A Global Platform for Climate and Mental Health

Summary

In 2025, Billion Minds Institute (BMI) , with Climate Cares Centre (CCC) at Imperial College London, committed to launching a Resilience Observatory as a platform to co-create a community-led and scalable model for mental health care in the most climate-affected parts of the world. Disaster and damages from climate change increase psychological distress, trauma, violence, suicide, and mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, and substance use. Over the next two years, early adopter initiatives supported through the Resilience Observatory will reach 54,500 individuals. By 2027, BMI and CCC will establish four regional hubs and develop hub toolkits to guide regional scale-up and replication and disseminate policy guidance to more than 1500 city governments in collaboration with Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) to improve living conditions in the face of climate change and mental well-being of communities around the world.

Approach

Billion Minds Institute (BMI) , with Climate Cares Centre (CCC) , Imperial College London, commits to launching a platform to co-create a community-led and scalable model for mental healthcare in the most climate-affected parts of the world.Over the next two years, BMI and CCC will establish 4 regional hubs and develop Hub toolkits to guide regional scale-up and replication, and disseminate policy guidance to over 1500 city governments in collaboration with Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) .
BMI and CCC have established a global Resilience Observatory to engage and integrate the efforts of organizations leading climate adaptation and psychosocial resilience efforts worldwide. In coordination with the UNFCCC Race to Resilience, Billion Minds hosted dialogues with 250+ frontline climate and mental health organizations to identify key needs and co-create a playbook for scaling community mental healthcare to address the unique psychosocial impacts of climate change.. A set of organizations leading “Early Adopter” initiatives, to model integration of psychosocial resilience programming in climate adaptation efforts, came together to design and launch the Observatory as a hub for knowledge sharing and learning. These Early Adopter initiatives serve hundreds of communities, reaching 54,000 individuals. Key lessons and insights generated through the Observatory will accelerate the development and scale of a model to support psychosocial resilience in climate-affected communities. The Observatory provides technical support to Early Adopter clusters ranging from Bangladesh cities evolving community mental health as part of urban planning, responses to climate-driven rural migration, to addressing mental health challenges of smallholder farmers across Africa.

Using Developmental Evaluation and Improvement Science methods, the Observatory will foster the adoption and standardization of an integrated model through knowledge-sharing, rapid testing, and cross-pollination of effective practices.

Action Plan

Year 1: Observatory Launch and Pilot Phase Q1: Launch inaugural Hub (hosted by AMARI) and begin monthly coordination across 8 Early Adopter clusters (27 partner organizations) . Pilot digital Hub functions.
Q2: Initiate 2-3 structured data sharing projects, hold ~4 quarterly cross-cluster meetings, and pilot the Climate Cares online portal as an open-source knowledge platform.
Q3: Deliver cluster-specific dashboards and agree on usage protocols. Begin cross-regional planning (South Asia, Caribbean/LatAm, Brazil) to prepare for Hub expansion.
Q4: Complete first-year evaluation, publish Hub replication toolkit, and release 3 ICLEI policy guidance to a 1,500+ city network.
Year 2: Hub Expansion and Scale Preparation Q1 : Launch 3 additional regional Hubs, expanding member organizations across 4 regional hubs by ~20.
Q2 : Convene a cross-Observatory summit to begin to assess policy-related scaling opportunities. Goal to have 100+ participants from member and policy organizations with 10+ policy partnerships established.
Q3: Update Hub implementation toolkit approaches and assess Climate Cares and GCCHE digital learning and platform capabilities. .
Q4: Complete impact evaluation and launch an open-source platform supporting expanded 50+ member organizations.

Background

The scale and massive health and social impact of unmet mental health compels solutions that break out of clinic walls. Tools of care for illness and promotion of mental health need to be anchored within communities, and empower the ways they collectively respond to other critical challenges they face; especially challenges that drive mental health risks to begin with. This approach is especially urgent for adapting to the climate crisis.

Disaster and damages from climate change sharply elevate psychological distress, trauma, violence, suicide, and mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, and substance use. Climate change could drive the population-level mental health burden up by 50% by 2050 (Liu, 2025) . That cumulative burden represents not only a public health crisis, but an alarming social one. It diminishes the psychological strengths underlying collective wellbeing, trust, agency, and cohesion essential for climate adaptation and resilience itself. So building psychological resilience in the face of climate change means more efficiently and effectively embedding mental health capacity within local climate adaptation capacity.

The global mental health field has been an engine for innovation to do that. The field has generated various ways to adapt effective mental health care, promotion, and prevention interventions so they can be performed by non-professionals. These “task-sharing” approaches can enable nonspecialist health workers to potentially meet over 90% of mental health needs in low- and middle-income countries (MHI, 2025) .
Realizing that potential—meeting the challenge of closing care gaps and bolstering communities to tackle other challenges that are at one and the same time major threats to mental health–will require new ways of implementing task-sharing so all sorts of grassroots organizations and institutions in the frontlines of those challenges lead, learn, and own mental health solutions.
The Billion Minds Institute’s initiative accelerates a global platform– the Resilience Observatory– so the frontlines of climate adaptation can meet that challenge.

Progress Update

Partnership Opportunities

BMI and CCC are seeking resources to i) address remaining funding gaps for the founding cohort of Observatory Early Adopters, ii) BMI and CCC overall administrative and operations coordination, and iii) Regional Hub leaders and doctoral/postdoctoral capacity.,Through this Commitment, BMI and CCC will manage and coordinate expert Hubs to put well-tested global mental health tools and methods into the hands of mobilized community members in the most climate-affected parts of the world. Doing so will accelerate and extend the reach of global mental health strategies, working through and strengthening credible local grassroots climate adaptive capacity. Hubs will anchor peer learning communities supporting implementation, evaluation, and capacity building for these respective local organizations to incorporate psychological resilience within their collective work around climate resilience. BMI and CCC will also make available an online resource portal and workspace to share case studies, data, and learnings across the Observatory network of adopters, and as a point of entry for new adopters, as a path to scale.