This webinar explains
Why it is essential now-and possible-to prepare everyone for the physical, social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral impacts speeding their way due to the climate-ecosystem-biodiversity (CEB) crisis.
How actively engaging local residents in identifying and strengthening existing protective factors, and forming additional ones, is vital to prepare them for the traumatic stresses, emergencies, and disasters speeding their way and allow them to remain healthy and resilient as they regenerate their community.
Why the most effective way to accomplish this is to form “Transformational Resilience Coordinating Networks” (TRCNs) in communities that use a public health approach to build population-level mental wellness and transformational resilience.
Why building mental wellness and transformational resilience must be integrated into efforts to slash the use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gasses, strengthen external physical resilience, and continually adapt to climate impacts.
SEE ALSO
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT (generated by Descript)
All right, as folks are coming in from the breakout room, thank you for being with us. We're going to get started here in a minute. together. Um, please, Christian's going to put this in the chat, but please briefly introduce yourself. Tell us where you're calling in from. We're real excited to get started again.
We'll, we'll get started here in a minute or so.
Oh, everybody. Uh, this is Bob Doppelt. I coordinate the International Transformational Resilience Coalition. We're going to wait 30 seconds more before we get started. So just hang in there for just a few minutes. Cause it's, that's right at nine now, but who knows what time the nine Pacific time, who knows what time it is.
For others. So hang in there for 30 seconds.
Okay. Well, we will start now. I want to welcome you all again. I'm Bob Doppelt. I coordinate the International Transformational Resilience Coalition or ITRC for short. Uh, and today we're going to talk about, uh, our UN High Level Climate Champion Race to Resilience Initiative. To help communities globally, organize, run, and what we call commission transformational resilience coordinating networks.
And what this is about is that community is indeed medicine, as we'll all find out. I want to give a call out and a thanks to our co partners in this, the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice and Trauma Informed Oregon, and to all of the many co sponsors of this initiative, And you can see all their logos below.
They're from all over the world. Uh, and we really appreciate them being here. Um, today, we're going to, I'm going to start off by just describing why we need to organize Transformation Resilience Coordinating Networks. Then I'm going to move into what's involved with them. What is it? What does it mean to have one organized?
And then we're going to talk about our initiative to help form them. And then you're going to hear from three people from around the world. Um, who think this can help in their part of the world. We won't have time for question and answer, but as Christian has put into the chat, you can post some in chat, and we'll try to get to them, follow up afterwards, or you can join our community of practice that will go in much greater depth than I can do in one hour here at the end of the month.
Um, so the key message we want to share today is that the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis. Requires many types of transformational changes, and I want to emphasize that this is well beyond just an atmospheric climate crisis, which is what the the focus tends to be. We are seeing widespread degradation of ecological systems and loss of biodiversity worldwide.
That is feeding into the changes and disruptions to the global climate system and hotter temperatures and global climate system problems are aggravating the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity. So it's really a global ecosystem biodiversity crisis. And one of the vital transformations we need to make, there's many, many, but one, Is to proactively create what we call the social infrastructure in neighborhoods and communities worldwide.
Needed to address two big, urgent tasks. The first is to provide the mutual aid, and I'll define that soon Needed to help all residents remain physically, socially, psychological, and emotionally safe, healthy, and resilient as they use the adversities they experience as catalyst to find new sources of meaning, purpose, courage, and hope in life and thrive.
And that's got to be closely linked with mobilizing residents, groups and organizations to do their part to reduce the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis to manageable levels and regenerate local physical, social, economic and ecological conditions. And the combination of these two focuses we have seen around the world can prevent and heal pervasive mental health and psychosocial issues.
And motivate residents to create safe. Healthy, just and supportive local conditions. Just a quick background on who we are. We were founded back in 2013, over 10 years ago, and after Superstorm Sandy hit the east coast of the U. S., and we saw mental health problems skyrocket, uh, and a number of years later, we, uh, kicked off what was, uh, we thought was going to be a six month, and it turned out to be a two and a half year international research project, asking people all over the world, has anybody got an approach to prevent and heal the mental health and psychosocial issues caused by relentless ongoing diversities?
And it turns out there is an approach and that's what we'll talk about today. It's a public health approach to mental health and it's applied in communities best. And this is what's needed to build population level mental wellness and transformation resilience. So why? First, we have to understand and this is distressing, but hang in there with us because we can't deal with an issue unless we really acknowledge it and grasp with it.
Um, the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis will increasingly disrupt every aspect of human society. We're seeing it in the U. S. now in the southeast part of the U. S. Uh, in North Carolina and other places where this record hurricane hit, Helene, but we're seeing record. Heatwaves in parts of Africa, especially sub Saharan Africa, rainstorms, other types of event, heatwaves in Asia, um, that's going to disrupt.
And it's much more than just disasters. Those impacts affect food, water, shelter, jobs, income, uh, health care, and many other kinds of, of issues. And unless we build universal or population level mental wellness and transformational resilience, the impacts will create a global epidemic. of distresses and traumas.
