Ageing in the time of climate crisis : An example from the Czech Republic
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The effects of the contemporary climate crisis vary according to local contexts; however, most authors agree that older people represent indisputably one of the most vulnerable population groups. Some authors, such as Haq and Gutman, even call for a new subdiscipline within the well-established field of environmental gerontology to address these new risks and their impacts on older people as well as the environmental consequences of population ageing as such. Following this call for a new “climate gerontology” approach, in our paper, we present results from qualitative interviews on urban (2012) and rural (2018) ageing experiences in the Czech Republic, combined with fresh insights based on focus groups with older urban and rural residents (2020). While the first set of individual interviews focused mostly on issues of spatial ageism and “age-friendliness” of the environment in a broader sense, the new data are being collected with a clear focus on the impacts of environmental change. We concentrate both on the variability of perceptions of climate change impacts between rural and urban environments (drought versus heat), and related everyday practices (coping strategies, home versus public space), as well as on how are these connected to the ways older people frame their understanding of contemporary changes and how they contextualize their interpretations in their own biographies and notions of spatial belonging and local memory. |
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