Ben Oestericher, Shabab Wahid, Edna Bosire,  & Emily Mendenhall

Kilifi is a portside city in southeastern Kenya. There are beaches all around, and more than half of the community depends on low-input rain-fed agriculture for most of their household income. Animal keeping, particularly cows and goats have a vital role in the economy as well as how people think about success and wellbeing. I (Ben) spoke to a local doctor who told me, “Pastoralists derive their identity from having cows. When these cows die, they don’t feel right as they are breaking a generational tradition and don’t know any alternative sources of livelihood-making.”

What’s challenging today is that the climate is changing and in Kilifi, this can predominantly be associated with drought. With less rain, there is food insecurity such as  less maize, which means there is less food for the family and livestock alike. This summer we completed a two months exploratory study of climate change and mental health in Kilifi, Kenya, in collaboration with our colleagues at the Brain and Mind Institute, Aga Khan University in Nairobi, Kenya. We interviewed a total of 50 stakeholders across the county ranging from policymakers, doctors, public health officers,  to community members. What we found was that people were concerned about climate–not in the existential way that many people are (staying up at night thinking about the melting ice caps or ensuing hurricanes) but rather in an immediate way. The common fears from the policy makers to the modest farmer was losing their way of life, their source of livelihood, and their identity and traditions. 

Well-being in Kilifi is conceptualized as the ability to provide for one’s family, carry on multi-generational cultural traditions, and to live off of the land and local resources. These local values are the global recommendations for mitigating climate change: look local, invest and grow what you have, and build communities that can rely on each other. A public health officer described this clearly in a story to Ben. He said, “There was an older man I knew who was a happy and social individual. His source of joy was his 50 cows, who he used to care for his extended family. During the drought one year ago, all fifty of his cows died. The individual could no longer raise money to pay for his children’s school fees, and became dependent on the government to provide. He ended up dying by suicide. He would rather lose his life than his way of life. Even if the weather improves, he will still never see himself as the same person again.” 

This story illustrates the extraordinary impact of climate change on people who contributed very little to the climate crisis in the first place. Not unlike farmer suicides linked to losing their lands because of debt, such as in India and the United States, climate suicides cannot be underestimated as a growing concern for mental health. However, the more subtle changes in generalized anxiety and moderate depression often remain less visible in the community and often uncounted. Thinking about how some of the most vulnerable to climate change experience these changes today and everyday, and what those will look like in the future, is an urgent endeavor.