We're already seeing, and we will increasingly see, unless we get out in front of this, widespread psychological, emotional, and spiritual distresses. This is climate anxiety, uh, and other terms we've heard for that. And we're also seeing, and we'll increasingly see, Individual trauma. Uh, this goes beyond distress and it's really where people experience, uh, shattered their core assumptions about the way the world operates, their role in it, uh, and really leaves them, uh, unclear about how they should act or think about the world.
Um, And just as importantly, we're seeing widespread community traumas occurring, uh, that a community trauma is when people living in a specific geographic area experience those individual traumas, but it goes beyond that. It's a loss of faith that the community, that the social support networks are there.
To support people to help people. It's really a really profound impact. And we're seeing that again right now in the northeast of the southeast of the US and the climate ecosystem. Biodiversity crisis goes beyond community traumas to create societal traumas, community traumas and societal traumas are both called collective traumas.
But community is, is limited to a specific geographic area. Societal traumas go, uh, affect every culture and entire cultures, entire nations, the COVID pandemic, uh, was a classic societal trauma and the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis is also a classic, uh, but, uh, societal trauma. And without initiatives, instituted globally to prevent and heal the mental health and psychosocial impacts of the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis.
It's going to turn out to be the greatest societal trauma modern society has ever experienced. And what's important to know is that pervasive traumas feed on themselves and create epidemics, um, unreleased trauma, unprocessed trauma becomes buried in the nervous system and can cause widespread flight, right?
Freeze or fawn self protection. Protective survival reactions. What this mean is we're just in a state of trying to fight back to protect ourselves. We're trying to flee the scene to protect yourselves or we freeze and hope that it goes away or fawning means that we sort of appease and try to be nice to people who we think are harming us or the things that are harming us to try to hope that they don't harm us.
Mhm. And those self protective survival reactions, they are instinctive self protective survival reactions, can lead to short term thinking, narrow minded thinking, me only thinking and behaviors that can cause people to deny what's happening, dissociate, disconnect from what's going on, blame others, attack others.
Appease others trying to get them to not harm them or to turn themselves, sabotage themselves with, uh, adopting practices, uh, alcohol, drugs and other sorts of practices that end up causing self harm or they reenact the same behaviors that caused the problems in the first place for them trying to work them out.
And history shows that when persistent and these kind of persistent and pervasive reactions occur, it can unravel. Families, groups, communities and entire societies. And we're seeing that in many places already around the world. Um, just as importantly to understand is that those self protective survival reactions resulting from the activation of the emotional brain, if you will, the limbic system in our bodies.
And also block solutions to the climate crisis because people are in this self protective reaction, so they oppose and don't want anything to do with things that cost more money, require a change in lifestyle, etcetera. They're just trying to get by, and this is that kind of reaction we're seeing in many parts of different populations, many parts of the world, just when new thinking, innovation and transformational changes are urgently needed.
And it's also important to remember that there is no physical health without mental health. This was a quote from Dr. Brock Chisholm, the first Director General of the World Health Organization, and what it means is that comorbidity between mental health and And physical health is very common. Uh, often mental health problems generate physical health problems and some physical health problems come back and activate or, uh, or, or aggravate, uh, uh, physical health problems.
So, but few people seem to grasp this, even in the medical field, they don't understand the connections, uh, which means that if we leave this undressed, the, uh, undressed, the pervasive distresses and traumas are going to greatly accelerate it. Physical health problems, not just mental health problems, and right, cause the cost of health care and access to health care and all that to be impacted also.
Individualized mental health and human services cannot address these challenges. We have to understand that professional mental health and human services are going to remain very important where they exist, when they exist, and for whom they exist. But in many communities and nations, there are few or no providers.
And due to fears of being stigmatized if they participate, fears of racism embedded in the system, conflicting religious beliefs, high cost, and other factors, research shows that almost 50 percent of the public will not engage in these kind of practices, in the professional mental health and human services, even if they could benefit from them.
In addition, mental health and human services are reactive. They mostly treat individuals with symptoms after those symptoms appear. They do not proactively prevent. uh, widespread problems by building resilience or activating transformational change. It's also important now to remember that, or understand that climate traumas, and most of the other, uh, distresses and traumas people are experiencing today, result from interacting individual family, community, social, economic, built, and ecological factors.
The social ecological model is one way to think about it or describe this. Down at the bottom you see, yeah, it, our individual, uh, biology, uh, and the family experiences, early childhood experiences, clearly affects our psychological, emotional, behavioral Aspects of us, but that's those factors are significantly influenced by the connections with families and friends and the social networks were important involved within the social norms and values in which we live.
All of those factors, of course, are significantly influenced by the conditions of our communities, the workplaces, schools, uh, the groups we are part of, religious and spiritual organizations. All of those factors interact and are infected by the policies and institutions, power relationships, types and level of services that are, uh, available.
In a community where people grow up, those structural factors and all of those factors are influenced by profound environmental influences. The conditions of food and water and open space and green space, a physical built environment, the economic environment and ecological systems. There's an old Native American saying that we are all shaped by, we are shaped by all our relations.
