Speaker: Burcin Ikiz, Founder & Director, EcoNeuro
How (and why) are you taking action on climate change solutions in, for, and with your community?
Burcin Ikiz: Hello, my name is Burchinikis. I am the founder and director of Econero and the chair of International Neuroclimate Working Group. As a neuroscientist, I have been interested in brain health for over 20 years, looking at what causes the neurological and mental health disorders we see and how we can address them. About 4 or 5 years ago, I got really interested in the climate crisis. I wanted to contribute meaningfully to the actions that target the crisis. This was because I had young children and I was worried about their futures and futures of all children. And when I started looking for evidence on what we know about how climate change and related ecological disasters and environmental factors are impacting our brains, I could not find any evidence. This led me in founding this research initiative and action tank in bringing together scientists and clinicians, public health experts, community health workers, policymakers, and architects, advocates, and more together with the goal of understanding and addressing the impacts of climate change on our brains. Now we are not only expanding research and our understanding of these factors throughout the world, but we also are seeing how we can translate that into knowledge into policy action, advocacy, and community work to make the populations that are most vulnerable, more resilient and brain healthy.
Describe a moment when you felt the real-world impact of your work in climate solutions.
Burcin Ikiz: When I started the Climate Working Group, we, this was April 2024. We had about 20-30 people from 5 countries that were interested in this intersection of climate change and brain health, and within months we had more and more people from around the world coming in being part of our group because they were really concerned about their communities and their brain health. And today, a little bit more than a year later, we have more than 200 members from 45 different countries. Most of these countries are from the lower middle income countries where they are the most vulnerable and feel the impacts of climate change the most. We feel like we are really bringing the voice of the science, researchers, and lived experiences of the communities that are impacted the most by climate change into our understanding of the effects of the climate change on our on their brains and looking for solutions together. And these efforts had led to more research collaborations, anything from understanding how air pollution and heat impacts the cognition of school children in South and Southeast Asia as well as. that are looking into bringing um the vulnerability indexes, bringing vulnerability indexes to Latin American countries to be able to map the most vulnerable populations and to uh influence policies that will protect them. Another ways we have been working that has shown the impact of our the climate solutions we bring has been in training to new field of healthcare professionals in these impacts of climate change on the brain health.
Who or what inspires/inspired you to care about climate change and climate solutions?
Burcin Ikiz: If you told me 20 years ago that uh when I first started neuroscience and was studying all kinds of different brain disorders in the lab that one day I would be working in climate change, I would have never imagined that. But this change happened thanks to my children who everyday inspire me with their love of nature and animals and the goodness in their heart, and my worry as a parent on their future. About 5 years ago I was walking my son from kindergarten, and he asked me what climate change was. And up up to that point I knew the basics, but I had never thought that I could be part of that world. But as I started explaining to him what the how our world is warming and what it means to nature and the animals living in it, I realized he got very concerned because he loved animals. He loved nature and he didn't want anything to happen to them. This worried me too and made me realize I wanted to be part of the climate action to protect our planet, so I told him, let's go home and think about how we can contribute to climate action. And when I went home, I started thinking, how can I most meaningfully contribute to climate action and I thought, well, I study the brain. Let me see what we know about how climate change and brain inter interacts. And this led to a whole journey and to this day, every day I wake up thinking about. Just my children, but all the children around the world feeling that responsibility of bringing them a better future and making sure their copulation, their communities, and our planet is much healthier than where it is right now, and that's what inspires my work every day.
