Age-Friendly and Climate Resilient Communities: A Grey–Green Alliance
The world’s population is aging while the Earth’s climate is warming. The climate change crisis poses threats to the aging population and requires concerted action. Steps to address these threats present opportunities for improving livability for people of all ages while addressing the underlying drivers of climate change. Yet prominent action frameworks such as the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities do not explicitly include climate resilience and sustainability as essential elements of age-friendly communities.
Dr. Holly Dabelko-Schoeny, Dr. Smitha Rao, Fiona Doherty, Anthony Traver and Marisa Sheldon, members of the OSU College of Social Work and Age-Friendly Innovation Center, along with Dr. Geoffrey Dabelko and Melissa Damico from the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service at Ohio University, collaborated on a journal article recently published is The Gerontologist.
In this essay, the researchers argue for the creation of a cross-cutting and interdependent sustainability and climate resilience domain to complement the existing interconnected WHO age-friendly domains of community and healthcare, communication and information, housing, civic participation and employment, outdoor spaces and buildings, social participation, respect and social inclusion, and transportation. These domains drive the community engagement, planning, action, and evaluation required by the communities who join the Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities.
The age-friendly network currently includes 1,445 communities, across 51 countries. The authors also discuss how the alignment of age-friendly and climate resilience networks strengthens local action and global advocacy through a shared vision for an age-friendly and climate resilient future.
The study concludes that WHO and age-friendly communities have an opportunity to advance better livability and climate resilience outcomes by explicitly integrating sustainability and climate resilience into the age-friendly community framework. Purposefully developing a Grey–Green Alliance and adding a ninth domain to the age-friendly communities network will facilitate research and action, further breaking down siloed approaches to these issues.
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