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Embodied experiences of environmental and climatic changes in landscapes of everyday life in Ghana
Abstract
Science and policy attention to global environmental and climatic change has been growing substantially. Yet, the psychological and emotional distress and pain triggered by these transformations have been largely ignored, particularly among poor and marginalized populations whose livelihoods depend on the living land. Building upon key geographical concepts of landscapes and place and embodied engagements within, we focus on environmentally-induced distress and loss of belonging (‘solastalgia’) in the coupled context of environmental and climatic changes and internal migration in Ghana. We assess the differential emotional experiences and memory among those who migrate from deteriorating environments in the North to urban slums in the capital Accra and those who stay behind in these altered homes. We use participatory mapping and 'walking journeys' in northern regions to examine understandings of landscapes of everyday life and identify places that induce solastalgia. Results illustrate that the combination of withered crops, drying up of wells, loss of beauty, and deteriorating social networks trigger strong emotional responses, in particular feelings of sadness. We conclude that these emotional responses are expressions of solastalgia in what we call “hollow homes” where place and self of agrarian livelihoods undergo both figurative and literal desiccation.
... Two articles in the review referred to classic concepts within the field of social psychology, such as ingroup/outgroup and intergroup dynamics, contact hypothesis (Stanley et al., 2022) and social identity theory (Pucker et al., 2023;Stanley et al., 2022). Other theoretical concepts mentioned were "solastalgia", used to refer to the distress resulting from the experience of environmental change (Pucker et al., 2023;Tschakert et al., 2013); kinship, to describe how humans are part of nature (Pucker et al., 2023); and conflict perception (Koubi et al., 2018). Only a few studies used critical frameworks, such as the discursive approach to the decision-making model (Ayeb-Karlsson et al., 2020), a transdisciplinary framework (Blakeman et al., 2023), or a dignity framework for mobility inspired by Pacific psychologies, critical community psychology and social justice framework (Yates et al., 2023). ...
... A few articles combined data collected from human participants with analysis of documents, reports, newspapers or governmental statistics (e.g., Issifu et al., 2022;Wolsko & Marino, 2016). Only a few studies used participatory approaches, such as community and participatory mapping (e.g., Tschakert et al., 2013). Yates et al. (2023) applied the Talanoa methodology -a methodology embedded in Pacific values -and conducted several group discussions. ...
... Climate impacts exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and affect people's lives and livelihoods (Mallick et al., 2023;Rai, 2022), but it is the lack of socioeconomic conditions that often triggers the decision to migrate (Adams, 2016). For example, Tschakert et al. (2013) show that climate-related events threaten people's well-being, leading to a lack of income, conflict and chaos, poor crop yields and insufficient food. Ultimately, it is the lack of income, the loss of access to fertile lands, and the absence of jobs that lead to the decision to migrate (Tschakert et al., 2013). ...
There have been multiple calls to examine the links between climate change and migration across different fields. This article reviews climate-related migration from a socio-psychological perspective. It examines the topics covered in existing literature, the geographical distribution of studies, and the theoretical and methodological frameworks adopted. A systematic search in peer-reviewed databases was conducted, following PRISMA guidelines and covering studies published until 2 June 2023. Peer-reviewed articles focusing on human climate-related migration, reporting empirical data, and addressing socio-psychological dimensions and/or approaches were included. In total, 25 studies were analysed. Results suggested an increasing interest in the topic in the last decade and that most studies focused on internal migrants. From a methodological perspective, we found a lack of studies using critical and participatory methodologies. Additionally, our narrative synthesis suggested that: socio-political and climate vulnerabilities are intertwined; dimensions of place attachment and sense of community are key in explaining how people deal with climate change and decide to remain or to migrate; communities affected by climate change and climate-related migration face health and well-being challenges. Finally, a few studies suggested the importance of looking at public attitudes towards climate migrants and recognising climate justice dimensions in climate migration. We critically discuss these and other results and possible avenues for future research in the fields of social and community psychology.
... West and Central Africa have also experienced flooding, which is becoming increasingly erratic (see Centre for Human Security, 2013;Nkeki et al., 2013;Reliefweb, 2020). The adverse effects of climatic risks on surviving victims trigger psychological trauma such as depression, reduction of self-value and self-worth due to an individual's inability to engage in the livelihood activity (crop farming) they were customarily used to , as well as catalyze substance abuse and an increase in domestic violence (Tschakert et al., 2013). The negative consequences of flooding may be precisely why creating interventions aimed at ensuring effective flood preparation for households is extremely important. ...
... The restriction of movement due to floodwaters not only disrupts daily routines, but also isolates individuals from social and religious activities, catalyzing the feeling of loneliness, fear, anxiety, and disenfranchisement by restricting their mobility. This finding closely aligns with studies conducted in Ghana, South Africa, and India (Tschakert et al., 2013;Padhy et al., 2015;. However, no respondent underlined solastalgiaan emotion that emerges as a result of a sense of desolation, detachment and grieving in response to irrevocable changes to landscapes that an individual feels connected to while one is still residing in the space (Albrecht et al., 2007). ...
... Another plausible reason for adopting the aforementioned measures aimed at mitigating the adverse effects of flooding, apart from those who adopted flood insurance, may be due to their strong affinity for an environment they have grown to love; a place that symbolizes solace and is laced with rich histories where migrating out of such environment may rapidly erode such meanings (Tschakert et al., 2013;Ebhuoma et al., 2020). Thus, it is not surprising that the increasing occurrences of flooding in the region triggered psychological distress, the resultant effect of a changing environment has metamorphosed the place from the solace they were once accustomed to. ...
