Koi fish sculpture with focus group quote: "You're just not really certain when the season really started. You get a warm spell and then it's cold again. There's just no predicting - it's too erratic now."

Climate Perspectives

Summary of Findings from Focus Groups with Workers in Construction, Farming, Home Health Care, and Fishing

Climate change is already visible across the Metro Boston region, forcing individuals and communities to cope with increasingly severe weather, unpredictable harvests and workplace conditions, and greater risks from vector-borne and heat-related illnesses. The Climate Perspectives project integrates focus groups and participatory art-making to collect individuals' perspectives on the current and future impacts of climate change and emerging resilience strategies. The project focuses on industries and workforces with greater exposure to climate impacts and employees who serve climate-vulnerable populations as part of their work.

In 2019, MAPC facilitated four focus groups and conducted follow-up interviews with managers, employees, and representatives from the construction, farming, home health care, and fishing industries.

Download the full report here and see key findings below.

MAPC and collaborating artists are integrating the findings into an art installation, "Schools of Thought on Climate Change." The installation helps communicate the focus group findings through sculpture and video and serves as a platform to collect additional perspectives from the public.

This project is a collaboration between members of MAPC's public health, economic development, and arts and culture departments.

Questions? Contact Jeanette Pantoja at [email protected].

Read the Full Report

Key Findings

Home Health Care

Climate Impacts

Extreme temperatures and lack of adequate weatherization of clients’ homes undermines client and Personal Care Aide (PCA) health.
Poor air quality and increased allergens may be contributing to seasonal respiratory health issues among clients and PCAs.
PCAs have few alternatives to traveling during severe weather to provide care to their clients despite the difficulty and risks.
PCAs face additional mobility barriers during severe weather events caused by local authorities failure to plan for and accommodate PCAs need to travel during these events.
Storm-related risks include power outages that can lead to loss of power to clients’ medical devices.
PCAs do not feel adequately prepared for a climate-related emergency, but recognize the critical nature of their role.

Barriers to Resilience

Participants want more training on climate change. Specifically, they want to develop capacity around emergency preparedness and on the climate health issues.
Clients often need financial assistance for utilities and access to free or low-cost home weatherization.
PCAs do not have formal recognition as part of their client’s emergency response team. They specifically asked for personal identification to be carried on their person and placed on their vehicle, so that they can more easily attend to their clients during a severe weather event.

Resilience Assets/Strategies

PCAs share a strong commitment to their clients. This commitment and pride in their work motivates PCAs to persevere in a stressful and oftentimes poorly resourced work environment.
Focus group participants are members of the 1199 SEIU Healthcare Workers union. The union facilitates access to information, training, and mobilization that can be leveraged to spread messages about climate change and build adaptive capacity among PCAs.
Temp or “relief” PCAs may be able to provide additional support to clients when the client’s primary PCA is unable to travel to them in the event of a storm or emergency

Farming

Climate Impacts

Warmer and less predictable seasonal conditions compromise crop planting, crop development, and harvests.
Erratic weather conditions and high summer heat undercuts the perceived benefit of a longer growing season.
Less predictable conditions also makes it more difficult to complete on farm improvements.
Farm operations may be inadequately protected to deal with the impact of extreme heat on worker health.
Mild winters, storms, and humidity contribute to the introduction of new pests and growth of existing pests.
More frequent precipitation contributes to work interruptions and poor soil maintenance. Humidity has also makes crop and hay storage more challenging.
Sea level rise and coastal storms combine to damage coastal cranberry bogs. One farmer anticipates having to eventually abandon his farm.
Cumulative climate impacts affect farmers’ ability to consistently bring products to market and undermines farmers’ efforts to sustain a stable base of customers.

Barriers to Resilience

Farmers need help understanding what changes to anticipate, including which crops varieties and livestock are more suitable for a changing climate.
Participants would like to see greater public and governmental focus on adaptation that is more reflective of their own sense of urgency.
Regulations can make it more difficult for farmers to adopt some adaptive practices, specifically composting.
Current regulations may not adequately account for changing climate conditions.

