Summary
Clinical psychologist Manasi Kumar argues that climate loss-and-damage policy should recognize and measure mental-health harms alongside damage to livelihoods, ecosystems and cultural ties. Her Nature World View draws on experiences in coastal Kenya and Gujarat.
A Nature World View published on 21 September 2026 argues that climate loss-and-damage policy should recognize mental health as a harm to assess and address—not only as an issue for adaptation programmes. Manasi Kumar, a clinical psychologist and professor of population health at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, makes the case from her work with communities facing climate pressures.
Kumar describes climate losses as extending beyond homes, income and livelihoods. They can also involve the erosion of traditions, knowledge passed between generations, community identity and people’s sense of belonging and hope. Her argument is that these effects should be visible in the frameworks governments use to assess climate-related harm.
From coping with impacts to recognizing loss
The article says that when climate policy addresses mental health, it often does so through adaptation measures such as preparedness, psychological first aid, resilience programmes and stronger health systems. Kumar considers these investments important, but argues they address only part of the problem: some communities may be unable to sustain a way of life as climate pressures accumulate.
She recounts conversations with coastal communities in Kenya, where concerns about declining fish catches, damaged marine ecosystems and shrinking livelihoods also included fears about cultural ties to the sea. Kumar reports hearing concerns about anxiety and other social pressures as poverty intensified. These are observations from her professional work, not population-level estimates of how common particular harms are.
Kumar also describes female salt workers in Gujarat who struggle to work in rising temperatures that at times exceed 50 °C. She says the heat compounds physical hardship, economic insecurity and chronic stress. The example illustrates how climate exposure, work and mental wellbeing can intersect in people’s daily lives.
A measurement question for climate policy
The UN loss-and-damage framework, as described in the article, offers a route for addressing harms that are not purely economic. Kumar argues that mental health should be treated as a legitimate area for public investment, assessment and institutional accountability, rather than being left solely to adaptation policy.
That raises a practical challenge: how should mental-health harms be valued when climate change also disrupts livelihoods, social cohesion and cultural identity? Kumar calls for governments to measure these losses, but the World View is a policy argument rather than a proposed measurement framework. It does not specify indicators or a valuation method. Its central contribution is to make the case that such harms belong in the discussion of climate loss and damage.