... Among vulnerable populations, climate change often results in alienation, lack of belonging, and demoralization with or without specific psychiatric disturbances [52]. Psychological harm was also inflicted from damage to homes and possessions, global migration, added grief of losing/leaving loved ones, seeing parents and caregivers undergo stressful relocations, and breakdowns in social networks and economic security all appear to exacerbate feelings of solastalgia [9,40,45,50,96,131]. ...
... In their integrative review of the literature, Galway et al. [9] discussed solastalgia related to individuals and communities who are witnessing climate change and the associated environmental degradation that impacts physical health sequelae, as well as mental health consequences. Solastalgia is characterized as having often overlapping emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions [9,40,50,96,131] Galway et al. [9] found that sources of environmental change causing solastalgia include extreme weather events/natural disasters (e.g., floods, droughts, hurricanes); prolonged environmental transformation; land clearing/deforestation, resource extraction/development (e.g., mining), gentrification/changing the built environment, displacement or appropriation of land/ political violence/war; rapid industrial development; and climate change as a unique source of environmental change. Climate migration is exacerbated in the setting of violence, conflict, and war, and is well established as a unique contributor to mental health challenges [13]. ...
... These various forms of distress have been described as having three classes of psychological impacts: Direct (e.g., acute or traumatic effects of extreme weather events and a changed environment); indirect (e.g., threats to emotional well-being based on observation of impacts and concern or uncertainty about future risks); and psychosocial (e.g., chronic social and community effects of heat, drought, migrations, and climate-related conflicts, and post-disaster adjustment [25]. Psychological distress was noted across multiple populations -among adolescents [57,124,126], adults [31,36,58,122], older adults [38], people who have [56,82,131], and among land-vulnerable persons [33,54,55,59,115,123]. Symptoms of psychological distress were described in the results as feelings of loss and grief, despondency, suffering despair, helplessness, hopelessness [43,48,55,135] and in sleep disturbances [59]. ...
Background
Climate change has been shown to be directly linked to multiple physiological sequelae and to impact health consequences. However, the impact of climate change on mental health globally, particularly among vulnerable populations, is less well understood.
Objective
To explore the mental health impacts of climate change in vulnerable populations globally.
Methods
We performed an integrative literature review to identify published articles that addressed the research question: What are the mental health impacts of climate change among vulnerable populations globally? The Vulnerable Populations Conceptual Model served as a theoretical model during the review process and data synthesis.
Findings/Results
One hundred and four articles were selected for inclusion in this review after a comprehensive review of 1828 manuscripts. Articles were diverse in scope and populations addressed. Land-vulnerable persons (either due to occupation or geographic location), Indigenous persons, children, older adults, and climate migrants were among the vulnerable populations whose mental health was most impacted by climate change. The most prevalent mental health responses to climate change included solastalgia, suicidality, depression, anxiety/eco-anxiety, PTSD, substance use, insomnia, and behavioral disturbance.
Conclusions
Mental health professionals including physicians, nurses, physician assistants and other healthcare providers have the opportunity to mitigate the mental health impacts of climate change among vulnerable populations through assessment, preventative education and care. An inclusive and trauma-informed response to climate-related disasters, use of validated measures of mental health, and a long-term therapeutic relationship that extends beyond the immediate consequences of climate change-related events are approaches to successful mental health care in a climate-changing world.
... Much of the research on affective health, wellbeing, ecological degradation and climate change has been done in the US or Australia while many other parts of the world are underrepresented in these studies (Tschakert et al., 2013;Galway et al., 2019). This matters because populations with livelihoods directly dependent on ecosystem services and functions are found all over the world. ...
... This matters because populations with livelihoods directly dependent on ecosystem services and functions are found all over the world. These populations tend to be the most vulnerable to solastalgia as their immediate needs and livelihoods are directly affected by environmental degradation (Tschakert et al., 2013;Poma, 2018;Iniguez-Gallardo et al., 2021). ...
... Such impacts on the life of people and communities may pass unseen, mostly due to research on climate change primarily being focused on its biophysical and economical aspects. Nonetheless, the impact on culture and affective life of populations is highly meaningful in the context of adaptation to climate change, especially for those populations whose livelihoods are heavily resource-dependent (Adger et al., 2013;Tschakert et al., 2013;Brown et al., 2019;Marshall et al., 2019). The risk of an increasingly weakened sense of agency is that it might create a vicious cycle where affective stress caused by environmental degradation limits and biases the possibility to see opportunities for action (Yang et al., 2018), linked to conditions such as depression, hopelessness, and inaction. ...
In the last few years, there has been an interest in understanding the impact of environmental change and degradation on people's affective life. This issue has become particularly pressing for populations whose form of life is heavily dependent on ecosystem services and functions and whose opportunities for adaptation are limited. Based on our work with farmers from the Xochimilco urban wetland in the southwest of Mexico City, we begin to draw a theoretical approach to address and explain how environmental degradation impacts people's affective life and sense of agency. Farmers who were part of our project referred to a sense of despair and helplessness toward the loss of the ecosystem and their traditional farming-based form of life. From the perspective of phenomenology, enactivism and ecological psychology, we argue that the loss of this form of life in the area is related to the degradation of socio-ecological systems, limiting the opportunities for people to relate meaningfully to others and the environment. We posit that losing meaningful interaction with the environment generates a feeling of loss of control while leading farmers to feel frustrated, anxious and stressed. Such affective conditions have a direct impact on their sense of agency. In terms of adaptation, the negative interaction between degradation, affective states and a diminished sense of agency can create a downward spiral of vulnerability, including political vulnerability.
