Climate change and psychosocial resilience in drylands: the need for more evidence

Abstract

There is increasing recognition of the mental health and psychosocial impacts of climate change. Relatively less attention is paid to the psychosocial dimensions of climate resilience, how interplays between psychological and social factors shape the behaviour of people and groups faced with climate shocks and stresses. In drylands of the Global South, farming and pastoralist communities in drylands are exposed to multiple sources of psychosocial stress, including climate change, conflict, political marginalisation, and rapid social and economic transformation. We argue that public policy, projects, and programmes intended to reduce poverty and strengthen climate resilience in these contexts should be aware of their potential to undermine psychosocial climate resilience. However, at present, the evidence base is not sufficient to inform policy or project and programme design; there is an urgent need for more high-quality transdisciplinary research on these topics.

Keywords:

• Climate change
• psychosocial
• climate resilience
• drylands

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Note

Notes

1 As an example, many development economists view household poverty reduction in terms of asset accumulation, such as owning land or farming equipment. Yet dryland livelihood strategies balance asset accumulation (e.g. increasing herds) with mobile and flexible responses to local and temporal availability of natural assets (e.g. moving to new pastures or destocking in response to drought), which are highly effective adaptations to the variable ecological conditions of drylands (Mortimore, 2005). This also underlines the value of communal, rather than private, land tenure institutions in these socioecological systems.

Additional information

Funding

Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises (SPARC) is a six-year programme, funded by the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), which aims to work with pastoralists and agropastoralists in Africa and the Middle East to build their resilience. This work was funded by the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Project number: 10012.