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The climate change debate: ageing and the impacts on participating in meaningful occupations.

Due to current international discussion on climate change and its impacts on population health, it is timely to discuss how such debate will affect current and potential occupational therapy clients who are older adults living independently in the community. Over the past few decades, Australian climatologists and world environmental experts have determined that the impacts and consequences of climate change will have diverse implications for Australia’s environment, economy and public health (Preston & Jones, 2006). The World Bank has identified that the ‘anticipated temperature increase resulting from climate change is of not so much direct concern as the possible indirect influences it may have on our daily lives’ (1998). A report by Preston and Jones commissioned by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) described that future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trajectories indicated that if left unchecked, human GHG emissions will increase several fold over the twenty-first century, leading to climate variability and an ecological flow-on effect (e.g. stronger storms and hurricanes; worse droughts and floods; changes or shifts in seasons; milder winters and wetter summers; World Bank, 1998). The climate change debate internationally has achieved significant gains towards first-world nations adopting the Kyoto Protocol to work on the reduction of GHG emissions per capita on a global scale (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, n.d.). From an occupational science and population health perspective, the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol is one method that the global community has done to work towards applying the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (WHO, 1986) in enabling supportive environments, building on healthy public policy at the macro(population) level and strengthening community actions by planning strategies to achieve better health. Emerging health challenges therefore from climate change (and climate variability), especially noting mental health issues have the potential to impact on occupational therapy practice. The flow-on effect poses immediate challenges, such as those recently described by Pereira (2008) in a paper which explored occupational deprivation in light of the effects of climate change on rural communities and ageing. According to Wicks (2006), the discipline of occupational science holds the ‘... premise that people need to participate in purposeful and meaningful occupation for their health and well being’ (p. 264) and that an occupational perspective of health (Wilcock, 2006) is linked to ageing successfully. People who are ageing, enjoying retirement transitions, or living as an older citizen have the right to live in a society which empowers occupational justice principles, which include ‘recognising and providing for the occupational needs of individuals and communities as part [of] a fair and empowering society’ (Wilcock & Townsend, 2000, p. 84). Wilcock and Townsend add that the complexities of our occupational lives can result in promoting growth (both personal and/or as a collective) or stunting of the future potential of individuals and populations. Therefore, without such occupational justice, ‘... the interpersonal interactions, communities, and the world experience inequalities which touch the very essence of living’ (Wilcock & Townsend, p. 84). Despite this understanding, factors beyond the control of older adults such as occupational injustices which can include occupational deprivation as a direct consequence of climate change, has the potential to threaten the occupational rights (Whalley Hammell, 2008) of successful ageing and engaging in meaningful occupations during retirement. Deprived of occupational choice beyond the control of the engager can affect one’s mental health. Occupational deprivation resulting from drought and water restrictions which limit meaningful occupational engagement can be related with experiencing a psychoterratic illness. Such illnesses are described as ‘earthrelated mental illness where people’s mental well-being (psyche) is threatened by the severing of ‘healthy’ links Robert B. Pereira, BOccThy (Hons), AccOT; Occupational Therapist.