... Whilst sustainability transformations are seen as desirable, voluntary shifts in the world-system, environmental threats and trends are the undercurrent of a planet transforming in response to human activity. These threats and trends represent undesirable, involuntary transformations (Barry, 2012;Tschakert et al., 2013. Though perceptions of agency and desirability both stem from people's everyday lived experience, this is often lost or simply assumed in the movement into abstract systems science and governance (Tschakert 2013). ...
... These threats and trends represent undesirable, involuntary transformations (Barry, 2012;Tschakert et al., 2013. Though perceptions of agency and desirability both stem from people's everyday lived experience, this is often lost or simply assumed in the movement into abstract systems science and governance (Tschakert 2013). ...
... People's priorities may lie in more proximate concerns about risks, safety, desire, and the reliability and accountability of those entrusted with governance responsibilities (Ensor et al., 2019). Changes may also involve different forms of loss and create various emotional affects (Tschakert et al., 2013;Albrecht, 2019). These are dimensions of transformations that are not amenable to abstraction and reduction to the quantitative, technical criteria associated with the planetary perspective. ...
Transformation studies have been leaning towards the more practical aspects of change processes and have not yet dealt sufficiently with their personal and political dimensions. They are arguably constrained in doing so if they are either overly focussed on systems and how to control them or on individualistic values and behaviours. In this study we show how the actually-occurring societal transformations that people face can be usefully approached through the lenses of dialogical sense-making and critical phenomenology. While distinct, these approaches share a concern with aspects missed when transformation is abstracted and alienated from people’s lives; namely people’s lived experiences during times of change, and the conditions of possibility for these experiences. Dialogical sense-making explores how people create meaning around transformations, through interactions with other people, with different lines of arguments, and as part of broader public discourse. Critical phenomenology engages with subjectivity and lived experience, and with the role of foundational as well as socio-culturally dominant yet contingent structures in shaping our ways of perceiving, experiencing and knowing the world. Through a discussion of insights from these approaches, we show how they offer tools that enable new questions about transformative change as it is experienced and made sense of. Situating analyses of transformation from within a focus on experience brings us closer to understanding the significance of change processes in people’s lives, and allows for an inquiry into the conditions of experience, including transformative experiences.
... The literature does not fully explore the complexity and ambivalence of residents' emotions toward tourism development and its environmental impacts. Studies of emotional geography have focused on criticisms of changes in the natural environment and nostalgia for the original environment (Kearns and Collins, 2012;Brugger et al., 2013;Tschakert et al., 2013) but have rarely considered the effects of economic benefits on emotions about such ecological changes (Komu, 2019). In less economically developed areas, people generally have an urgent desire to escape poverty and improve their living conditions. ...
... Empirical studies have illustrated that distress can be induced by the loss of various types of ecosystems and landscapes. For instance, Tschakert et al. (2013) reported that the destruction of forests, depletion of water resources, and disappearance of beautiful scenery generated fear, anger, disappointment, and helplessness among the residents of northern Ghana. Due to global warming, glaciers in many mountainous areas have started retreating, and therefore, the residents of these areas, who rely on glacial meltwater for survival, feel a sense of loss, crisis, and anxiety (Brugger et al., 2013). ...
... (PY-F-39). The loss of their clean and peaceful living environment has damaged Bama residents' sense of belonging and attachment and induced "ecological grief," which echoes the findings from previous studies (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018;Hess et al., 2008;Kearns and Collins, 2012;Tschakert et al., 2013). ...
Studies on residents' attitudes toward tourism development either assume that residents are unemotional "homo economics" or frame their emotions as forming rigid patterns. Following emotional approach, this study on Bama in China argues that residents' emotions toward tourism development and its environmental impacts are dynamic and ambivalent. Qualitative methods such as semi-structured interview and observation were used to collect data. The results show that during tourism development, interactions with outsiders encouraged the residents to realize the symbolic healing effects of their living environment and develop feelings of amazement and pride. However, continuous development had negative effects on the physical and symbolic environments, which induced complex emotional responses in the residents, including dislike, dissatisfaction, tolerance, anger, and fear. However, in this wealth-building stage, the residents' ecological grief is compensated by economic growth and has not evolved to resisting actions against development. The emotional ambivalence between eagerness to economic prosperity and concern of ecological loss still exists in Bama and was enhanced in the shutdown of tourism caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Further research should explore whether, and how ecological concerns about a tourism location may override potential economic gains and encompass anti-development actions.
... Arguably, a damaged home environment can cause distress for the residents, which could result in anxiety, anger, sadness, and discomfort (see Warsini et al., 2014). These could set in motion a series of unpleasant outcomes not limited to social fragmentation, substance abuse and domestic violence (Tschakert et al., 2013). For instance, some small-scale farmers in Afghanistan committed suicide due to their inability to pay back landowners following a bad harvest (Hasrat-Nazimi & Benzow, 2012). ...
