Under this section of the hub you can find a diverse set of resources about Healthy Adaptations to inform your research or practice and learn about global interventions, their successes and challenges.
Resources take a range of different forms including research papers, policy briefs, reports, case studies, videos, and podcasts.
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A clear, accessible summary of how climate change affects health, safety, place, self, and belonging — and why it matters for well-being and fair, inclusive adaptation.
Date: 14/10/25
Climate adaptation must go beyond technical fixes to address the full spectrum of human well-being—objective, subjective and relational. Measures like hard infrastructure or relocation can unintentionally disrupt identity, community bonds and mental health, especially for vulnerable groups. Transformative, co-designed, context-specific strategies that integrate psychosocial factors are needed to build truly resilient and equitable futures.
Date: 06/05/25
Planned relocation as an adaptation response to climate change can unintentionally undermine the very well-being it aims to protect. Research in Ghana’s Volta Delta shows that those moved by government-led interventions reported lower overall life satisfaction, higher anxiety, weaker sense of safety, and diminished community attachment and identity compared with a nearby, non-relocated village facing the same risks. These findings highlight that effective adaptation must go beyond engineering: successful relocation requires inclusive planning, livelihood restoration, and ongoing psychosocial support to safeguard both physical safety and mental health.
Date: 06/05/25
Looking across different forms of adaptation to floods, we use existing literature to develop a typology of key domains of impact arising from interventions that are likely to shape health and wellbeing.
Date: 02/10/23
We examine how elements of well-being are at risk from climate change, and propose policy and research priorities that are oriented towards supporting well-being though a changing climate.
Date: 02/10/23
Find definitions for terms that are frequently used in the Healthy Adaptations Hub.
| Terminology | Definition |
|---|---|
| Affect | People’s emotional evaluation of experiences of everyday life. Affective responses to flood interventions are important for understanding the social consequences of adaptations and how these are distributed. Affective responses are also important for galvanising support for adaptation policies because of the way people can influence how they interpret social situations and their intended and actual behaviours. |
| Affective wellbeing | People’s emotional evaluation of everyday life experiences in terms of their preferences versus reality. |
| Place making | [Definition to come] |
The Healthy Adaptations Hub showcases research from a range of projects that have been undertaken by social scientists, health economists, demographers, epidemiologists, and hydrologists across multiple universities (see Underpinning Research for details on who’s been involved).
The Hub showcases a series of resources to support sustainable, health-focused climate risk adaptation, addressing mortality risk and other multi-faceted health impacts.
The Hub has been informed by underpinning research carried out as part of multiple projects addressing different aspects of these issues.
Get in touch with the Healthy Adaptations Team at:
Catherine Butler (University of Exeter) c.butler@exeter.ac.uk | Neil Adger (University of Exeter) n.adger@exeter.ac.uk | Stacey Heath (Open University) stacey.heath@open.ac.uk