did I know that Raj did know about climate justice, because these things can be viewed through multiple lenses.

00:03:01: Who would have thunk it?

00:03:03: Climate Justice and mental health.

00:03:06: having a thing!

00:03:07: The tea is too hot but first let me tell you about Raj.

00:03:11: Raj's the mastermind behind the Mariwala Health Initiative an advocacy capacity building and grant making organization also an animal trainer and behaviorist, if that is the right word who I ask random questions about the birds in my garden.

00:03:35: And so there are things I learned about mental health, and those came to me quite later in life than they should have despite having a diagnosis relatively early.

00:04:04: So that's how I started working on mental health also because i spent some time in queer feminist activism.

00:04:19: That was really hard for me.

00:04:21: that, you know in a space I saw as mine... ...I wasn't able to bring my full self into it.

00:04:32: Now back to the topic at hand.

00:04:34: In their expansive work Raj and the Mariwala Health Initiative Journal gave us the reframe series that asked What is need of mental health & climate change to permeate each other's isolated expert-led discourses?

00:04:49: They also asked what is the paradigmatic change needed in conversations of climate change, mental health and their intersection.

00:04:58: In their work... don't I sound so adult?

00:05:00: ...in their work more ha-ha they conceptualize anyway!

00:05:04: In their Work Rajj & their co-conspirator Sanya Rizwan argue that Climate Change Emergencies are deeply linked to psychological distress and structural oppression.

00:05:15: It's not just about recycling or making sure the polar bears are not in their own personal jacuzzi because they're ice caps are melting.

00:05:22: The impact on mental health is

00:05:24: real.".

00:05:26: I've been asked this question all the way from immigration counters, and the Bombay Airport to Mental Health Conferences right?

00:05:35: Is there a connection?

00:05:37: And my answer is yes!

00:05:39: There it.

00:05:44: One is just in terms of the discourse between climate change and mental health.

00:05:51: It's marked by a certain global North dominance, And that dominance tells us whose knowledge Is seen as valid invisible.

00:06:01: So if you hear discourse around Climate You're going to hear A bunch technical stuff Heating and adaptation Degrees XYZ, if you hear about mental health again.

00:06:17: You're going to hear it through a diagnostic lens severe mental illness schizophrenia depression anxiety.

00:06:24: we are gonna look at XYZ in XYZ population.

00:06:28: so that's one intersecting point At the field level.

00:06:34: and part of why I mean don't see the intersection is because of this dominance in expert-led narrative.

00:06:43: This expert led discourse goes, it almost sounds scientific neutral technical... It almost sounds like both these impact all sorts of people the same way which we know isn't

00:06:59: true.".

00:07:01: And as much is a global problem?

00:07:03: Like said on previous episode not all climate crises are created equal.

00:07:08: The reframe priest says that both climate change and mental health disproportionately affect the well-being of people at the margins of society, such as Indigenous in rural communities, disabled people, queer people or oppressed costs in races and working class communities.

00:07:28: So while I can use these narratives to say this—the kind of subpointers —that both are these narratives also focus on the individual.

00:07:41: Individual attributes, individual behaviors, individual lifestyle factors, individual targets of change but what both of them do together is that they obscure the systemic and structural factors that influence and inform and distribute how climate change or mental health is experienced.

00:08:08: Now, a really funky term because you know I love to give you a funky term.

00:08:14: This really funky is eco-anxiety.

00:08:17: It's like other anxieties but for the climate crisis Eco anxiety defined as fear of environmental destruction and climate disasters As an extra little treat.

00:08:29: there also solestalgia which is distressed caused by changing environment or homeland due to deforestation, floods etc.

00:08:41: So of course eco-anxiety in a more dominant narrative sense is described as distress or worry about environmental changes that are going to happen in the future About the future In which climate change is reality.

00:09:00: But for me I question The idea Of Future because some of us already living it, um... It is spoken about more in a clinical sense.

00:09:12: I mean psychologists and psychiatrists are saying that we're seeing cases of eco-anxiety.

00:09:19: however for me eco anxiety is very rational embodied response to real ecological loss uncertainty and way life.

00:09:34: It's not something that requires treatment.

00:09:38: it is something to be engaged with, to be politicized.

00:09:45: Truth be told everyone these days has some anxiety about something between the political landscape The price of eggs and or fuel Or pressure finding a mate in hyper digitised world.

00:09:57: We are all on edge our own lives And the anxiety around the climate crisis always seemed like it was for everyone equally.

00:10:07: Like, the ozone layer getting thin is an everyone problem right?

00:10:11: Wrong!

00:10:12: Even with a climate crisis your racist misogynistic curmudgeon of an uncle loves to discriminate.

00:10:20: Just because we are all in this big beautiful house doesn't mean that you're paying the same amount when it comes to rent that's carbon emissions and definitely not doing the same amount of post-party cleanup when it comes to this capitalist shindig.

00:10:37: Sitting where I am in what is called, i guess, The Global South or the majority world we've been facing the social context of mental health or distress causing situations.