... The first, solastalgia, pays delicate attention to understanding the emotional dimensions of 'disrupted mind-nature relationships' (Tschakert et al., 2013, p. 13). Generally, studies within this field describe feelings birthed in people as a result of negative environmental changes which, in turn, compromises their quality of life (Albrecht, 2007;Brugger et al., 2013;Tschakert et al., 2013). The second focuses on place-based attachment. ...
... Somewhat similar conclusions have been reached in studies that have analysed the distresses caused by environmental and land use changes in the United States (Hendryx & Innes-Wimsatt, 2013), Australia (Hanna et al., 2011;O'Brien et al., 2014) and Canada (Brugger et al., 2013;Cunsolo & Ellis, 2018). In the context of the developing South, however, studies are yet to embrace the concept of solastalgia in theorising the distresss caused by ecological crisis, albeit research conducted in Ghana (Tschakert et al., 2013) and Indonesia (Warsini et al., 2014) are notable exceptions. Although the study by Paprocki (2018), in Bangladesh, did not utilise the solastagia theory, yet, it was evident in the response of a man who had migrated from the southwest (rural community) to Dhaka in pursuance of better economic opportunity. ...
Environmental and climatic changes have become issues of global concern partly because of their ability to disrupt activities connected to people's livelihood. Yet, the emotional distress caused by these changes and the factors responsible for place-based attachment, especially in the Global South, have received scant attention to date. Drawing on the theories of 'solastalgia'-sadness caused by environmental change and the ensuing emotions it evokes-and place-based attachment, this article analysed the embodied experiences of climatic and environmental changes on rural households in KwaMaye, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Primary data was obtained qualitatively. Findings indicate that environmental and climatic changes, which have manifested in the form of increased soil infertility, soil erosion, mole and termite infestations and increased drought conditions , have undermined farmers' ability to produce food and engage in livestock production effectively. These circumstances evoked frustrations, increased anxiety, sadness, reduced self-value and self-worth as well as helplessness. Nonetheless, place-based attachment is underpinned by kinship bonds and ancestral heritage. These issues have been discussed within the wider theoretical debates revolving around solastalgia and place-based attachment.
... Geographers have long paid attention to the relations between people's embodied everyday experiences and the socio-material places in which they live (Relph, 1976;Tschakert et al., 2013;Tuan, 1977). In this context, landscapes are seen as integral to human lives, both contributing to and a product of human existence. ...
... A more-than-representational or relational approach to landscape helps to distinguish between these various forms of understanding the landscape as it puts the human-landscape interactions centre stage and takes seriously the diverse interactions and resulting understandings. By making visible how stakeholders look at the landscape and where they direct their attention to, we enhance our understanding of what these stakeholders find important and how it shapes their perception of what is worth preserving or what needs to be changed (Tschakert et al., 2013). In addition, our findings underscore that landscapes can be both an 'intellectual artefact', such as a Nature 2000 classification, as well as an experiential process in which the sound of birds and the specific aesthetics of particular trees are experienced and appreciated (see also Brace & Geoghegan, 2011). ...
Research and practice in sustainability transformations often manifest diverging ideas on the nature and origin of sustainability problem(s), their solutions and the division of roles and responsibilities to address these problems. This diversity is underpinned by a plurality of values, forms of knowledge and worldviews. Moreover, these diverging ideas are dynamic, both in interaction with each other and with the sustainability challenges they are addressing. Providing room for these diverse ideas and bringing them into conversation has proven challenging. Based on research revolving around wildfire prevention in the Netherlands, in this chapter we explore a relatively unknown methodology to engage with such diversity: the transdisciplinary walkshop. A transdisciplinary walkshop combines the act of walking and being at the site where there is a sustainability challenge with a workshop in which multiple stakeholders, including researchers, participate. We reflect on ways in which transdisciplinary walkshops may allow diversity to become explicit and to engage with it.
... Issahaku et al., 2021;Twerefou et al., 2015). Very few studies have addressed intangible NELD, including the loss of social cohesion, sense of place, and identity, especially among local communities living in climate-sensitive areas (Acharibasam & Anuga, 2018;Tschakert et al., 2013). This research neglect has led to a discounting of climate change impacts experienced through intangible values, identity, and cultural landscapes. ...
... Similar to prior equivalent research (e.g. Tschakert et al., 2013), we employed a qualitative research approach. This research approach is ideal for understanding social factors that are not easily quantifiable (Hennink et al., 2020), such as NELD from climate change. ...
The concept of non-economic loss and damage (NELD) of climate change has emerged strongly in the international policy arena in the past few years. Nonetheless, while research on climate-induced loss has focused on the economic dimension, the non-economic aspects have often been side-lined in academic research and policy debate. This paper draws on in-depth interviews and a focus group with farmers to develop a comprehensive understanding of climate-induced non-economic loss and damage in southern Ghana. A key finding of the research is that climate change has a non-economic loss aspect, leading to a loss of social cohesion and indigenous knowledge of farming. We further demonstrate that the loss of social cohesion and indigenous knowledge of agriculture drives individualism among farmers. Our findings have implications for climate change adaptation strategies and policies across the global South.
... Importantly, climate-induced migration negatively impacts mental health by disrupting social ties, community affiliations, and interpersonal ties (Shultz et al., 2019;Torres & Casey, 2017). In Ghana, a diminishing sense of place results from environmental and social deterioration affecting people's everyday life (Tschakert et al., 2013). ...
