The Government’s Climate Action Plan 2019 notes how adaptation actions ‘should be risk-based, informed by existing vulnerabilities of our society and systems, and an understanding of projected climate change’ (p. 143). ‘Existing vulnerabilities’, research suggests, increasingly include the mental health and wellbeing impacts of climate change and related social, cultural and economic change. Yet to date these impacts have not featured as priority concerns in national or EU policy responses to climate change. One major challenge we face moving forward is determining how best the navigate the socio-emotional terrain of potentially largescale environmental breakdown and its disruptions to traditional interactions with the natural environment, community, landscape, cultural heritage, labor, mobility, and more. This workshop focuses specifically on how these issues affect Ireland’s farming communities. It brings together a broad range of experts, government policy, health, safety and farming community representatives to consider in more depth current gaps in understandings of Irish farmers’ lived experiences of climate change and its impacts on mental health (e.g., heightened anxiety and stress linked to loss of livelihood, security of place, rural heritage, traditional knowledge skills, identity, biodiversity, hope for the future, etc.).
A range of resilience building, positive mental health measures will be considered and brought into dialogue with the goals of sustainable agriculture, heritage, life on land, decent work, reduced inequalities and other goals in ways that attempt to further the WHO’s Health in all Policies Approach (e.g., SDG3+, nature-based prevention, adaptation, and heritage restoration) and help move debate on the mental health risks posed by climate change more into mainstream policy thinking.
Funded by the EPA and supported by UCC.
WORKSHOP PROGRAM
10am
Tracey Skillington & Annalisa Setti
Introduction to workshop, schedule & major aims
10.10-10.20am
President of UCC, Professor John O’Halloran
Welcome
10.25am
Mary Butler, Minister for Mental Health and Older People,
The importance of good mental health
10.40 -10.55 am
Dr Ina Kelly, Depart of Public Health, HSE, Midlands
The mental health impacts of climate change on farming communities – A Public Health Perspective
10.55-11.10am
Finola Colgan, Mental Health Ireland
Climate Change, Mental Health, Farming - What are the Impacts?
11.10-11.25am
Dr Declan Byrne, Teagasc, Wicklow, Uplands Projects,
Farming in the Uplands
Q& A: 11.25-11. 40am
11.40: Coffee 10 minutes
11.50-12.05pm
Dr Alice Doyle, IFA, Wexford Mental Health, Chair of Farm Families Committee, IFA,
Climate anxiety-a farmer's perspective
Breakout Group Discussions: 12.05-12.20pm
12.20-12.35pm
Dr John McNamara, Teagasc, Kilkenny, Health & Safety; UCD,
Advisory support for Farmers’ Mental Health and Climate Change Mitigation
12.35-12.50pm
Dr Patrick McGurn, Caomhnú Árann,
Climate change and agriculture, the role of low input agricultural systems for biodiversity and carbon storage.
12.50-1.05pm
Dr Angela Veale, School of Applied Psychology, UCC
Climate change- individual and community resilience
Breakout Group Discussions & Synopsis: 1.05-1.20pm
1.20-2.20pm Lunch Break
2.20pm -2.35pm.
Dr Gerard Clarke, Psychiatry, UCC,
Stress and the microbiome-gut-brain axis
2.35-2.50pm
Dr Annalisa Setti, Applied Psychology & Environmental Research Institute, UCC
How we think about climate anxiety and pro-environmental behaviour
2.50-3.05pm
Ms Anna Meehan, Irish Heritage Council.
Heritage and the traditional farm buildings scheme
3.10- 3.25pm
Prof. Luigina Ciolfi, School of Applied Psychology, UCC
Heritage, Participation, and Wellbeing
3.25-3.40pm
15 -minute coffee break.
3.40-3.55pm
Dr Tracey Skillington, Sociology & Criminology, UCC
Accounting for multiple, climate-related determinants of mental health – a cross sectoral response to the needs of farming communities
3.55-4.20pm
General discussion
4.20pm: Workshop ends