And there's a Bantu term in southern Africa, uh, Ubuntu, I am because we are. Since we are, therefore I am. They're describing these interacting factors. And research shows that the current dysfunction of these interacting social factors in many conditioned communities are creating an epidemic of distresses and traumas worldwide.
To address these challenges, we've got to get out of our silos. And think systemically and respond holistically. And the massive scale of the challenges we face can sometimes overwhelm us. I know I feel overwhelmed at times, and I'm sure many of you do. But at the same time, if we view them as teaching tools, as opportunities to learn, we can learn and grow and activate deep seated transformational changes.
And I think many of you, or all of you on the line, have experienced that in your life as well. So we have to keep that in mind. The distresses can overwhelm us, but we can also use them as teaching tools. Uh, and really act, uh, create really profound transformational changes and to do so, we've got to build what we call population level capacity for transformational resilience.
What do we mean by that? When suffering is caused by previously unseen external forces that have no end point. No resolution or simple cure, and that is a perfect description of the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis. The priority must be to help everyone develop the capacity to buffer themselves from and push back against those traumatic stressors, and just as importantly, to use adversities as transformational catalysts to learn, grow, adapt, and thrive.
Find new sources of meaning, purpose, courage, and hope in life. So let's go a little further with that. What do we mean by transformational resilience? It really is about helping everyone strengthen their capacity for what we call presencing, which is self-regulation and co-regulation. That is to learn different age, culturally appropriate ma ways to calm their mind, mo body, mind, emotion, and behaviors during stresses, and help others do so as well.
That's co regulation. But just as importantly for the climate ecosystem, biodiversity crisis is purposing. This is actually adversity based growth post traumatic post traumatic growth. Post traumatic growth. Um, we thought those terms are too nerdy. So we call it transformation. But it's to use adversities as catalysts to learn.
new things to adopt new ideas and new behaviors and find through that find new strengths that you never thought you had, develop better connections with other people, more appreciation of life and thrive. Presencing and purposing, even if you use different terms to describe those, are what primary prevention is about.
And we have seen in our work, and I think many of you would agree if you really looked at it in this framework, that the combination can rebuild. Faith and hope in the future. The capacity for transformation resilience is also shaped by interacting individual family, social, economic, physical, built, and ecological factors.
We have to address all of them to build transformation resilience, which means we need to respond at the scale of the challenges we face. And this means we must think and act and work at the population level and address all of these interacting stressors. And this comment was, uh, this, this point was really, uh, reaffirmed to us by the comment from the noted clinical psychologist, Dr.
George Albee, who said, no epidemic has ever been resolved by paying attention to the treatment of the affected individual. Now, this is a psychologist, not a physical health specialist. He's talking about the mental health issues also. We can't just focus on the individual. We have to focus on the population.
And this key point led our research to realize that we've got to expand our approach beyond individual mental health services, which will remain important, but we have to expand beyond that to embrace a public health approach to mental wellness and transformational resilience. So what does this mean? A public health approach to mental wellness and transformational resilience takes a population level approach, not one that merely focuses on individuals with symptoms of pathology or high risk groups, most vulnerable groups, but they are fully included what's called, in using what's called proportionate universalism and life course approaches.
I don't have time to get into that now, but we will talk about that. In the two part community practice that's, uh, uh, gonna have to happen at the end of the month. But our mantra really have to be leave no one behind. The climate emergency is going to affect everyone. Uh, leave no one behind. A public health approach to mental wellness and transformational resilience prioritizes preventing mental health and psychosocial problems before they emerge.
Not really reacting to or treating them after they appear. And it integrates group and community minded healing methods. We'll talk about this soon into the prevention strategies. So we must always remember that prevention is the cure and a public health approach to mental wellness and transformation.
It's accomplishes this. By strengthening, engaging local residents and strengthening protective factors, as they're called social support networks, resilient skills, individual, collective, resilient skills, local habits, local resources and other things that build and sustain healthy thinking and behaviors.
Not merely fixing deficits, trying to identify risk and treating individuals with symptoms of pathology. We must enhance strengths, assets, and resources. In Buddhism, there's an old term that says, uh, water the flowers, not the weeds. That's what this is about. Research, uh, really clearly shows that we can build and enhance mental wellness and transformation resilience.
And that the most effective way to do that is to establish the horizontal social infrastructure and communities. That means connections all over the communities, very different than what, what we often do is just find a specific building to be a resilience hub. Um, now we're trying to create the connections across the community that can call, we call a transformational resilience coordinating network.
T. R. C. N. But each community calls it something different. Uh, what's whatever resonates locally and a T. R. C. N. engages a broad and diverse array of local grassroots leaders, neighborhood leaders facing spirituality, youth, education, civic, nonprofit, private and government leaders, uh, uh, that come together to jointly plan and implement strategies that strengthen as many existing protective factors as possible.
