Author(s)

TANGAI MAREGA

Abstract

While energy innovation and climate action are essential to achieve the sustainable development goals, they can also produce unintended psychosocial harms that are often overlooked in global governance. This article explores how energy transitions – such as South Africa’s coal phase-out, wind energy projects in Kenya and cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo – have exacerbated mental health challenges including anxiety, trauma and social dislocation. Drawing on established frameworks for the social determinants of health, we analyse how energy policies frequently neglect emotional well-being. A review of international legal instruments, including major climate and health agreements, reveals significant governance gaps in emotional health protections. Even the foundational regulations for global health security tend to overlook mental health, highlighting structural and legal limitations such as weak enforcement, narrow scope and poor system integration. These omissions undermine community resilience and recovery. Failure to address mental health risks also violates established international human rights obligations. Inspired by models from other international agreements, we propose a binding ‘Mental Health Equity Transition Pact’ to integrate psychosocial safeguards into climate and energy policy, promote both economic and emotional resilience and support rights-based transitions.

Keywords

energy transition, global mental health, just transition, social determinants of health, climate policy, health policy, international law, cultural diplomacy, human rights, sustainable deve