This paper is based on research with older men and women from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. It looks at older people’s experience and awareness of climate change, and calls for better inclusion of their views in developing adaptive strategies. Older people are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and are repositories of indigenous knowledge and experience that could contribute to local and national adaptation. They are, however, excluded from climate change debates.
Climate change and aging are two of the biggest issues facing humanity this century, but explicit links between the two are rarely made. The impacts on people over 60 years old in the poorest countries are already severe. Older people in affluent countries are also disproportionately affected by climate-related emergencies. By 2050, people aged over 60 will outnumber children aged 14 and under, with the fastest growth in the over-60 age group in the poorest countries.
Small-scale disruptions as well as climate-related emergencies have serious impacts on individual households. Declining income and physical weakness make older people particularly vulnerable to disease, extreme weather, ‘climate migration’, and decreasing livelihood options. Climate-related impacts on older people include:
- Worsened health. Climate change will bring an increased disease burden. Food and water shortages are likely to exacerbate old people’s precarious nutritional and health status. Extreme weather – especially heat waves – disproportionately affect the old.
- ‘Climate refugees’ are expected to increase as people seek to escape water and food shortages, climate-related disasters and conflict. However, older people will find it harder to relocate and many are likely to be left behind in worsened conditions.
- Grandparents are often the primary carers of children in the countries researched. Providing care and economic support to dependants in the face of climate impacts such as poorer food security will be even more of a struggle.
The study revealed that old people are excluded from debates on climate change from the grassroots up to policy and international levels. Even where there is a willingness to include older people, a difficulty is that they are not familiar with the language and concepts of ‘climate change’. National government and civil society programmes tend to be aimed at younger age groups. Policy recommendations include the following:
- Educate old people on climate change to help them make sense of what they are experiencing and address their exclusion
- Include old people in the definition of ‘vulnerable groups’ both in the successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol and in the guidelines for the UN’s Adaptation Fund
- Incorporate measures to build old people’s resilience into all climate change programmes (including the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) and any global facility)
- Combine the experiences of old people (who can compare past and present) with scientific research to develop a grounded opinion on climate change effects that can better inform policy.