And engage the community and forming as many additional ones as they can to enhance population level mental wellness and transformational resilience. Here's a sample ideal Transformational Resilience Coordinated Network. You could call this well coordinated decentralization. Seems like a contradiction.
I'll explain that in a second. Using a ring team or a hub and smoke approach. So inside, you see this, the circle inside, uh, and starting up at the top, you see that there's neighborhood leaders, private sector leaders, civic, youth, public sector, mental health, other NGOs, faith leaders, and others. Um, that's the steering committee.
For this transformation resilience coordinator or leadership council. There's all sorts of different words that groups use. Um, and, and I just put on some examples there, they're made up of different populations and the people representing different populations or who work with different populations.
That group might elect co chairs. They might elect an executive committee. They might hire staff if they can raise the fund to do that. Uh, they planned the strategies together. They make the decisions together. One of the things they have to do early on is learn good communication skills and learn good conflict resolution skills because there people haven't learned how to work together like this often.
So it takes some time. They have to take some time to learn that But outside of that, you'll see a whole series of what we call resilience innovation teams that are working with specific populations or sectors building mental wellness and transformation resilience. So up in the upper right hand corner, there might be a team working with neighborhoods.
One team moving to the right, they're moving with private sector, one with youth groups, one with education, public sector, human services, working specifically, those working specifically on climate issues or arts and culture. They're developing strategies and working with the different population and sectors that they work with and are respected by, but they come back and share their strategies with the broader steering committee and with all the other resilience groups, uh, and get feedback on it.
So, uh, working on, uh, education, uh, might be working with public education. They share their strategy and they hear from other people on the steering committee or other resilience innovation team members. And they say, well, you know, 10 percent of the people, the kids in our community are private schooled, uh, or they're homeschooled.
Uh, have you thought about how to engage them? Oh no, we haven't done that. Okay. We'll put some time into thinking about that. So you get that kind of feedback and you also can coordinate. They also coordinate fundraising strategies. Both different groups are going to go after the same funder and say, well, wait a second, let's combine our proposal or let's clearly separate it even better to make sure we can get funding.
So this is well coordinated decentralization and we see this. Variations of this in many, many groups around the world. Oops, what just happened there? Um, So
something just happened with, there we go. So why establish these ongoing transformational resilience coordinating networks? Here, uh, one way to think about is, is there's sort of common phases of disasters. Uh, over on the left hand side, Most disasters, not all, but most have, uh, some warning periods.
Sometimes it's a day, sometimes it's years, sometimes it's just a few hours. With the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, we have had decades. Um, but, uh, we haven't done much about it. But then the impacts occur. A direct impact can, uh, can traumatize 20 to 40 percent of those who are directly affected and 10 to 20 percent of the first responders and people who know someone who's impacted or can, can, uh, distribute it from afar.
Uh, and then you go into the heroic phase. The impacts are occurring or starting to phase out, and people who don't know anybody, don't know each other, put their lives on the line to help others. They really step forward in many ways. It's really, and we see that in the news a lot. And then we enter what's called the community cohesion.
Sometimes it's called the honeymoon phase, uh, that can last for a few days or a month, where people in the community who don't know each other often don't even like each other. come together. They share food, water, shelter, um, power. They find ways to just support each other. And that's really powerful. And we see that happening in the Southeast of the U.
S. right now in other places, um, that it's really a very powerful thing. And we think that's really key. But then what happens is people go have to go back and attend to their own lives. So the community cohesion phase ends, the honeymoon phase ends, uh, and you go into a long period of what we call the disillusionment phase, which can last months or years, and this is where most of the mental health and psychosocial problems appear, when people are now back on their own, they don't have those support, uh, and it can go on for years, and you can see on the bottom, some people will remain dysregulated, Others, most others will eventually start to recover.
They come to terms working to their grief because it can take months or years to do that. Um, but if you have more relentless stresses or new disasters as a climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis is going to produce, uh, it can cause regression or completely block recovery. Uh, and, but some people will eventually move.
So why is, should we establish these ongoing transformational resilience coordinating networks? Because the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis is going to continue for decades, most mental health and psychosocial problems surface months or longer after the initial stream stressors or disasters occur.
So we need to build the horizontal social infrastructure where Uh, that allows residents to sustain the community cohesion phase for decades to come. We've got to establish mechanisms to make that a permanent thing. And so always remember that it's our relationships, our social connections that are the bridges.
Between individual and collective safety, wellness, resilience, and transformation. So why focus specifically on neighborhoods and communities? Because this is where people spend most of their time and interact most directly with the social, physical, economic, and ecological factors that they deal with in life.
And it's where most people directly experience the impacts of the climate ecosystem to biodiversity crisis. Working with single populations in isolation from others can be helpful, um, but they really risk reinforcing the siloing and stigmatization that often contributes. To many of today's problems, so it is really essential to understand that there is no community resilience without widespread social, psychological and emotional resilience is big focus in many communities and many countries about external physical resilience.
