A non-governmental organization warns of children and young people’s growing fear of the climate | News
The past summer has highlighted the materialization of the effects of climate change in Finland, says Tunne’s director Taneli Saari.
Climate anxiety among children and young people will increase in the near future, predicts the mental health organization Tunne.
The past summer has highlighted the materialization of the effects of climate change in Finland, says executive director Tunne Taneli Saari. He says that some young people are already clearly more anxious.
The association offers opportunities to deal with feelings and thoughts related to climate and environmental change through counseling, workshops and other activities. It is a partner of Miele, Finland’s largest and oldest mental health group. Saari works as an expert in Mieli Mielenterveys Finland’s environmental anxiety project.
The Mannerheim Children’s Protection Association, on the other hand, says that climate anxiety is still rarely mentioned in its phone and online chat services for children and young people. It is typically mentioned as an additional burden in otherwise distressing life situations or mental states, the organization says.
2018 was a watershed year
“This summer has brought to the fore how the effects of climate change are starting to become more concrete here in Finland as well. Some young people are already clearly more worried, and I believe that children will also be exposed to these things even more. In Finland, the issue of climate change only started to be dealt with more visibly after the 2018 climate after the warming report,” Saari told MTV3’s Uutis on Sunday.
The special report published in October 2018 by the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change, the IPCC, called for rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all areas of society in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.
Tunne is now involved in a two-year national project on environmental feelings with Miele and Nyyt, a non-governmental organization that promotes students’ mental health and learning ability. The project is financed by the Financial Center for Social and Health Organizations under the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
Tunne is a non-profit organization founded in Helsinki in 2018. Founded in 1897, Mieli describes itself as the world’s oldest non-governmental organization focused on mental health.