Health in a changing climate: Perceptions of “broken relationships” during COVID-19 in Austria

Abstract

This article contributes to understanding health in a changing climate by analysing public perceptions of the root causes of the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria. Drawing on 209 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted between April 2020 and October 2021 in a country that was facing significant challenges regarding national climate targets at that time, the study explores how people linked health, nature, and politics during the pandemic. While many initially expressed hope that the COVID-19 Anthropause would catalyse sustainable change, this optimism soon faded. Over the following year and a half, participants increasingly identified the broken relationships between humans, nature, and things as the root cause of overlapping health, environmental, and climate crises. This culminated in a widespread awareness that personal health is inextricably connected to the wellbeing of the natural environment—and that systemic change, though considered unlikely at the time, is necessary to address these intersecting crises. Our findings show strong resonances between Austrian residents’ multidimensional understanding of health in times of climate change and insights from decolonial scholarship, Indigenous people’s knowledges, as well as global majority perspectives. In dialogue with environmental health, Planetary Health, and Indigenous scholarship, we draw out how participants conceived health as a condition shaped by various ‘natural’, biological, ecological, social, political, economic and other dimensions that interact over time and space. Highlighting this perspective from a global minority context raises more far-reaching questions about the need for decolonial repair to address climate-related health impacts.