Climate change and the environmental determinants of violence and mental distress in fragile contexts: Ethiopia, Myanmar and Nepal

冲突和环境灾难同样对日常生活造成巨大干扰，特别是在本已脆弱的情况下。然而，了解不同的人如何经历相关的中断并不是很清楚。我们可以假设，干旱和洪水造成的严重不安全感将引发严重的精神痛苦和创伤，然而，对其结果的具体行为-情感反应的理解并没有很好的记录。缺乏理解意味着人道主义和发展部门往往不把情感福祉纳入其方案编制。我们将探讨并争辩说，如果不这样做，关键的利益攸关方就错失了调整其活动的机会，而这种调整实际上可以增强男女的情绪韧性，从而使他们能够更好地应对和度过高度不安全的时期。因此，该项目将建立在以前项目的基础上。第一，“埃塞俄比亚的水安全和牧民的情绪反应(哭泣)”。牧民是饲养牲畜并转移牛群以寻找新鲜牧场和水供应的农民。在埃塞俄比亚，他们大约有1200万人，他们非常容易受到极端贫困的影响，气候变化加剧了他们的贫困，特别是水资源短缺，这反过来又引发了牧民和土地使用者之间的冲突。政府推行依赖水的可耕作农业的政策加剧了这种情况，从而进一步耗尽了牧民可用的资源。预计情况会变得更糟，因此，该项目希望记录这种情况对这一群体的情绪和福祉的影响，以期首先影响埃塞俄比亚的水政策和做法，然后更广泛地将与福祉有关的指标纳入执行机构使用的标准监测和评估工具。该项目成功地证明了在监测、评价和学习方法中纳入福祉指标的重要性，该项目的联合调查员埃塞俄比亚国际研究中心目前正在使用这些方法。第二个项目“暴力叙述：国内流离失所对尼泊尔和缅甸暴力侵害妇女行为的影响”侧重于两个背景，缅甸和尼泊尔都处于转型期，最近刚刚摆脱了对妇女生活产生许多影响的长期国内冲突。这两个国家也都遭受了包括洪水在内的自然灾害的后果。因此，经常发生内部流离失所。该项目力求更好地了解这种流离失所对妇女生活的影响，特别是了解是否有证据表明针对妇女的暴力形式有所增加。该项目能够获得令人震惊的数据，这些数据清楚地表明，妇女在与洪水有关的流离失所后遭受严重的人身不安全，而且在目前的人道主义和发展对策中没有对此作出充分的反应。该项目产生了一系列学习简报，特别是在两国当地妇女组织一级产生了影响，这些组织能够利用数据为流离失所的妇女提供更多的资源支持。新的联合项目将通过提供更多数据来证明干旱或洪水引发的灾害如何对男性和女性产生情感影响，从而推动已经取得的影响。通过性别和幸福视角对所有数据集进行重新分析，将意味着不同群体在经历不安全感以及他们在经历和结束后的心理韧性水平方面的差异将微妙得多。反过来，这将纳入一个新的框架，以更全面地指导关键利益攸关方将情绪反应作为其工作的一部分。

Conflicts and environmental disasters alike cause huge disruption to daily life particularly in contexts that are already fragile. However, understanding how different people experience the related disruption is not well known. We can assume that the intense insecurity caused by drought and flooding will trigger significant mental distress and trauma however understanding the specific behavioural-emotional responses as a consequence are not well documented. The lack of understanding means that the humanitarian and development sectors tend not to incorporate emotional wellbeing into their programming. We will explore and argue that in not doing so key stakeholders miss the opportunity to tailor their activities in a way that could in fact bolster the emotional resilience of men and women and thereby make them more able to cope with and move through periods of intense insecurity. The project will therefore build on previous projects. First; 'Water-security in Ethiopia and the Emotional response of Pastoralists (WEEP)'. Pastoralist are farmers who raise livestock and move their herds in search of fresh pasture and water supplies. In Ethiopia there are around 12 million of them and they are acutely vulnerable to extreme poverty made worse by an ever changing climate, specifically water shortage, which in turn triggers conflict between pastoralists and land users. This situation has been intensified by a government policy to push arable farming that is water dependent thereby depleting further the resource available to pastoralists. The situation is predicted to get worse, the project therefore wanted to capture the emotional and wellbeing impact the situation was having on this group with the view to influencing water policy and practice in Ethiopia in the first instance, and then more widely to see indicators relating to wellbeing included in standard monitoring and evaluation tools used by implementing agencies. The project has had success in evidencing the importance of including well-being indicators in monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches which are now used by the project's Co-Investigator IRC Ethiopia. The second project; 'Narratives of violence: the impact of internal displacement on violence against women in Nepal and Myanmar' focused on two contexts, Myanmar and Nepal that are both in transition having recently emerged from long-term civil conflicts which impacted on the lives of women in many ways. Both countries have also suffered from the consequences of natural disasters including flooding. As a consequence internal displacement regularly occurs. The project sought to understand better how this displacement impacts on the lives of women and in particular to see if an increase in forms of violence against them could be evidenced. The project was able to capture shocking data that clearly showed that women suffer intense physical insecurity following flood related displacement and furthermore it is not adequately responded to in current humanitarian and development responses. The project has generated a series of learning briefs which has driven impact in particular at the level of local women's organisations in both countries who have been able to use the data to argue for more resourcing to support women at times of displacement. The new combined project will drive forward the impact already achieved by offering more data evidencing how disasters triggered by drought or flood impact emotionally on men and women. A reanalysis of all data sets through a gendered and wellbeing lens will mean a much more nuanced picture will emerge of how different groups experience insecurities and the level of mental resilience they have during and in the aftermath. In turn this will feed into a new framework to direct key stakeholders more holistically to include emotional responses as part of their work.