(English) Health, wealth and wellbeing: the challenges facing development and environmental action

Miala tsiny fa tsy mbola misy amin’ny teny malagasy ity lahatsoratra ity.

A new study in Madagascar reveals that young Malagasy people are suffering not only physical, but also serious mental health challenges as a result of climate catastrophe.

And yet, even as these impacts are being uncovered and better understood, and even within a context in which the world is agreed that action must be taken to protect the environment for the benefit of every man, woman and child on Earth, the world’s wealthiest states are slashing environment and development funding.

We work, and will continue to work, to help empower people experiencing food shortage, poverty and the impacts of climate change, but, perhaps more than ever, we need your help.

 ‘Adolescents in Androy, southern Madagascar, speak of famine, fear, and futures stolen by drought and sandstorms.’

Dr Nambinina Rasolomalala, Catholic University of Madagascar

A research report, There is no hope, only strong wind, has discovered that young people in Southern Madagascar are suffering anxiety, depression, and other serious mental health challenges because of climate change.

The study, carried out by researchers at Trinity College Dublin, UCL, Queen Mary University of London, the Catholic University of Madagascar, and CBM Global, is set to be published in the upcoming (May-June 2025) issue of the Journal of Climate Change and Health.

It reveals that along with the serious physical health impacts climate change is having in Madagascar, including malnutrition and its wider effects, the psychological health and well-being of Malagasy adolescents are also far-reaching and severe.

The report’s lead author, Dr Kristin Hadfield, from Trinity College Dublin, said: ‘Young people in southern Madagascar are the unwilling pioneers of the impact of climate change. They can provide important insights into the way climate changes impact on adolescent mental health.’

Dr Nambinina Rasolomalala from the Catholic University of Madagascar, added: ‘Adolescents in Androy, southern Madagascar, speak of famine, fear, and futures stolen by drought and sandstorms.’

Dr Hadfield continued of the study, which surveyed 83 young people and gathered data from focus groups with 48 of them, in six rural villages: ‘We found chronic climate stressors – not just extreme weather events – are already shaping adolescent mental health. In higher-income countries, climate anxiety often focuses on future risks, but in Madagascar, young people are already living the reality.’

The study, conducted in Grand Sud, which in 2021 experienced what some describe as the world’s first climate change-induced famine, found that 90 per cent of households had run out of food in the past year, and 69 per cent of adolescents had gone an entire day without eating.

Many had witnessed people in their communities starve to death.

One adolescent said: ‘So many died. There were many elders, but they died because of the malnutrition.’

One participant added: ‘I have no idea what I can do to be happy.’ Another said: ‘Life is a misery.’

These testimonies reflect precisely our experience as a Malagasy organisation.

We know that 79.9 per cent of Malagasy people live on or below the global poverty baseline of £1.73 per day, and that 80 per cent of Malagasy people rely on agriculture – many on subsistence agriculture – as their sole source of income or food.

We know that hunger is common among Malagasy people, and that malnutrition is rife: 50 per cent of Malagasy children suffer stunting because of food shortage.

We also know that despite suffering some of the worst impacts of climate change yet experienced anywhere, Madagascar is one of only four carbon sinks – states which remove more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit – on Earth: a particularly bitter irony.

And through an accident of birth, Malagasy men, women and children are charged with looking after some of the world’s most remarkable rainforest.

Our work addresses the crises affecting Malagasy people, including young people: food shortage caused in part by, and forest loss which will worsen, climate catastrophe.

Our Resilient Forests and Livelihoods programme helps Malagasy people improve livelihoods and food security, while protecting, restoring and expanding the rainforests.

Through training, equipment and technical assistance we help Malagasy people achieve this themselves, and as well as material outcomes, we offer empowerment to people: the knowledge they can take action to improve their lives and fight against climate catastrophe.

We put skills and the real ability to achieve change in the hands of some of the people worst affected by climate change, and who had felt powerless.

Our Youth for Lemurs scheme has educated 239 young people in Eastern Madagascar in sustainable farming practices. By enhancing agricultural yields, introducing aromatic and medicinal plants, and promoting ethical marketing, they have become a driving force for conservation efforts, are sharing knowledge with their communities, fostering sustainable farming and lemur conservation. They are making a difference in protecting wildlife habitats and improving their communities’ livelihoods.

In our ECCLiM project, we trained 75 young leaders, 42 of them women, to provide agroecological guidance, improving local governance and livelihoods.

Our PROUD/FIERES initiative trained 16 young women aged 20-45, who now share knowledge and skills about resilience against, and responses to, climate change, with their communities.

In all of these instances – in every component of our work with Malagasy people and Malagasy partners – we are not only helping people improve their lives and combat climate catastrophe, we are also empowering them, so they can see they are the agents of their experience and can overcome climate change and food insecurity.

But we are doing so in the face of slashed funding by the US and European countries for both development and environmental purposes.

The new US administration slashed all funding delivered by the US Agency for International Development by 83 per cent, while the UK has announced it plans cuts of 40 per cent, France of 37 per cent, the Netherlands by 30 per cent, and Belgium by a quarter. Germany, Switzerland and Finland have also announced plans to cut aid of all kinds.

A report by independent media outlet Mongabay says that the loss of millions of pounds from reforestation and restoration projects will lead to the loss of knowledge and applicable experience as well as money, leading to a global inability to do the things the world has already agreed are necessary (in November 2020, 119 countries agreed to restore 1bn hectares of land restored worldwide; in November 2024, at COP29, states agreed to provide at least £231.61bn in climate finance yearly to developing countries by 2035).

Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO and founder of Dryad Networks, a company that tackles wildfires, said: ‘Countries in the global South are often hit hard by climate events, facing wildfires, floods, droughts, and deforestation. Reducing aid removes access to critical tech innovation and services that can strengthen local climate resilience. 

‘This risks creating a dangerous loop: more climate shocks, more displacement, more economic instability, and greater long-term aid needs. Prevention is the only sustainable strategy.’

We would add only that people deserve better: they deserve reasonable levels of comfort, freedom from hunger, and they deserve peace of mind, free from avoidable anxiety, depression and severe challenges to their mental health. And that without alternatives, many people hope they can improve incomes and wellbeing by removing forest for farmland.

We are working with Malagasy people so they can mitigate and reduce those negative outcomes.

And we – and they – are succeeding.

But while we are insulated from the outcomes of US funding being slashed because we do not receive USAID money, the decimation of resources from the world’s wealthiest states will impact on the world’s poorest, and those who live within them.

In short, we are working, and what we do, thanks to the Malagasy people with and for whom we work, we are delivering.

But we must do more. And we need your help.

If you can, please do consider us for donations. Please like and share our messages, here and on social media.

Please consider writing or speaking to your elected representative to remind them that what we are doing impacts people’s lives, and saves many, including eventually far beyond Madagascar.

And we would be neglectful in the extreme if we didn’t mention that any donation you make through the Green Match Fund from 12pm GMT on Tuesday 22 April, until 12pm GMT on Tuesday 29 April, will be doubled in value, and all spent on our Resilient Forests and Livelihoods programme.

Find out more about that here.

The world knows we need to do what we at Money for Madagascar, and Malagasy people, are doing. It is vital we join together in this difficult period, to continue helping our environment, and one another.