... The withering away of social networks due to pervasive outmigration results in social erosion (Tschakert et al., 2013). Participants fondly recalled the past. ...
Human-induced global climate change is associated with population migration as places become uninhabitable. Uttarakhand is one of India’s most ecologically fragile and climatically vulnerable states. There are massive disparities between the hill and the plain districts as the development initiatives remain concentrated in the plain districts. The inadequacy of the state government, coupled with environmental changes, has made the life of the hill communities challenging. Many people have migrated from the hills resulting in depopulated or ghost villages. Based on interviews with 75 people, the article attempts to shed light on changes that occur when the inhabitants of a place leave. Loss of a place and its community life can have severe implications on the well-being of the people. Respondents showed a range of emotions, including the longing for their homes before the onset of environmental changes. With more intense and frequent climatic events, it has become essential to understand such social and cultural costs of migration.
... (Neef et al. 2018, p. 130) A second set of examples teases out configurations between types of immobility (E3), climatic drivers (D), and losses (C) in drought-and flood-prone regions in sub-Saharan Africa, with further emphasis on age, gender, rurality, and dignity. In northern Ghana, elderly family members had no choice than to stay put in terrains shriveled by droughts, lack of political support, and eroding social networks while the younger generations had long migrated to cities in the country's south; the aged men and women who remained in place reported extreme sadness, distress, depression, and desiccation of self and body (solastalgia) in their hollow homes and thinned-out places of alienation (Tschakert et al. 2013). Without dignified prospects for the future and little to no agency to contest such "collective existential outsidedness" (ibid, p. 23), the social and environmental losses among those forced to stay had become intolerable: ...
... (Tschakert et al. 2013, p. 22) Dignity, or more precisely the loss thereof, is one of the under-researched aspects of intangible harm from climate hazards and climate change. In the same case study from Ghana, an elderly man described the fact of having to drink from the same water source as animals as the ultimate breaking point beyond which he no longer recognized himself as human (Tschakert et al. 2013). Similarly, yet in the context of floods in Kenya, a woman lamented her lot in an emergency relief camp where she had sought shelter: I moved with my family to the camp … and stayed there for two months. ...
Recent scholarship on climate mobilities and mobility justice calls for dynamic, relational, and agent-centered approaches to comprehend the complex decision-making that compels certain people to leave the places they call home, encourages or forces others to stay put, and acknowledges those who engage with mobile populations in host countries. Yet, these efforts fall short of advancing a coherent conceptual framework to make sense of the multifaceted, subjective, and affective aspects of climate-related movements and deliver more inclusive research agendas in the context of regional environmental change. This article aims to address this gap by introducing a multidimensional visual heuristic that we call the im/mobility cube. This framework makes it possible to systematically examine relational and intersectional struggles of mobility and (dis)placement, along three interconnected axes: the lived experiences of moving, remaining in place, and receiving mobile subjects upon arrival; the role of climate change as part of a complex web of drivers; and the consequences that mobility and immobility have on people’s lives, livelihoods, and well-being, from desirable benefits to intolerable losses. This heuristic foregrounds the embodied inequalities and often intimate kinopolitical struggles that im/mobile populations face, at the juncture of their aspirations and capabilities, complex subject-making processes, and ever shifting relations of power. As such, our conceptual lens sharpens the focus on the simultaneity and linkages of climate-driven im/mobility encounters within regional contexts and their diverse and courageous protagonists.
... This can complicate and undermine people-place relationships and lead to negative social and psychological outcomes (Brown and Perkins 1992;Hess et al 2008;Tapsell and Tunstall 2008;Cox and Perry 2011;Cunsolo Willox et al 2012;Durkalec et al 2015). In particular, people who have a close living and working relationship with their land, such as farmers, may be highly sensitive to such changes (Albrecht et al 2007;Tschakert et al 2013;Ellis and Albrecht 2017) and suffer more from them (Stain et al 2008). A few authors also think environmental change can trigger place attachment (Dentzman 2018) and significantly affect postdisaster reconstruction (Chamlee-Wright and Storr 2009). ...
... A few authors also think environmental change can trigger place attachment (Dentzman 2018) and significantly affect postdisaster reconstruction (Chamlee-Wright and Storr 2009). Although existing research has provided important insights, local farmers' dynamic sense of place during gradual land degradation and restoration has been insufficiently explored (Rogan et al 2005;Tschakert et al 2013;Ellis and Albrecht 2017). ...
Sense of place and environmental problems have received increased attention in recent years; however, there is limited understanding of the dynamics of sense of place under gradual environmental changes. Using fieldwork and in-depth interviews, we explored the changes in rural residents' sense of place during the processes of ecological degradation and restoration in Huajiang Gorge, China. Our findings show that residents' sense of place is dynamic and complex. In the environmental degradation period, karst rocky desertification aggravated by human activities caused the slow spread of a negative sense of place; as rocky desertification governance developed, positive and negative or ambivalent feelings coexisted. We argue that the dimension of place dependence is the most sensitive to environmental change and affects farmers' sense of place positively or negatively, which may form a locked-in sense of place. Consideration of the dynamics and complex sense of place in karst rocky desertification governance could contribute to the effectiveness of decision-making and promote residents' wellbeing.