And we think, well, that's what we're gonna do to build community resilience. We're gonna harden infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. All of that's important without social, psychological and emotional resilience. There's not going to be community resilience. So slashing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening external physical resilience, and regenerating ecological systems and biodiversity are essential, but most of this work is done by NGOs, or the private sector, or government agencies, and do not meaningfully engage local residents, and the work is usually disconnected from activities that build social, psychological, and emotional wellness and resilience.
So I've seen my organization when I first when I formally ran a program at the University of Oregon, we started the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, and we saw that many of those external physical resilience and mission reduction projects are going to have limit effect or fail unless an equal emphasis is placed on strengthening the human dimensions of resilience and integrating that with the other components.
So our research, and we kicked off that long research project, we identified five foundational protective factors that are going to be vital to build population level mental wellness resilience for the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis. By far, the most important is to build social connections across cultural, economic, and geographic boundaries in the community.
You could think about these as bonding, bridging, and linking social support networks. There's also a way to think about it as strong and weak social connections. I don't have time to get into that now, but we will in the community of practice at the end of the month. Building social connection is vital to overcome the toxic, uh, social isolation and loneliness.
It creates widespread mental health problems today, and this is made worse by disasters and adversities when people are not connected with others. They don't get somebody who can help them. They don't even know people who have their phone number, their address, understand what conditions are in, et cetera.
And so they end up in worse shape. But just as importantly, family, friends and neighbors are far more important than first responders. During the first three to five days of disasters and many often much longer in most disasters. Social connections are also especially important in times of distress because they provide the mutual aid, people helping each other, food, water, shelter, uh, uh, et cetera, and emotional safety needed to help people stay sane and resilient.
And just as important with all of that is that Doing this kind of work engaging people and connecting people motivates some people to find meaning and purpose in their own lives by helping others engage with, uh, learn and connect with others. The second foundational protective factor we've identified is to ensure a just transition by engaging residents in pro social activities That enhance local physical, economic, and ecological conditions.
So physical built means housing, transportation, green space, open parks, economic conditions meets locally owned family wage jobs, ecological conditions mean dealing with pollution, restoring the health of forest and ecological systems. You know, in research, as many of you know, is really unequivocal, unhealthy, unsafe and unjust local conditions create mental health and psychosocial problems, and active engagement and pro social activities that address these issues actually creates healthier and fair local conditions, and it builds hope that enhances resilience and innovation.
And integrating efforts to slash emissions and enhance local conditions with efforts to build human resilience can lead to the social, economic and political pressure for change, while motivating again some people to find new meaning and purpose and hope in their own lives by helping others engage in these activities.
The third foundational factor we identified, um, that's really going to be vital is to help, uh, foster, uh, uh, mental wellness and resilience literacy. That means to help everyone become trauma and resilience informed. Help everyone understand how trauma and toxic stress can affect their mind, body, emotions, and behaviors.
And how it can affect groups and then learn those presencing in person within skills that I talked about, uh, uh, this builds on health literacy and helps people understand what is happening within them and within other people, which can normalize their struggle. Oh, there's nothing wrong with me. This is natural.
This is normal and therefore reduces their fear of being stigmatized. And eliminates their capacity or likelihood to stigmatize others. They understand what's going on while building the knowledge and skills needed to prevent and heal their own mental health and psychosocial problems and motivating some people to find meaning and purpose in their own lives.
by helping people become trauma and resilience informed. The fourth, uh, uh, protective factor, really vital protective factor we identify was to encourage residents to regularly engage in specific practices known to enhance mental wellness and transformational resilience. There's a variety of them, including laughing often, finding simple joys.
And when people engage in this, it releases the trauma in their nervous system, which can prevent and heal trauma themselves, and it builds social connections through pro social activities, while offering activities that foster emotional states that provide residents with meaning and purpose during adversities, and motivating some people to find meaning and purpose in their lives by helping others engage in those activities.
And the last, uh, the fifth, uh, foundational protective factor we identify was to actively engage residents in ongoing group and community minded healing processes. Group healing gatherings, like healing circles and others, which are mostly facilitated by peers, normalize struggles people are having and helps eliminate fears of stigmatization.
It allow residents to hear how others view their problems and how they're caring for it in a non judgmental and non clinical way. But not everyone is helped by talking about their distress. So many other approaches should be offered on an ongoing basis as well. Expressive therapies, art, drama, music, dance, writing, mindfulness based healing, spiritual healing, nature based, Stealing memorial events, et cetera.
Uh, and some residents will be motivated to find new meeting purpose and hope in their lives by being trained as peer facilitators to help run these kind of programs. I just read these five barnational protective factors linearly, but they're not really linear. They're interactive, uh, and communities start with whatever makes sense to them.
And then they slowly add others. So you can start really anywhere. Here's a few examples of transformation of resilience coordinating networks going on in the U. S. North Carolina Smart Start Healthy and Community Resilience Initiatives has 50 different initiatives, some just in development, some, uh, much further along.
They're focused in general on four ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences, many of them start there, and that's their primary focus, but also Adverse Community Experiences, Adverse Climate Experiences, and Atrocious Cultural Experiences, which often just means racism. Uh, but there's the Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Network, which is a grassroots network helping mostly marginalized communities, uh, and you can read some, uh, some of the others of them.
