Community collective action to respond to climate change influencing the environment-health nexus

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2020

End date

12/31/2023

Budget

352,641 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

This project aims to generate knowledge about how community-based groups and grassroots organisations are responding to impacts of climate change on the determinants of health and health systems. To study this question, a qualitative study involving interviews and focus group discussions with members of these organizations is conducted in the northeast coastal town of Toco in Trinidad. Toco is a coastal community that rely heavily on natural resources, especially fishing, for people?s livelihoods. It has an economy and culture that is closely tied to the management of these resources. The project has so far received 34 survey response and conducted semi-structured interviews and conversations with 25 representatives of community-based groups in Toco that are dealing with different issues, from fishing and agriculture to wildlife conservation. The project is also conducting a scoping review of the literature to synthesize empirical studies that have investigated how community-based stakeholders have responded to climate change health impacts in the anglophone Caribbean countries. This review will highlight key gaps in knowledge addressed by the Toco case study and highlight areas that should receive further attention going into the last year of the project. Among the key findings is that, despite the imminent threat of climate change, community groups perceive poverty, lack of employment, poor nutrition and insufficient educational levels to be key drivers of poor health. Accordingly, with respect to improving health, the activities of community groups are focused on these discrete issues rather than the overarching challenge of climate change. With limited support from the government, these organizations are pursuing capacity-building activities of local groups. Crucial barriers to a stronger role for these organizations in the community-level response to climate change and its impact on livelihood is finance, difficulties in attracting volunteers, and siloed focus of the respective organizations. In the next phase of the analysis, the study will focus on what motivates these organisations to collaborative, work across sectors and share the costs of dealing with the shared threats posed by climate change, which represent a collective action problem. The focus on community collective action problems is based on the premise that communities play a crucial yet poorly understood and often poorly accepted role in addressing the multi-sectoral impacts of climate change, even though a baseline of knowledge exists within this multi-stakeholder environment. The Toco case study is led by the University of the West Indies in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and University College London, and comparisons will be made with a similar case study conducted in Sitka, Alaska, by the Rand Corporation. These case study sites contrast locations with similar demographic characteristics, similar community approaches, and similar concerns about climate change while being in different regions with different climates.