We must count the cost of growing climate anxiety

“It’s unbearably hot today,” “The roads are underwater again,” and “The crops didn’t survive”—these lines have become so familiar that they no longer sound alarming. But put together, they tell the story of a country where climate change has infiltrated work, study, travel, and even the imaginations of the future.

Economists typically measure the costs of climate change with monetary value. They tally up the costs of lost crops, washed-out roads, damaged bridges and flooded factories. These numbers are important as they drive investment and development decisions. However, there’s a price that is rarely counted: the cost of climate anxiety.

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Productivity doesn’t depend only on machinery and infrastructure, but also on people’s ability to concentrate, solve problems and make decisions. Climate anxiety weakens these foundations. In 2017, the term was popularised by the American Psychological Association, which defined it as a “chronic fear of environmental doom”. It is not considered a mental illness, and most psychologists today view it as a proper response to a legitimate and escalating danger. Greater concern lies in the impact on human behaviour and the economy. Economics has long understood how uncertainty affects human behaviour. During uncertain times, households get more cautious. Businesses wait to invest when they cannot foresee what is next. Most people, in general, do the same: delay decisions that they would make otherwise, and take fewer risks.

Think of a farmer living in Satkhira, watching each season bring more saline water into the soil. Even after a good harvest, he cannot be certain that the next one will survive. Or a student in Dhaka, whose classes and exams are often cancelled due to waterlogged streets. These are not normal stories. When millions of people become more cautious, less productive, and less willing to invest in their futures, the consequences are no longer only psychological but also economic.

A survey of 10,000 individuals aged 16 to 25 in 10 countries, published in The Lancet Planetary Health in 2021, revealed that approximately 59 percent were very concerned about climate change and around 45 percent said their feelings were negatively affecting their daily lives. Another study focused on Bangladesh, covering both rural and urban areas, published in the same journal two years later, uncovered that for each one degree Celsius increase in average temperature in the two months prior, the likelihood of an adult experiencing anxiety disorder in Bangladesh increased by about 21 percent. Meanwhile, the likelihood of co-occurringanxiety and depression among adults was reported to be around 24 percent higher. Research also found that people exposed to flooding were significantly more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and both conditions simultaneously.

Moreover, along with poverty, the experience of sudden economic shocks such as crop losses, illness or disruptions to livelihoods is also associated with poorer mental health. These findings suggest that the country’s most familiar climate hazards leave behind more than damaged homes and roads; they also leave lasting psychological scars.

These are not merely health concerns. These have a cascading effect on economic growth as well. Roads and factories are not the only things that drive an economy. Human capital does. It depends on the knowledge, creativity and judgment of the people. Chronic stress chips away at those abilities. It becomes harder to focus, think creatively and plan, posing economic challenges for the entire country.

In Bangladesh, many people have to work outdoors or in the heat. Farmers, rickshaw pullers, traffic police, construction workers, street vendors, and garment workers continue working regardless of the weather. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), heat stress could reduce global working hours by 2.2 percent by 2030, representing a productivity loss equivalent to eight crore full-time jobs. Southern Asia is expected to be among the most severely affected regions, losing approximately 5 percent of its working hours.

Repeated school closures due to heat and flood interrupt learning and erode motivation, and if today’s students cannot learn up to their potential, tomorrow’s workforce pays the price. The cost of a rebuilt bridge is easily calculable, but it is difficult to calculate the price of the investment that was never made or the dream that was stifled by an uncertain future.

However, Bangladesh has acted on this and made progress. Decades of investment in cyclone shelters and early-warning systems have saved countless lives. The National Adaptation Plan 2023-2050 provides a long-term roadmap, and other initiatives such as the National Tree Plantation Campaign indicate that greener cities are a public health initiative, not merely an environmental one. However, adaptation should not stop at embankments, drainage systems and physical infrastructure. It should also include investments in community mental health, particularly for populations repeatedly exposed to floods, extreme heat and other climate-related shocks. Protecting people’s psychological resilience is ultimately another form of protecting the country’s economic resilience.

Climate change visibly destroys one side of the ledger. The other is what it quietly erodes within us: lost focus, interrupted schooling and the tacit burden of uncertainty that people bring to work each day, and almost nobody is counting it yet.

Syeda Shagin Akhter is lecturer of economics at Bangladesh Open University. She can be reached at shaginakhter@bou.ac.bd.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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