00:10:53: We have been facing disasters for many years.

00:10:58: So all of a sudden when the global North was experiencing it, you know.

00:11:03: It really I think became far more prominent in discourse.

00:11:10: so just because its Eurocentricity Because if it's expert led top-down scientific stuff and what people were experiencing at that time we started talking A whole lot More about it but

00:11:23: You Know

00:11:24: Malawi and Heshi have suffered this for decades.

00:11:29: Bangladesh is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world.

00:11:32: and yet you know, this never penetrated I think global discourse right?

00:11:39: And what came with that at that time from both climate change and mental health was this move all of a sudden without thinking about anything else to finding solutions Right.

00:11:53: so again we are going very much.

00:11:56: we're leaning into the hegemonic narratives in both these fields.

00:12:01: Which is disproportionately global north-led, you know?

00:12:05: In terms of narratives research policy and expertise.

00:12:10: but Of course We all know who faces more of the conditions with climate change And mental illness Is to ask oneself I mean what produces distress.

00:12:25: And the moment you ask that, it's just not psychological.

00:12:29: It is social and political.

00:12:35: We know mental health cannot be separated from conditions in which life itself is sustained.

00:12:42: I love giving examples so they are tangible.

00:12:46: Climate change is not just about the environment, right?

00:12:49: It's a crisis of safety and continuity of belonging which are all really very foundational to mental health.

00:12:57: Farmers facing crop failure experiencing chronic stress debt despair urban communities who live in heat waves deal with irritability sleep disruption increase in intimate partner violence floods and displacement leads to grief, trauma loss of identity Unemployment which has a relationship with mental illness.

00:13:25: And of course young people are feeling fear an uncertainty about the future.

00:13:31: Within that we're hearing a lot in climate change literature About Young People Experiencing Climate Anxiety and They speaking about it like It's something new.

00:13:44: But those of us who live in the majority world, who are in their thirties now have already experienced years of climate anxiety.

00:13:57: Right?

00:13:58: Not that people living in global north experience it as youth but they've had this over and again.

00:14:09: so you can see a difference when You kind of question who's leading that discourse.

00:14:17: the fact of the matter is That eco anxiety or this distress.

00:14:23: This worry.

00:14:25: It's a very rational and I'm stressing on the word rational embodied response to this very real ecological loss an Uncertainty, but you're seeing so as first step.

00:14:42: If we challenge the expert lens and you know, move away from it as a diagnosis.

00:14:47: Move away uh...from the idea that is to be treated but instead lean into the idea That this something that need understand more.

00:14:58: This is something that needs hold And this is something We need to politicize.

00:15:05: Even in last episode with Ruth Nyambura We established climate crisis isn't affecting everyone equally.

00:15:11: I will keep

00:15:12: hammering

00:15:13: on about this.

00:15:14: And some of the worst hit are indigenous communities, and not only that they're some of most silenced.

00:15:22: One article calls for centering global majority voices as well those at most immediate risk in climate crisis.

00:15:29: However often these other voices left out.

00:15:33: According to one study, climate change academics from some of the worst hit regions are struggling to be published and The challenge is even worse for female authors.

00:15:43: This study looked at one hundred Of the most highly cited Climate research papers over the past five years.

00:15:49: fewer than One percent of the authors were based in Africa while only twelve of the papers had a Female

00:15:57: lead researcher.

00:16:00: We're kind of speaking In the us-and them thing but I think, you know the global South Global North is a binary like any other and that is reductive.

00:16:11: But so much of what our communities have been doing So much of What Indigenous Communities in The Global North Have Been Doing?

00:16:20: Have Been Safeguarding The Environment Right!

00:16:25: So i Think That's One Distinction We Must Make That we Do Have Knowledge in our context.

00:16:35: that is currently not being seen as valid, of course.

00:16:38: That it's currently not been taken into account.

00:16:42: people in the global north are talking about heat waves and trying to figure out what to do but so many of us in the Global South have already lived through that And our bodies know What It means To live Through It.

00:16:55: Indigenous Communities Which Are Really The Stewards Of So Many environments across the world.

00:17:03: I mean, just even if i have to choose one The Amazonian Rainforest.

00:17:08: they're completely left out of these discussions and They are the communities who've managed To hold This two-word ship an interdependence between human existence And this.

00:17:22: ecosystems right?

00:17:25: And I mean I think indigenous community is know it really well because It is very deeply tied to their sense of self, the sense community and culture.

00:17:39: According a UN paper Indigenous peoples are among firsts who face direct consequences of climate change due to dependence upon close relationship with environment resources.

00:17:52: Climate Change exacerbates difficulties already faced by indigenous communities including political and economic marginalization loss of land and resources, human rights violations discrimination and unemployment.

00:18:08: Indigenous people in the Amazon Kalahari Himalayas and other places are going through

00:18:15: it

00:18:16: because of climate change but not at the heart of conversations which apparently reserved for white men-in-suits and climate change deniers.