There's a number of going on throughout the U. S. And there's many examples of international mental health and cycle. So support initiatives. M. H. P. S. S. Uh, the interagency standing committee, uh, defines these as a community based M. H. P. S. S. approach puts individuals, communities and social systems at the center of the intervention in all phases of the response.
Only a few of these initiatives describe their work as a public health approach, but that's basically what they're using. Each focuses on different issues and needs based on what's occurring in their community. Uh, each is unique. There is no one size fits all approach. None address all the five foundational protective factors we identified yet, and only a few are explicitly focused on the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, but they all tend to use a common set of principles and methods.
And they show how community is method medicine. If those not focused on the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis expand to address it and thousands of new community initiatives like this are launched worldwide, we can build universal capacity for transformational resilience for the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis.
So how are we going to help with that? Our UN High Level Climate Champion Race to Resilience Initiative will help form and operate these kind of community resilience initiatives globally. Again, thank you to all the co sponsors. Here's how we're going to do this. When people apply on our website to form a new Transformation Resilience Coordinated Network or expand an existing group or coalition to address the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, we're going to designate them as a prospective Transformation Resilience Coordinated Network.
They will, we will then send them a handbook, Specifically for this, this kind of organization, um, and we'll provide technical assistance by phone and email and involve them with a community practice where they engage with others, uh, trying to form a resilience courting network as well. And it's really focused this perspective networks are focused on forming a steering committee, a leadership council, whatever they want to call it with a clear mission, vision, goals and operating procedures.
Once a group has a steering committee with a clear mission, vision, et cetera, um, we will, uh, we will designate them as an emerging, or invite them to become an emerging Transformational Resilience Coordinating Council, uh, and help them develop the strategy to build population level mental wellness and transformational resilience.
And to do that, we're going to provide a handbook specifically to developing strategies. We'll provide technical assistance again by phone and email and involve them within a community practice with other community groups doing the same kind of work to develop a multi systemic strategy. And what we mean by that is addresses all those issues that we just that I talked about in the social ecological model and when a group has developed their multi systemic strategy.
We will invite them to become a commissioned transformational resilience coordinate network to begin to, they're commissioned to begin to implement their strategy. We, again, provide a different handbook to them on how to implement strategies, evaluate them, continually improve them, continue with technical assistance, and involve them in a community practice with other community networks that are implementing strategies so they learn from each other, problem solving, et cetera, and are able to continually.
improve their strategies. So we invite you to, uh, to learn more about this in the community practice, the two part that happens later in the month, but also to think about, are you interested in, uh, forming a new resilience courting network in your community or asking or having an existing group. Uh, become a part of this.
If so, you can apply to become a perspective or apply to become an emerging Transformation Resilience Coordinating Network. I now want to introduce a few people who will share their thoughts on this approach, this work. Um, and I first want to introduce Dr. Joshua Wurtzel, who's the chair of the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on Climate Change and Mental Health.
He's also a member of our steering committee. Josh, it's all yours. Pleasure to be here and so excited about the Race to Resilience Initiative. Um, What I'll add is that at the American Psychiatric Association, and I also co chair the Committee on Climate Change at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, we're all very committed to trying to understand how climate change is impacting mental health and building various structures to support people clinically and in the community.
And the Race to Resilience seems to be, you know, one of the forerunners of that, and we're very excited to partner and in supporting Bob and his team with that effort. Um, I'm sure that Bob has already touched on this, but in addition to all the distress that people are feeling about climate change, there are a number of other ways, including how heat impacts the brain, all the indirect effects of climate change on mental health from things like airborne pollutants and zoonotic illnesses, bugs that carry diseases and so forth.
And then there's from natural disasters and the existential distress of climate change that a lot of us experience. So we're interested in supporting efforts in all of those domains, and I'm very excited that the APA can be supportive in this project. Thank you, Josh. And he's right. I did not have time to go into all the different impacts on our bodies and our minds that the climate emergency is causing.
But he's absolutely right. This is a really broad, diverse kinds of set of impacts. And we really have to think about all of them. Uh, thank you, Joshua.
Okay, something is stuck here. I would now like to introduce Dr. Kenneth. Young Gabi on Chang, who's a distinguished professor of public health at the state University in Nigeria, and the regional convener of connecting climate minds and sub Saharan Africa. Kenneth, it's all yours. Thank you so much, Bob, and I'm very delighted to be here.
Thanks everyone who is participating in this very wonderful seminar. Yeah, I'm the regional coordinator for Connecting Climate Minds in Sub Saharan Africa. And, uh, you know, the race to resilience, which Bob has really explicitly demonstrated in his seminar, is actually very dear to our heart in Africa, and that we work is really centered on trying to really understand How climate change is impacting on the mental health of Africans on.
We're doing that a community level. And what we are really observing is that there is really residual residual resilience among people because of so many socioeconomic determinants and that climate anxiety and climate emotion is adding extra burden to already pre existential problems that they have.