... Different conceptualizations of transformation, however, disagree on the system perspective, on the boundaries of the system in question, and on the extent to which the changes to system attributes are emergent or deliberate (Feola, 2015). Critical social science authors have highlighted the role of deliberate choices in supporting transformational adaptation that engenders positive innovation and non-linear outcomes (O'Brien, 2012;O'Brien and Barnett, 2013;Patterson et al., 2018;Tschakert et al., 2013). Adaptation planning, as conceptualized here, is thus inextricably confronted with the progressive potential offered by transformation (Pelling, 2011;Pelling et al., 2014), while also acknowledging that its efforts can lead to both positive and negative outcomes (Park et al., 2012). ...
... For years, globally comparative analyses and indices of climate change vulnerability, risks of harm from extreme weather, and transnational climate-change-related risks have attempted to do just that (e.g. the ND-GAIN; the Global Climate Risk Index, Eckstein et al, 2020; or the Transnational Climate Impacts Index, Benzie et al., 2016), while vulnerability assessments have downscaled quantitative measurement to national and sub-national scales (Füssel and Klein, 2006;Klein and Nicholls, 1999;Yuen et al., 2012). Such assessments can be particularly important for uncovering existing forms of contextual vulnerability, which are corroborated by the impacts of climate change (van den Berg and Keenan, 2019;O'Brien et al., 2007). They can provide a useful basis for decision-making that is sensitive to justice issues. ...
The measures implemented to adapt to climate change are primarily designed to address the tangible, biophysical impacts of climate change in a given geographic area. They rarely consider the wider social implications of climate change, nor the politics of adaptation planning and its outcomes. Given the necessity of significant investment in adaptation over years to come, adaptation planning and implementation will need to place greater concern on justice-sensitive approaches to avoid exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and creating maladaptive and conflicting outcomes. Building on recent calls for more just and transformative adaptation planning, this paper offers a flexible analytical framework for integrating theories of justice and transformation into research on climate change adaptation. We discuss adaptation planning as an inherently normative and political process linked to issues pertaining to recognition justice as well as distributional and procedural aspects of justice. The paper aims to contribute to the growing discussion on just adaptation by intersecting
theoretical justice dimensions with spatial, temporal and socio-political
challenges and choices that arise as part of adaptation planning processes.
A focus on justice-sensitive adaptation planning not only provides opportunities for examining spatial as well as temporal justice issues in
relation to planning and decision-making processes. It also paves the way
for a more critical approach to adaptation planning that acknowledges the
need for institutional restructuring and offers steps towards alternative
futures under climate change conditions.
... This system had eroded due to outmigration, leaving elderly people feeling isolated and unsupported (Speck 2017, p. 433). Similarly in Ghana, outmigration due to environmental changes has left those who stay experiencing deep emotional impacts of increasingly "hollow homes" (p.24), resulting in social emptiness and solastalgia (Tschakert et al. 2013). These impacts have received insufficient attention compared to the economic impacts of migration and demand greater consideration. ...
Within the migration system, the seminal Foresight report highlighted that climate change can have significant implications for staying populations. Yet research on this remains limited. This study aims to fill this gap by assessing the impacts of sustained outmigration on staying farmer communities in the Indian Himalayan Region, affected by incremental climate change. Employing an empirical qualitative approach, new data is collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 72). Staying communities describe migration as good, bad, and necessary with the majority (46%) noting negative impacts such as fewer people to do agriculture, abandoned assets, more tasks for women, loss of community, disrupted household structures, mental health implications for the elderly, and disinvestment in public services. While remittances from migration have positive impacts, they are primarily used for meeting everyday needs (81%) and not invested in climate change adaptation. In addition to migration impacts, changing weather patterns, agricultural shifts, and societal transformations further exacerbate the vulnerabilities of staying populations. Without policy support to address these vulnerabilities, the benefits of migration may not effectively contribute to climate change adaptation. The findings here are likely applicable to staying populations in other mountain areas, facing similar pressures from migration and climate change, underscoring the need for targeted interventions to build long-term adaptive capacity.
... Davidson and Kecinski (2022) suggest that understanding emotions is critical to the success of adaptation and mitigation strategies. Increasingly, research highlights that distress and anxiety are emotions particularly associated with the climate crisis, including studies with children and young people (Hickman et al., 2021), the general public (Sangervo et al., 2022;Whitmarsh and O'Neill, 2011), affected communities (Tschakert et al., 2013;Askland and Bunn, 2018), educators (Verlie et al., 2020), and climate scientists (Head and Harada, 2017;Duggan et al., 2021). Rather than unfairly shifting the burden of responsibility for climate action onto individuals (instead of the wider political and institutional drivers of the CEC), such research underpins the assertion made by Ahmed (2014) and Verlie (2019) (see above) that emotions cannot be considered separately from the social-political realm; the capacity for changes in one is dependent on the other, and vice versa. ...