Resilience Assets/Strategies

Participants anticipate that farmers will increasingly utilize greenhouses and controlled environments to protect crops from highly variable weather conditions.
Farmers have increasingly adopted cover-cropping, silvipasture, and no-till practices as a way to promote soil health and protect soil from extreme precipitation and other climate impacts.
Solar arrays help control electricity costs and assist with climate mitigation.
Participants identified grant and technical assistance programs that have been supportive of their adaptation and resilience efforts.
Policies that support local food production, like institutional purchasing of local food, support the overall viability and resilience of smaller scale agriculture.

Fishing

Climate Impacts

Warming ocean temperatures are contributing to a northward shift in the range of many species.
The species that are locally increasing in population include both commercially-viable species and invasive species with disruptive impacts on local habitats and other species.
The frequency and breadth of emergency shellfish closures has increased following extreme precipitation events.
Fishing and processing facilities are vulnerable to damage from sea level rise and severe storms.

Barriers to Resilience

Resilience Assets/Strategies

Construction

Climate Impacts

Less predictable seasonal conditions impact project scheduling.
Warmer winter conditions allow operations to continue later into the year.
Climate change motivated changes to building codes and regulations influence the types of new projects.
Participants anticipate growing demand for resilience infrastructure.
Participants are more vigilant about worker heat exposure, but it is not an urgent concern.
Additional impacts include storm damage to worksites (e.g. power outages, flooding) and related increases to insurance costs.

Barriers to Resilience

The construction workforce is aging.
Cost, reliability, and convenience are barriers to adoption of clean energy equipment and technology.
Uncertainty about the anticipated long-term impacts contributes to a lack of urgency about climate change.
Participants perceive a lack of decisive government action on climate change. Some were skeptical about public commitment to new funding streams for resilience projects.
Participants do not perceive having full agency to determine how they will adapt. They see themselves as responsive to public policy and client needs.

Resilience Assets/Strategies

Construction promotes resilience through living wages, job security, and many opportunities for skill development.
Participants were not deterred by the notion of change. Adaptation is built into the culture of construction.
Participants described worksite policies and practices that promote worker health and enhance worksite sustainability.
Licensing boards have been effective in quickly building awareness and instituting change across the industry through new curriculum and licensing requirements.

Voices on Climate

MAPC Artist-in-Residence Hortense Gerardo worked with filmaker Monica Cohen and the Boom House to interview two people effected by climate change: fisherman Jamie Bassett and farmer Dave Dumaresq. The short "video-lets" integrate into the Schools of Thought art installation, but also serve on their own as powerful reminders of the current costs of climate change and how people are adapting innovatively.

Art Installation

Artists Carolyn Lewenberg and Nia Holley crafted four separate groups of fish using gloves and materials from each industry: for example, burlap for farmers, gauze and scrubs for home health care workers, fishing nets for those in the fishing industry, and orange safety netting for construction workers.

In the "Schools of Thought on Climate Change" installation, the koi hang among lanterns printed with quotes from the focus groups. Viewers can read how climate change effects people’s livelihoods: species migration, storm damage to soils and equipment, power outages, and extreme heat risks to both outdoor workers and consumers of home healthcare. Viewers can also learn about actions people are taking to respond and prepare: clean energy adoption, worker safety training, and partnering with institutional buyers to develop markets for new seafood products, including invasive species.

Read our Planning101 blog post for more!

This project was conceived, designed, and created by: Carolyn Lewenberg, Daniel Koff, Hortense Gerardo, and Nia Holley (2019); Materials: mixed media, wire.

Where Can I See It?

Coming Up:

Past Installations:

Wake Up the Earth Festival, Jamaica Plain: May 2019
Cambridge Arts River Festival: June 2019
Boston GreenFest and Tech Expo: August 2019
City of Boston Racial Equity and Climate Roundtable: November 2019
MetroCommon 2050 Speaker Series: Climate Equity Forum: December 2019