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

冲突和环境灾害都对日常生活造成巨大破坏，特别是在已经脆弱的环境中。然而，了解不同的人如何体验相关的中断并不为人所知。我们可以假设，干旱和洪水造成的强烈不安全感将引发严重的精神痛苦和创伤，但对具体的行为-情绪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将情感福祉纳入其方案编制。我们将探讨和论证，如果不这样做，关键利益攸关方就会错过机会，无法调整其活动，实际上可以增强男女的情感弹性，从而使他们更有能力科普和度过极度不安全的时期。因此，该项目将以以前的项目为基础。第一，“埃塞俄比亚的水安全和牧民的情感反应”。牧民是饲养牲畜和移动牛群寻找新鲜牧场和水源的农民。在埃塞俄比亚，大约有1 200万人，他们极易受到极端贫困的影响，而不断变化的气候，特别是缺水，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种政策，进一步耗尽了牧民可用的资源，加剧了这种情况。预计情况会变得更糟，因此，该项目希望了解这种情况对这一群体的情感和福祉的影响，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价工具。该项目成功地证明了将福祉指标纳入监测、评价和学习方法的重要性，该项目的共同调查员因诺琴蒂研究中心埃塞俄比亚办事处目前正在使用这些方法。第二个项目;“暴力的叙述：在尼泊尔和缅甸，境内流离失所对暴力侵害妇女行为的影响“侧重于两种情况，即缅甸和尼泊尔都处于过渡期，最近刚刚摆脱长期的国内冲突，这些冲突在许多方面影响到妇女的生活。这两个国家还遭受了包括洪水在内的自然灾害的后果。因此，国内流离失所现象经常发生。该项目试图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对妇女的暴力形式有所增加。该项目获得了令人震惊的数据，这些数据清楚地表明，在与洪水有关的流离失所之后，妇女遭受了严重的人身不安全，而且在目前的人道主义和发展对策中没有充分应对这一问题。该项目产生了一系列学习简报，特别是在两国的地方妇女组织一级产生了影响，她们能够利用这些数据主张提供更多资源，以支持流离失所的妇女。新的合并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。通过性别和幸福透镜对所有数据集进行重新分析，将意味着将出现一幅更加微妙的画面，显示不同群体如何经历不安全感，以及他们在期间和之后的心理弹性水平。反过来，这将纳入一个新的框架，以更全面地指导关键利益相关者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.