And many of our people do not really understand, uh, that, uh, they don't really understand the symptoms and signs of, uh, of mental health, and, uh, they are unable to really see the connection between, uh, climate change and mental health. So we are basically, uh, more or less, uh, doing education and then trying to see how we can actually step up that resilience.
And what we are currently doing now at the moment Is that we've generated the research and action agenda plan for Sub Saharan Africa on how we can really, uh, you know, catapult, uh, resilience, and now we're using meteorologic data, uh, which is corresponding from our work, corresponding to, uh, the period of, uh, the various periods of mental health defects, uh, such as anxiety, emotions, depression, and all that in order to build early warning systems.
That can strengthen resilience, uh, should in case they meet with this catastrophe. Uh, and last but not the least is that we are really observing that, uh, uh, the challenges of mental health as a result of climate change is really causing an epidemic on the continent. And I think the race to resilience, uh, we don't really continue.
And, um, uh, people are very excited to listen, especially that connection. And I think that's, uh, uh, one of the key, uh, areas that, uh, We are working on. I really thank you, Bob, for giving me this opportunity on that. We will continue to race for resilience. Thank you very much. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Kenneth.
And thank you for all the work you're doing there with all the folks that are being impacted. And finally, I want to introduce Dr. Emma Lawrence, who's the lead at the Climate Care Center at Imperial College London, and also the lead with Connecting Climate Minds that is really involved to people all over the world, 90 countries and 1, 000 people trying to get a handle on this mental health, uh, connection between mental health and climate change.
Uh, Emma, it's all yours. Thanks so much, Bob. And as everyone says, it's a pleasure to be here to see colleagues and friends and so many people joining from around the world. So, as Bob's already said, I lead the Climate Care Center, and I've been. Being able to work with people like Kenneth and others around the world to try and bring together communities of researchers, of policymakers, of people living with these experiences, um, of humanitarian workers, of people working on climate resilience and adaptation of all sorts of spaces.
And we know that connecting people, um, sharing. What people are going through, but also what is, is working and what people are doing to respond, um, is can be very powerful. And so that's what we were doing through reconnecting Climate Minds, was bringing people together through dialogue, building these communities of practice.
Um, and really what emerged was, uh, what we would, we were emerging. A set of recommendations for research and action priorities. Um, we have case studies. We have lived experience videos and toolkits all on our global online hub, which I can put in the chat. But really what emerged was this importance of of community of learning.
Um, from the needs that we're hearing across communities, but also the solutions that are in communities and that community itself as Bob has so clearly described, we heard over and over again, can be the difference between people, um, continuing to, uh, have resilience to come back from the challenges to have even growth from the challenges they're facing, um, to be able to take action.
to protect themselves and their families and communities going forward, or really, really struggling and having these widespread mental health impacts in the face of escalating compounding stresses. The difference really does come down to the strength of those social bonds and whether you've just got people around to care for you, to, um, to take action together, et cetera, et cetera, and whether there's opportunities for that.
And that's, what's exciting about, um, the work that Bob is doing is also making Those opportunities for more, more communities to do that, um, around the world and to be learning those tools and skills to, uh, regulation of connection, um, that will enable, um, that resilience, that true resilience within, um, the concept of climate resilience, that social and psychological transformational resilience.
So, um, Yeah, it's a, it's a pleasure to be here and support the work that Bob and his team are doing. And, um, we have this wonderful global network of people coming together and we're also connecting researchers with, um, uh, people who are starting to make change on the ground or to do work in climate resilience to understand and share learnings in what's working, um, across these efforts.
So yeah, very happy to connect into this space and, uh, yeah, good luck. Thank you, Emma. And if anybody, uh, wants to connect with, uh, uh, Connecting Climate Minds, you can just get on the web or email us and we can, we can send you the link to, to find them if you can't, uh, find them. So, uh, doing great, great work.
Uh, all three of the speakers are involved with organizations doing great, great work. So, let me just summarize briefly that we have two big, urgent tasks in front of us. We have to build the social infrastructure in communities, and I just can't emphasize that enough. Yes, we've talked about physical aspects of resilience.
They are important, but it's really the social infrastructure that's going to be far and away the most important, uh, in neighborhoods and communities that, uh, really are needed to help people remain safe and healthy and resilient. During the long climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis. This is going to continue for decades, uh, and to help people make the transformational changes needed in the way they think and about the world and themselves and how they should act and engage to find new sources of meaning, new sources of purpose, new courage and hope in life and thrive.
Uh, we know. We can do that. We've seen it in many, many, many communities. Question is, can we scale it up and get that information and process it out to others? That's one of our big tasks. And the second is to mobilize our communities, mobilize residents, organizations and groups in the communities to do their part to regenerate local conditions, local, social, economic, ecological conditions, uh, and regenerate the health of the planet as they do that.
Uh, we have to, uh, take actions that are going to require some really transformational changes in the way we approach our economy, uh, uh, resource development, uh, resource extraction, on and on and on to, uh, minimize the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis to manageable levels. So we've got to integrate those two.
