Ageing Care and the Climate Crisis in Villages on the Spain-Portugal Border

CLIMAGECARE explores ageing social care and older people's care experiences in the context of the climate crisis in villages on the Spain-Portugal border.

The border and rural areas of Spain and Portugal share environmental and social conditions that impact the care of older people because depopulation processes and the lack of care policies in social and health programmes are causing a care crisis, and the current climate crisis is increasing the number of forest fires and the temperatures in these border areas, which mainly affect the ageing population.

This project adopts a critical and reflexive approach to understand how ageing care is delivered in these rural border areas in a context of climate crisis.

It analyses: (1) ageing social care in relation of the primary health system, community and families in the context of climate crisis events such as forest fires and increased temperatures, and (2) the daily care experiences of older people in the context of climate crisis events and their cultural construction of care and self-care based on their relationship with local care actors and the non-human environment.

The design of CLIMAGECARE is grounded in empirical and interdisciplinary research, crosscutting the fields of care studies, environmental studies and medical anthropology to understand the dynamics of the relationships between ageing care and the climate crisis.

The project will use qualitative research methods and a co-creation approach in two villages on the central Spain-Portugal border to answer the research questions.