The Climate Crisis and Breastfeeding: Opportunities for Resilience

Abstract

The climate crisis is an emerging global challenge that poses potential risks to breastfeeding practices and outcomes. There are multifaceted effects of climate change affecting the breastfeeding dyad across environmental, societal, and human health dimensions. Breastfeeding support in the face of climate change will require solutions at the structural level—healthcare, community, and workplace settings—and at the mother-infant dyad level. Breastfeeding can additionally be an adaptive response to crisis situations and can mitigate some of the environmental challenges associated with climate change. Despite the undeniable significance of climate change on breastfeeding (and vice versa), our perspective as experts in the field is that this topic has not been systematically addressed. Although we highlight some of the challenges, potential solutions, and co-benefits of breastfeeding in the context of climate change, there are numerous issues that could be further explored and necessitate additional preparedness planning.

Resiliency in Breastfeeding and Lactation Research: A Conversation About Scholastic Transparency, Bias, and Systems of Support

“…Through breastfeeding, we anticipate and prepare our children on a cellular level for their changing environment. As discussed by Cerceo et al (2024), breastfeeding fosters resilience in infant feeding because it is close, contained, and local; it doesn't have to be dependent on the built environment, but can be a system existing directly between two humans. In this moment of accelerated environmental change, human milk and breastfeeding are exquisitely important to our resiliency, and our ability to adapt and to extend ourselves into new experiences.…”