A recent article, led by Ashlee Cunsolo, Director of the Labrador Institute of Memorial University in Canada, explores ecologically driven grief as a mental health response to climate change. The article, published in Nature Climate Change, discusses ecological grief in the context of physical ecological losses, loss of environmental knowledge and identity, and anticipated future loss. The authors also outline recommendations for future research on environmental grief.
āTo bear witness to ecological losses personally, or to the suffering encountered by others as they bear their own losses, is to be reminded that climate change is not just an abstract scientific concept. Rather, it is the source of much hitherto unacknowledged emotional and psychological pain, particularly for people who remain deeply connected to, and observant of, the natural world,ā write the authors.
More research is focusing on how climate change impacts mental health, and studies suggest it may lead to increased depression, anxiety, PTSD, and deaths by suicide. The American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica also sponsored a report on mental health and climate change. However, little research has studied climate change through the lens of grief and loss, which the authors term ecologically driven grief.
The authors define ecological grief as āthe grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change.ā
The authors view ecological grief as a ānatural response to ecological losses.ā They also understand ecological grief as a form of disenfranchised grief (i.e., grief that is not openly acknowledged by society). As a result, the authors suggest that āecological grief and the associated work of mourning, experienced in response to ecological losses are often left unconsidered, or absent, in climate change narratives, policy, and research.ā The authors argue that ecological grief is a critical framework to understand how climate change impacts psychological health and to develop coping strategies to reduce climate change-related suffering.
In the article, the authors draw from their previous research on grief responses to climate change in Canada and Australia. They outline three contexts for ecological grief: grief associated with (a) physical ecological losses, (b) loss of environmental knowledge, and (c) anticipated future losses.
Grief associated with physical ecological losses: The authors associated this form of grief with āthe physical disappearance, degradation and/or death of species, ecosystems, and landscapes.ā They described that it could be the result of an acute weather disaster (e.g., Hurricane Katrina) or in response to gradual ecological changes. They write, āgradual and incremental changes ā or āslow violenceā ā are often not considered, or are entirely invisible, due to the temporal dispersion and the lack of any particular identifier of impact or emergency.ā The authors give examples from their previous research with Inuit communities in Canada and communities in the Australian Wheatbelt who experience anger, sadness, and despair related to disconnection from the land and loss of a thriving ecosystem.
Grief associated with loss of environmental knowledge: The authors also discuss how climate change can impact the identity of people who have close relationships with nature. People who hold identities related to āknowing the landā and who feel pride in passing their environmental knowledge to future generations can experience a sense of loss of this knowledge and their identity due to climate change. āAn inability to prevent the degradation or loss of land can also negatively affect notions of personal identity and generate experiences of ecological grief,ā write the authors. For example, individuals with identities of being āgood farmersā may experience guilt and helplessness at not being able to protect their land. In previous research by the second author, a farmer in the Australian Wheatbelt stated, āItās terrible to know that the soil has been there forever, since the beginning of the Earth, and your greed and mismanagement makes it blow.ā
Grief associated with anticipated future losses: People can also experience anticipatory grief about expected future losses due to impending ecological changes. This type of grief is also connected future losses of culture and livelihood. Anticipatory grief is also closely tied to feelings of anxiety about climate change and may be especially challenging for children and youth. In previous research by the first author, a Canadian Inuit stated, āThere is nothing else [we can do], we canāt dwell on it. Then we would be all suicidal. You just have to do the best you can with what change is coming.ā
The authors also outline suggestions for future research on ecological grief. They recommend developing a theoretical foundation for environmental grief. This would help answer questions about whether ecological grief follows a similar model to other forms of grief and how personality, culture, and environment may influence it. The authors also suggest using people-place relationship frameworks as a āconceptual architectureā to examine how people develop relationships with places (e.g., having a relationship with the āhomeā). This could pave the way for research on whether certain ecological losses are more psychologically impactful than others (e.g., loss of a private home versus a public space).
The authors also recommend research on risk factors for experiencing ecological grief. For example, individuals who have close work and living relationships with the land are more likely to experience ecological grief. Additionally, people who live in areas with high climate risk and who have more vulnerabilities are likely to be more affected than others.
Research on ecological grief can also contribute to climate policy and how āloss and damageā are conceptualized in public policy ā the authors highlight that standard environmental assessments often do not capture intangible, psychological loss, which can result in undervaluing the costs of climate change. Future research on ecological grief could also be used to improve emerging ecotherapies, or therapies with the aim to help people cope with climate change.
Researching and addressing the psychological impacts of climate change are important in the Anthropocene, which the authors define as āan era in which people the world over are confronted with the prospect of unyielding ecological decline and the loss of environmental futures.ā
āGiven that we are living in a time of extraordinary ecological loss, and that these losses will not end any time soon, we anticipate, along with a small but growing number of scholars, that ecological grief will become an increasingly common human response to the losses encountered in the Anthropocene,ā they write.
Future research on ecological grief may be even more vital given the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changeās recent report that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, the atmosphere will warm to 1.5Ā° Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2040, resulting in increasing food shortage, wildfires, flooding, and significant losses of coral reefs.
