KLIMAFORSK-Stort program klima

Local volunteer-based organizations can have a significant impact on addressing climate change and its effects on health and healthcare systems, especially when public authorities fail to fulfill their role. The role of volunteer-based organizations in collaborating to address the cross-sectoral effects of climate change on health is insufficiently explored and understood. Using qualitative interviews, surveys, and literature reviews, this project has examined how local volunteer-based organizations manage climate change and its impact on health and healthcare systems. This includes how they organize their efforts, handle resource scarcity, and design cross-sectoral collaborations. Through a participatory approach, the project has leveraged the knowledge that various volunteer-based organizations in communities possess about the challenges they face. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health has collaborated with the University of the West Indies and University College London in conducting a study in Toco, a northeastern fishing and agricultural community in Trinidad and Tobago, where the economy and culture are closely tied to sustainable utilization of natural resources. The project has been part of a larger research collaboration including studies in Sitka, Alaska, USA, led by the RAND Corporation. Sitka and Toco are in different regions with different climates but serve as study sites with similar demographics and concerns about the impact of climate change. The funding from the Research Council has resulted in three scientific publications, the development of a participant-based video series, and a concise summary (“policy brief”) oriented towards decision-makers. The first study, comparing experiences from Toco, Alaska, and five global citizen science forums, explores factors influencing organizations’ motivation to contribute, organize themselves, and share costs to address the effects of climate change, thus promoting collective action. Key factors include economic flexibility, individual high-skew contributors, and social learning between organizations. The second study conducted interviews (n = 25) and surveys (n = 34) with members from 12 voluntary community organizations involved in areas such as fishing and agriculture, youth activities, women’s development, living conditions, and natural resource conservation. Participants in the study perceive that Toco is increasingly affected by climate change and present concrete eye-witness accounts of impacts on fishing, farming (agriculture) and the environment. While climate change is an imminent threat – particularly to weather-dependent livelihoods- organizations identify poverty, lack of employment, poor diet, and insufficient education as greater influences on public health. Activities to improve public health are therefore largely linked to addressing these issues, forming the basis for local capacity building. Key obstacles organizations face in this work include a lack of funding and limited support from central authorities, difficulties in recruiting volunteers, and a focus on sector-specific issues rather than working cross-sectorally. The last publication is a scoping review that has mapped and summarized studies exploring how local community-based organizations and actors have addressed climate change in English-speaking Caribbean countries. The article provides a comprehensive summary of existing research at the intersection of climate change, health consequences, and the activities of volunteer-based community organizations. Fourteen studies with data from nine different countries were summarized. The review highlights the need to consider a broad set of factors when assessing how climate change affects health. When assessing volunteer-based organizations' responses to health consequences of climate change, it is relevant to explore how climate change affect agriculture, fishing, and the conservation of natural resources. This is related to livelihoods, nutrition, and living conditions, and is essential to consider when evaluating health consequences. An interesting finding is that few studies directly examine the impacts of climate change on public health and healthcare systems, representing a clear knowledge gap. In addition to presentations at several international conferences, findings from the project have been presented in a video series (https://sta.uwi.edu/iir/voices-toco-community-action-climate-change-and-health-project) and a policy brief (https://www.enbel-knowledge.eu/?category=Policy+briefs). Participating organizations in Toco have had the opportunity to convey lessons learned and messages to decision-makers and other stakeholders on their own terms through this video series, which constitutes a central product in the research project and fulfills the goal of generating knowledge through active participation from stakeholders with the ability to take action. They have also actively participated in preparing the policy brief.

1. Scientific outcomes: New scientific insights by exploring the underexplored link between climate change, its impact on public health and health systems, and community action in English-speaking Caribbean countries, and policy-relevant lessons about how volunteer-driven community organizations respond to these challenges and the major factors influencing local collective action 2. Societal outcomes: Capacity-strengthening of community members through participation in research processes and the opportunity to share insights on their own terms through videos and a launch webinar, leading to increased awareness among members about the health consequences of climate change. 3. Societal outcomes: Increased awareness among local and national policymakers regarding the pivotal role played by volunteer-driven community organizations in local responses to climate change, alongside the challenges they encounter in achieving optimal collective action

Climate change drives ecosystem changes intersecting deep-rooted, chronic vulnerabilities, including to hazards related to heat stress, infectious disease, and food systems. Across the globe, and often as a result of inadequate action by formal institutions like governments and businesses, grassroots organizations are taking initiatives to conduct environmental monitoring and to engage in climate change-related actions. Being non-profit, often informal, and with limited resources, these organizations face classic collective action problems of incentivizing members to contribute outside of wider systems, such as markets and governments, with the clout to punish or reward actions. Building on prior research from the partners, we will sample citizen science and non-profit groups based in the US (Alaska) and Trinidad and Tobago (Caribbean) in order to provide a contrast of locations with similar concerns about climate change. Working with these groups, we will study not only successful organizations that have grown and acted over several years, but also sample recently formed and unsuccessful groups. Groups at these varying stages of their life cycles will provide comparative controls, and avoid biasing the data, as would occur if we studied only groups that were long lived. The method will use a combination of semi-structured qualitative interviews, focus groups, and participatory development exercises. The latter will draw on participatory rural appraisal, factoring in the critiques of it, using processes such as resource maps, dream maps, change maps, pair-wise ranking of issues, and community walk-throughs. The findings will include recommendations as to the features that contribute to the survival and effectiveness of grassroots groups supporting their own health and health systems. Recommendations will be provided for funding strategies for governmental (or quasi-governmental) and private sector institutions that may seek to fund grassroots groups.