Yes, that's really the challenge ahead of us. Let me just say a couple things that I know many of you are thinking Wow, it takes a lot of work and time to organize these community resilience networks And it's true that it does But you you start where you're at And most of these community networks start by one or two or three people in their neighborhood and community realizing this is important You They start getting together for coffee or tea or whatever.
And they think they talk about it. They find that they agree on a vision. Well, we could be doing X, Y, or Z. That would be different than what's happening today. Uh, and they develop a small, their own little vision. They develop a little elevator speech, you know, to explain it to others, and they go and start talking to others.
In their community, friends, neighbors, colleagues, work colleagues that they know, and they get, they just grow the group that's interested in this over time. It might take a couple of months, more lunches, more emails, whatever, um, and you just grow this slowly over time, uh, and you then develop this, uh, you ask people to participate in a steering committee or a leadership council, whatever you want to call it.
Uh, that's how most of these are formed, and people just do what they can. Given the time and resources they have available to do that kind of work and others see it, get engaged, get excited and get activated by it, too. So that's how most of these, uh, initiatives get off the ground. One of the other challenges many have is that people are in many communities and many countries now.
Are not used to working together, and so they find conflict. It's difficult to communicate and address conflicts initially. So what many of the local groups do is they specifically focus on first getting to know each other to develop camaraderie. between all the different people in the, in the steering committee or the leadership council.
Um, they practice, um, good communication skills and they practice conflict resolution skills, often by doing it through games and things. So they actually are just sort of setting up, uh, ways to learn how to communicate well with people they don't know that might have different views. Um, especially different political views or religious views, but also then how do we resolve conflicts and practice that?
And what we have seen is that actually addresses many of the key issues. And more and more people see that happening in the community and get engaged and get excited, uh, and decide that they want to participate in the group grows from there. That's how the vast majority of these initiatives grow. And then in some places, uh, Uh, you know, we've seen it happen a lot.
Uh, and, uh, if you're concerned about the time and resources to do that, and how that affects what you're currently doing, think about what happens if we just continue business as usual, you know, three or four or five different of these community groups get organized, and it might be a government agency, a nonprofit or others say, Hey, why don't we do this more broadly?
And they set up a program to set up funding and support for these kinds of community networks. And that's how they grow. So it is doable. We've seen it happen a lot, and, uh, if you're concerned about the time and resources to do that, and how that affects what you're currently doing, think about what happens if we just continue business as usual.
Uh, is that a pretty picture? And for most communities in most places, it's not so it does take some change. It does take doing some stuff, adding some things to your, to your, uh, the set of work initially, but it will end up being much more effective and, uh, undoubtedly more, uh, efficient also. So our Race to Resilience Initiative, our TNC Commissioning Initiative, we call it, will help communities worldwide learn how to do this and build resilience.
population level transformational resilience. So, to learn more and to apply to participate, you can register for the two part community of practice that we're going to hold on Tuesday, October 22nd and on Tuesday, October 9th. That's going to go into much greater depth. The first one will be on how to organize these Transformation Resilience Coordinating Networks and what a public health approach means.
Uh, but you'll get a chance to talk with the others. I know there's already 50 or 75 people already signed up for that. There'll be more by the time October 22nd comes along, um, but you'll get a chance to talk with others who are interested in this from different, uh, regions and different countries. You know, we're going to bring in some people who have led these efforts, so you will hear from them, um, uh, how, how they've perceived it.
Uh, and in the October 29th session, you're going to actually hear from people who are implementing One or more of those five core protective factors, um, uh, so that you can understand different ways you could build social connections in your community or help the community become trauma and resilience informed, et cetera.
So that's what those 2 sessions will focus on. Uh, and, uh, we hope that by at that point, you really get a sense of what this involves. And you can decide then if you are going to form a new resilience coordinating network or. Um, what your existing group or organization or coalition to join and, uh, and try to then expand your focus to focus on the climate emergency.
So, uh, so you could register for the two part community practice, or you can apply to form a perspective or emerging transformations in coordinate in your community or expand your existing one to become a perspective or emerging networking community. You can find the, uh, go to our website. To, uh, find both applications for both and we will get back to you within a few weeks, uh, to let you know, uh, whatever.
But if you apply for the new practice, you're just automatically part of it. So we invite you to join us on this very important journey. Uh, and we really, uh, thank you for being here today. And for all the work you're all doing, you wouldn't be doing you wouldn't be on this webinar unless you're already doing some really, really good work.
So thank you for joining us. And we hope that you will consider joining us on this journey as we try to organize community resilience initiatives across the world to really get out front of and prevent and heal the mental health and psychosocial health crisis. We want to be able to address the rising climate impacts generated by the climate emergency as we also help people engage in reducing that crisis to manageable levels.
And enhance the local conditions of their community in ways that really help people thrive. So, with that, we'll end today's session. Thank you all for being here. And we hope to see you sometime soon. Thank you.
Yorumlar