The authors conclude:
āIndeed, to seriously engage with the concept of ecological grief is to become open, in a personal sense, to the magnitude of the ecological challenges facing our global society. There is much (grief) work to be done, and we need to do this work individually and collectively, publicly and privately, ethically and politically, in order to enhance our understanding of climate change impacts, and to expand discussions on what is to be done.ā
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Cunsolo, A., & Ellis, N. R. (2018). Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss. Nature Climate Change, 8(4), 275-281. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0092-2 (Link)
More research on this matter would definitely be a good thing. What do about President Trump, and his new Environmental Destruction Agency? Right here you see part of the solution rather than part of the problem. No doubt global warming affects us all. Given enough information, perhaps even our chief executive’s reasoning capacity will kick in.
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What about research into how helpless and frustrated some of us feel to stop the pigheaded climate alarmists whose proposed economic policies actually *would* lead to major destruction all over the world? Itās bizarre to me how left-wing bias is ubiquitous in the science field.
Or maybe the fact that the biological community shuns any of their colleagues who dares doubt their false Darwinian orthodoxy? The fact that this is contributing to millions and millions of people losing their faith in the true God, and choosing a destination straight to eternal damnation in Hell?
Again, bizarre.
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climate scientists tend to be pretty middle of the road in terms of politics.
Are you saying that climate denial is a right wing thing?
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DEFORESTATION !!!!!
Rivers in the Sky: How Deforestation Is Affecting Global Water Cycles https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-deforestation-affecting-global-water-cycles-climate-change
Global tree cover loss reached a record 29.7 million hectares (73.4 million acres) in 2016, according to new data from the University of Maryland released today on Global Forest Watch. The loss is 51 percent higher than the previous year, totaling an area about the size of New Zealand.
https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/10/global-tree-cover-loss-rose-51-percent-2016
100 metric tons of CO2 can accumulate in one acre of forest over time. Each person generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO2 per year. The carbon footprints of 18 average Americans can be neutralized by one acre of hardwood trees.
We don’t need anymore research we need those NWO sacks of crap and fake news Fox to CNN and everything in between to call out the real cause.
They just want to tax everything, I never see any real environmentalism on the news.
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You mean instead of grieving, fix the problem? Too radical!
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This is serious — it’s too late to save the environment, we need to find a drug specific to “ecological grief,” and FAST!!!
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Lol! I figured big Pharma must have developed a new pill for Climate Change grief, so the mental illnesses creators are fast at work creating a new āmental illness.ā
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Oldhead, SSRIs and SNRIs are used to “treat” depression, so I think Big Pharma would just repackage Zoloft and Paxil to address this grief problem.
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Our Mother will not die completely, but she may take a few billion years to recover before she is ready to try āintelligentā life again.
Iām not grieving. This Earth is my home and it has been destroyed by humans. Humans themselves havenāt been doing so well for a while either. I think a reboot on a planetary scale is justice served.
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I would like to see dinosaurs make a comeback. They lived in relative peace and prosperity for millions of years until the stupid asteroid wiped them out. Humans don’t deserve what we’ve been given because we destroy the land.
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Iām on Team Rex! Whoās with us?
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I’m on Team Asteroid myself.
I woke on Jan. 2 to see that my tent neighbor lost EVERYTHING he had to arson. He was not inside the tent when somebody decided to burn it down, had crashed at a friend’s place. He came ‘home’ to a pile of ash. Humanity? I think that’s been a failed experiment.
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Well, we know how the match between Team Rex and Team Asteroid ends so my money is on Team Asteroid. š
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An asteroid? Wasn’t it because they were too big to get into the Ark? That is what Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle said apparently.
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Have you seen the updated version of “The Day The Earth Stood Still” where it had been decided to “save the planet” — by eliminating the human race?
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You know, that would work…
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Earth Liberation Front – Igniting a Revolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO2pA5We34A
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Seems like a pretty disempowered viewpoint. Why don’t we do research on how to get people to value and take care of their environment, instead of giving up and dealing with the grief of failing to have done so?
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Joanna Maccy has worked on grief and empowerment around environmental issues for most of her life. https://www.joannamacy.net/main
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The people in the article who are directly affected by climate issues caused by others could still spread their stories to motivate people to change their ways. I don’t like to think that it’s all so hopeless. For a lot of us too, instead of grieving the loss of nature, we could start grieving the things we will have to give up in order to keep nature. Like saying goodbye to unnecessary purchases and consumption.
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Lets consume less Government. Remember that the worst polluter on planet Earth is not a major corporation– it’s the U.S. federal government. At least its partially closed right now.
https://ivn.us/2012/04/18/the-number-one-worst-polluter-on-earth-is-the-u-s-federal-government/
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Right on.
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What about corporate responsibility? Exxon reportedly knew more than thirty years ago that climate change was inevitable. Shouldn’t they have to pay for helping people who are suffering from ecological disasters?
I’m especially thinking about the recent disaster in south east Africa.
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Your sense of responsibility is orders of magnitude higher than that of a big corporation. Or apparently than most individuals. I wish more other people felt the same as you do about it.
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