Grey and Green: Can the Two Walk Together? Challenges to Climate Planning for an Aging Population: Perspectives of Israeli Policy Stakeholders and Planners
Shvat Eilat, Liat AyalonAbstract
Background and Objectives
Climate change disproportionately affects older adults, yet age-friendly planning and climate adaptation remain disconnected in municipal implementation. This study examines barriers to integrating Age-Friendly Plans (AFPs) and Climate Adaptation Plans (CAPs) in Israeli municipalities, where both frameworks were recently introduced nationwide.
Research Design and Methods
We conducted semi-structured interviews with 39 policy stakeholders, planners, municipal administrators, and academics involved in age-friendly or climate adaptation initiatives. Interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify barriers preventing integration.
Results
Four interconnected barriers emerged, operating at macro and micro levels. At the macro level, knowledge gaps about climate-aging connections and resource constraints limit municipal capacity. At the micro level, narrow institutional framing that reduces aging to welfare concerns and fear-based avoidance of both aging and climate change impede implementation. These barriers function as a self-reinforcing system: structural knowledge gaps enable cognitive barriers, while fear-based avoidance influences institutional priorities and resource allocation.
Discussion and Implications
Our two-level barrier model demonstrates how macro-level structural constraints and micro-level cognitive and psychological barriers reinforce one another, systematically maintaining policy separation despite clear resonances. Successful integration requires interprofessional collaboration, cognitive reframing, capacity-building, active local government leadership, sustained funding mechanisms, and proactive governance structures that support integration across policy domains.