Climate Change and Mental Health
Ahrva
A voice for the emotional and human dimensions of climate change.
Ahrva is Enact's programme on climate change and mental health in India. We listen to how people are actually feeling, build language for it that fits the lives they live, and take what we find to the policies that are supposed to respond.
Why this programme exists
Climate change is being measured everywhere. But are we listening to how people are experiencing it?
We have become better at measuring rising temperatures, extreme weather, environmental loss and climate risk.But the human experience of climate change is harder to capture.
What happens when a familiar season changes? When a river disappears? When heat becomes unbearable? When a disaster takes away a home? When the future feels uncertain?
These experiences carry emotions, and those emotions shape how we cope, connect, participate and act. India offers a particularly important context for understanding this relationship. Climate and environmental change are experienced differently across its landscapes, communities and generations. Ahrva asks what happens when we put those emotional experiences at the centre of the conversation.
Because climate wellbeing isn't only about reducing distress.
It is also about nurturing the emotions that help us care, connect, adapt and act.
That is where Ahrva begins.
Where it started
A conversation that turned into a finding
In November 2023, Enact and Youth for Resilience brought together fifteen people in Bengaluru for an afternoon of conversation about climate change and mental health. We came together to listen. What emerged was something we hadn't quite expected: a rich and largely unnamed emotional landscape.
People spoke about eco-anxiety without knowing where to take it, grief after climate-related disasters, the difficulty of finding language for what they were experiencing, and the absence of climate in many conversations about mental health.
Fourteen distinct emotions surfaced in a single afternoon. Five stayed with us.
They became the starting point for Ahrva.
Convening
Rising Resilience: The Connecting Climate Minds Pop-up Dialogue, India
Bengaluru · 5 November 2023
Held under Chatham House rules, the dialogue brought together participants and facilitators to explore the connections between climate change and mental health. The conversation surfaced experiences, coping strategies and fourteen distinct emotions — providing the first seeds of what would become Ahrva.
Our Other Convenings
Convening
Sharing Circle at Manostava 2025
Bengaluru · 8 November 2025
At Manostava 2025, we brought people across generations together for a sharing circle on mental health in a changing climate. Through stories, reflection and the Ahrva Five, we explored how environmental change shapes our emotional lives and what helps us find connection and resilience.
One of our participants blogged after attending this event. Check it out.
COP29
Healing the unseen: the depth of non-economic loss and damage
Baku · 20 November 2024
A side event at the SHARE Hub in the Blue Zone, Baku, on 20 November 2024, co-hosted with Bring Back Green Foundation. The first panel covered the mental health impacts of the Wayanad landslides, climate migration, and the cultural significance of biodiversity loss. The second turned to what research and storytelling can do to make invisible losses count.
UPCOMING PUBLICATION
The state of climate change and mental health in India
From heatwaves and floods to displacement, livelihood loss and an uncertain future, climate change is already shaping how people experience and respond to the world around them.
This exploratory report examines what that means for mental health in India.
Drawing on research and fieldwork with young people, it explores climate grief, disaster-related distress, inequality and gaps in support and asks what needs to change.
If you need support
Enact is a research and policy organisation and cannot provide counselling or crisis support.
In India, Tele-MANAS provides free, confidential mental health support 24/7 in more than 20 languages.
14416
1-800-891-4416
Outside India, please contact a local mental health service or crisis helpline.