Higher Education (HE) is, at best, struggling to rise to the challenges of the climate and ecological crises (CEC) and, at worst, actively contributing to them by perpetuating particular ways of knowing, relating, and acting. Calls for HE to radically transform its activities in response to the polycrises abound, yet questions about how this will be achieved are often overlooked. This article proposes that a lack of capacity to express and share emotions about the CEC in universities is at the heart of their relative climate silence and inertia. We build a theoretical and experimental justification for the importance of climate emotions in HE, drawing on our collective experience of the Climate Lab project (2021–2023), a series of in-person and online workshops that brought together scientists, engineers, and artists. We analyse the roles of grief, vulnerability, and creativity in the conversations that occurred, and explore these exchanges as potential pathways out of socially organised climate denial in neoliberal institutions. By drawing on the emerging field of “emotional methodologies,” we make a case for the importance of emotionally reflexive practices for overcoming an institutionalised disconnect between feeling and knowing, especially in Western-disciplinary contexts. We suggest that if staff and students are afforded opportunities to connect with their emotions about the CEC, then institutional transformation is (a) more likely to happen and be meaningfully sustained and (b) less likely to fall into the same problematic patterns of knowledge and action that perpetuate these crises. This profound, sometimes uncomfortable, emotionally reflexive work is situated in the wider context of glimpsing decolonial futures for universities, which is an integral step towards climate and ecological justice.
... Authorities and those in situations of power often make decisions on how to cope with risk and climate change effects based on the idea that residents are, or should be afraid, of harm and destruction. Yet previous studies have documented how emotions such as sadness, anger, disappointment, and helplessness are also associated to climate change (Tschakert et al., 2013). Phenomenologists also know that disasters disrupt the sense "of being" associated with home (Askland and Bunn, 2018). ...
Most studies and policy in disaster risk reduction have focused on either what people lack (their vulnerability or their capacities to deal with risk (their resilience). Few studies and decision-making processes have focused on the role of emotions in informal urban settings. However, the results of a four-year study including interviews, three international workshops, and 24 community-led initiatives of risk reduction in Cuba, Colombia, and Chile, shows that emotions play a fundamental role in the design and planning of grassroots initiatives. Anxiety, pride, anger, uncertainty, and awe are crucial in risk-related agency. These emotions help building leadership and engagement and are decisive in establishing empathy, trust, and legitimacy-all which constitute the basis for change towards social and environmental justice. Phenomenology can help address connections between emotions , agency, and space. To succeed, risk response frameworks must recognize the interplay between emotions, behaviors, and politics.
... Bodily and sensorial dispositions also allow people to develop sensitivities to and embody changes in the environment under climate change, from the physical experience of suff ocation in cities during warmer summers (Singer et al 2016;Wainwright 2017) to emotional distress linked to a sense of place (Brugger et al 2013;Drew 2013;Tschakert et al 2013). Th e locus of the body also highlights the importance of the senses in engaging with climate change; indeed, all the senses can be engagedsight (Orlove et al 2008), taste (Arceño 2020), touch (O'Reilly 2016), hearing (Peterson and Brennan 2020) and smell (Fallik 2022). ...
With technological developments, distant Himalayan ice has largely replaced early scientific accounts that emerged from physical engagement. Ice became an abstraction that in contemporary accounts is commonly enmeshed in a climate change imaginary and aims to contribute to knowledge about something happening at the planetary level. This article proposes a shift in narrative scale, drawing on ethnographic research in the Indian Himalayas. It explores stories of entanglement in icy ecologies, portraying ice not as a mere abstraction but as a vital body. In these accounts, ice is at the centre of mundane and intimate encounters with climate change and its materiality induces a relationship between bodies (humans, non-humans) that transcends their ontological boundaries. Recognizing these experiences is a fundamental element in reimagining Himalayan ice, departing from technological limitations, and underscoring the consequences of ice melting within the context of climate change.
Resume
Avec les progrès technologiques, la construction à distance de la glace himalayenne en tant que formation épistémique a largement remplacé les premiers récits scientifiques issus d'un engagement physique et sensoriel. La glace est devenue une abstraction qui, dans les récits contemporains, est généralement imbriquée à l'imaginaire du changement climatique et vise à contribuer à la connaissance quant à un phénomène planétaire. Cet article propose un changement d’échelle dans les récits sur la glace himalayenne. S'appuyant sur des recherches ethnographiques menées dans l'Himalaya indien, il explore des récits d'enchevêtrement au sein d’écologies de glace. Dans ces récits, la glace n'est ni une abstraction ni un substrat passif, mais plutôt un corps vital : au centre de rencontres banales et intimes avec le changement climatique, sa matérialité induit une relation entre les corps (humains, non-humains) et transcende leurs frontières ontologiques. Prendre en compte le caractère dispersé de ces expériences offre la possibilité de cultiver un autre type d'imaginaire pour l'Himalaya et ses glaces, un imaginaire qui dépasse les limites imposées par les impératifs technologiques et qui est attentif aux conséquences de la fonte des glaces sous le changement climatique.
... A changing climate affects not only a person's surroundings, it can be experienced as disorientation. As Tschakert, Tutu & Alcaro (2013) describe in their work on the effects of climate change in Ghana, deteriorating landscapes, apparent in parched fields, withered crops and dry water wells, for example, cause emotional distress. There is a sense of solastalgia in Northwest Greenland too in how I hear some people talk of the transformations happening around them (e.g., Nuttall forthcoming). ...