00:18:24: with Instagram and Twitter accounts Indigenous people often contribute the least to climate crisis and subsequently, to conversation around its solutions.

00:18:35: Yet are getting affected by it the worst?

00:18:39: The math is just not matting!

00:18:43: We did a research in one of the hottest areas in India And we spoke two daily wage laborers... ...and women said that In the afternoons we take a break and sing.

00:18:56: That's what helps us.

00:18:58: So when I'm talking about ways of coping community knowledge, I don't necessarily mean kind going back to the experts or very neat solutions.

00:19:13: That's our first step is to challenge the whole jump-to-solutions and focus on drawing out what in these extractive systems We need to change because we have to make that shift away from the individual.

00:19:31: In the hottest summer months, everyone keeps a clay pot of water outside their home so anyone who is passing by can take it.

00:19:40: I mean there's real community knowledge.

00:19:43: People had been doing this for years So in that sense some strategies are needed To deal with them.

00:19:54: it's very important to look at disability movements and disability activism.

00:19:59: And disability activism has kind of been kept away from climate activism, partly around I think stressors to do with more individual behavior change such as plastic straws or mobility in vehicles right?

00:20:17: But again if you look a community that is used to navigating environments, that are very hostile for them.

00:20:27: That would be disabled folks right?

00:20:32: So again what do you when your wheelchair user in a heat wave.

00:20:39: these are important things to consider and lessons to pick from.

00:20:43: let me tell you disaster response tells us that there only certain kinds of people get thought of when it comes to disasters.

00:20:59: For example, evacuation are first line responders trained on how to evacuate a person with mobility impairment?

00:21:13: With visual disability or intellectual disability?

00:21:20: shelters in disasters.

00:21:22: Are they equipped with bathrooms that are accessible?

00:21:27: Not just for disabled folks, but for trans folks as well.

00:21:30: and to that end where do trans folks get put in a shelter again?

00:21:39: warning systems depending on where you go sometimes their shared through loudspeakers which means what happens.

00:21:49: Smartphones what happens to those who don't afford can't afford smartphones.

00:21:55: Who can't avoid that sort of technology?

00:21:57: or?

00:21:57: Don't have the internet?

00:22:00: Disaster prep does not have nuance is not intersectional Does not consider the reality of both evacuation Or rehabilitation.

00:22:10: and overall, The framework Is ableist a neurotypical and cis heteronormative and classists In terms of intersectionality, we have I think a crisis of imagination where we are not seeing quote-unquote solutions or ways in which to engage with climate change.

00:22:32: Who bears the burden of care work during crises?

00:22:36: We both know the answer to that it's women who manages water food and household stability who cannot farm anymore are having to go out into cities.

00:22:52: And of course, Who faces the most violence and vulnerability during climate change displacement or disasters?

00:23:03: All this distress is either normalized Or invisibilized.

00:23:08: again just give you an example.

00:23:11: This has researched.

00:23:13: we have data for it.

00:23:15: Women couldn't use bathrooms during disasters in shelters because they faced violence.

00:23:23: What happens after the disaster?

00:23:25: Trans communities, when there was a tsunami across Southeast Asia and South Asia, trans community got completely cut out of any welfare or social safety nets.

00:23:38: And this same happened to caste oppressed communities.

00:23:44: And there you have it folks, we need a historically based intersectional context to our political Ubuntu-driven approach of this climate crisis thing.

00:23:55: These two episodes only began to scratch the surface because woo!

00:23:59: I did not even begin thinking about all these bits and pieces in moving parts Because generally...I try stay on my lane But you know what?

00:24:10: We are kind of stuck here together.

00:24:12: So maybe a little climate justice knowledge isn't a bad thing.

00:24:17: Mental health and the climate crisis is absolutely a real thing, so make sure to check out the resources in The Show Notes And also the Reframe Journal Edition which has also linked up there As well as all other info because I just try throw everything right.

00:24:34: we're here for smart time not short.

00:24:39: Shout out to the Global Unit for Feminism and Gender Democracy of The Heinrich Ball Foundation that continues... ...to host this.

00:24:47: Thank you!

00:24:48: Because, y'know it's a good time.

00:24:49: I will not lie It is A GOOD TIME!

00:24:51: And also speaking Of A Good Time thank you To my mix-and-mastering team Ray & Sheldon who answer My Whatsapps Answered My Emails and just like Embrace My Chaos THANK YOU TO THE NEWEST MEMBER OF MY LITTLE VIBE Cameron.

00:25:08: What are you doing, Smith?

00:25:11: For your dope research and always helping me.

00:25:16: Like with my terrible Googling because my googling is not the best for somebody who has these many degrees.

00:25:22: My research also Not Always The Best but thank You so much.

00:25:26: till next time make your own organic wine from scratch start training Your local pigeons to attack your enemies or tell your nosy aunt that for some plants Are the new babies Because It's all chaos anyway and this is

00:25:40: not

00:25:41: the apocalypse we signed up for.