The Gathering on adaptation to climate change and extreme weather

The Gathering was part of a series of events put on by the BPS South West Branch and the Division of Clinical Psychologists to help all local psychologists to work proactively with climate change, both with clients, and in communities. 

Previously our group had focused on the psychological impacts of climate change for different groups, but particularly children and young people. This year the focus was on adaptation to climate change, which we acknowledge is a challenging subject, not often talked about in the media. 

Event informed by survey findings

Before the Gathering on 26 February, we had conducted research on how prepared people feel for the coming difficulties of extreme weather events, and how well they feel supported in adapting to this. Thus, the Gathering in Bristol was formed around the, mostly qualitative, findings from this research. 

The day was a chance for participants to discuss these in small groups, with some input on the main themes from four speakers.

The first part of the day was spent coming to definitions of adaptation, talking about how we, as individuals, and as professionals, help people come to terms with the changes that we observe across the world and in the UK. 

This theme was then supplemented by a talk by Liz Marks on navigating eco distress among clients and ourselves, which emphasised just how universal the difficult emotions brought up by the thought of climate change are, even across wide population samples. As part of her talk, she invited us to reflect on this, and explained how psychologists from different perspectives use effective approaches to help de-pathologise climate distress, and encourage people to help themselves, often through joining groups or activist organisations.

The next theme developed from the research data was action potential, that is how prior attitudes, and events that happen, activate people's potential for taking action, which in turn helps them in developing resilience, i.e. their ability to bounce back after shocks. 

This theme was addressed by Dr Stacy Heath in her presentation. Her emphasis was very much, as a social psychologist, on maintaining continuity in change, working with social identity and attachment to locality. This led to an interesting discussion on how we, as psychologists, can help broaden collective community effort and work more actively with families, who may have conflicting views on the potential threat of climate change.

Personal behaviour change

After lunch, the next theme from the research data was attitudes towards interventions such as activism and personal behaviour change. A presentation was given by Dr Jan Maskell, focusing particularly on work culture, where different forms of leadership and work design can bring about good ethical decision making, as well as better motivation and engagement with climate change among staff. This brought up a lot of debate about role modelling, a subject pretty relevant to psychologists, especially when working in communities and with younger people.

The fourth theme from the research data was about the effectiveness of interventions to help people psychologically adapt. This theme was opened up by a presentation from Izzy Fisk, who talked about her experience of launching various related initiatives in her work in the NHS. 

She brought out strongly the point that there had great benefit both for herself and others; her putting out her ideas through the organisation was experienced as liberating for other people too, empowering them to talk about feelings and ideas that they had previously not really been able to talk to colleagues and managers about, but which were often quite emotionally pressing.

The last part of the day was a plenary session conducted in a large circle format, reflecting on the process we had all been through together, and what we have learned from this; particularly how we can individually and as branch take this forward. 

The tenor of the discussion was that many were deeply moved and felt more in touch with their own difficult process of coming to terms with what we know and were then more determined to try and have some effect. The final rounding up was correlating everyone's ideas on how we take this impetus to a wider audience, hoping to engage other public and private institutions, corporations and community leaders from the South West, to get them talking about the need for focusing on adapting to climate change and extreme weather events. More detail on this will be presented as a third phase of planning leading to broader meetings.

Reactions

The event was attended by a wide variety of people, from councils, the NHS, the Met Office, charities and private sector coaches.

Feedback from participants:

• The BPS / DCP SW event today was excellent. Great content, well-structured with lots of participation and excellent speakers. My anticipatory worries were unfounded. Sorry!
• Opened nicely by Lisa and Anne-Marie. Credit to Anne-Marie and the working group who conducted the public engagement survey and Steve for effective group facilitation. Very good speakers with complementary perspectives.
• A real psychology in the community experience.