In the coastal areas of Northwest Greenland, water, ice and land intermingle with the lives and trajectories of humans and animals, take on a multitude of shapes and forms, and give rise to a complexity of social relations. However, as in other parts of the Arctic, the effects of climate change are increasingly evident. Sea ice cover during winter and spring is less extensive than people living in the region today have known it to be, while icebergs calve from tidewater glaciers at arate faster than they and scientists have previously observed. Glacial ice mass is diminishing and increased meltwater runoff from glacial fronts affects water temperature, ocean depths and circulation patterns, as well as the formation and thickness of sea ice and the movements of marine mammals and fish. These changes have profound implications for local livelihoods and mobilities, the wider regional economy, and human-animal interactions. In this article, I consider what some of the effects of climate change mean for people and their surroundings in Northwest Greenland’s Upernavik area and draw attention to liquescence as a counter to the “ice is melting” narrative that typically understands climate change as liquification. While the scientific monitoring of sea ice, glacial ice loss, and surface melt on the inland ice in the Upernavik region—and in the wider Northwest Greenland area—is well established, and contributes to the regular updating of state of the ice reports for the Arctic, little attention has been given to what these changes to ice and water mean for people and for human and non-human relational ontologies. Thinking of this in terms of liquescence, rather than liquification is a way of moving toward a deeper appreciation of people’s experiences and sense-making of the changes happening to them and to their surroundings as affective, sensorial and embodied.
... Their contributions have considerably impacted discipline, enhancing comprehension of the psychological aspects linked to climate change and ecological disturbances. [35] Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss 342 Article [36] Climate change and mental health: risks, impacts and priority actions 218 Article [37] The impact of climate change on mental health: A systematic descriptive review 216 Review [38] The early psychological impacts of the deepwater horizon oil spill on Florida and Alabama communities 137 Article [39] Climate change threats to family farmers' sense of place and mental wellbeing: A case study from the Western Australian Wheatbelt 106 Article [40] From anger to action: Differential impacts of eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger on climate action and wellbeing 97 Article [41] Differentiating environmental concern in the context of psychological adaption to climate change 95 Article [42] Unpleasant and pleasant memories of intensive care in adult mechanically ventilated patients-Findings from 250 interviews 83 Article [43] Mapping the solastalgia literature: A scoping review study 80 Review [44] Embodied experiences of environmental and climatic changes in landscapes of everyday life in Ghana 69 Article [45] Addressing mental health in a changing climate: incorporating mental health indicators into climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments 66 Review [46] Reef Grief: Investigating the relationship between place meanings and place change on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia 59 Article [47] Climate change and mental health 58 Article [48] Impacts of family and community violence exposure on child coping and mental health 58 Article [49] Anxiety, worry, and grief in a time of environmental and climate crisis: A narrative review 57 ...
Ecoanxiety, which encompasses the psychological impacts of environmental change, has emerged as a pressing global concern. However, the complex interrelationship between environmental factors and mental health in the context of ecoanxiety remains underexplored. This bibliometric analysis examines the evolution of international research on ecoanxiety and mental health using the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Parameters analyzed include publication trends over time, contributing countries, research foci, and keyword frequencies related to climate change, ecoanxiety, mental health, and solastalgia. The findings reveal surging scholarship in recent years, exponential publication growth, and increasing international collaborations. The total of 214 documents initially retrieved, 122 peer-reviewed publications met the inclusion criteria after pre-processing. The analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of ecoanxiety and mental health research. It elucidates patterns in the emergence and progression of this burgeoning field to inform future research directions. Specifically, the elucidated features regarding keyword usage and research trends establish a foundation to advance investigations on the nexus between environmental issues and psychological well-being. This bibliometric study synthesizes existing knowledge and unveils fruitful avenues to progress understanding of the psychological ramifications of ecological crises.
... The existing literature on climate-induced mental health impacts is still relatively scarce (Watts et al. 2018(Watts et al. , 2021Kelman et al. 2021), but includes the study of solastalgia or distress as people's environment changes (Adger 2003;Albrecht et al. 2007;Tschakert et al. 2013;Butler et al. 2014), 'eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger', or 'ecological grief and despair' (Willox 2012;Cunsolo and Ellis 2018;Du Bray et al. 2019;Stanley et al. 2021). Furthermore, lived experiences from female and youth represent a research gap as studies continue to be narrated around men. ...
It is well-known that women, children, and other intersectional and marginalised social groups are disproportionately impacted by ‘non-economic wellbeing loss’ in the context of climatic changes. However, few empirical studies investigate its interrelation with violence against women and children (VAWC). We urgently need to widen our perceptions of what falls under the umbrella term ‘Non-Economic Loss (and Damage)’, NEL(D)s, for societies to appropriately be able to avert, minimise, and address losses and damages among vulnerable people. Through stories of loss and healing, we step into the realities of illustrating how women and children experience non-economic wellbeing loss within a climate-violence nexus in Bangladesh, Fiji, and Vanuatu. A storytelling and systems analysis approach guided the analysis of personal narratives gathered through a secondary data review and empirical field work. The research findings identified different pathways through which women and children’s mental health was compromised in the context of structural violence and climatic risks. In Bangladesh, the narratives described wellbeing erosion in the context of gendered (im)mobility; in Fiji, the findings captured women’s and children’s experiences of sexual violence, domestic abuse, exploitation, and trafficking in the context of natural hazards, while in Vanuatu, hardship, gendered dependence, and healing were narrated by women in their stories surrounding disaster recovery. This article comprehensively lays out the longer-term societal wellbeing consequences of climatic changes and gender-based violence. It also identifies research gaps in need of further attention and proposes policy recommendations as well as methodological and disaster health service solutions to address wellbeing loss in a climate changed future.
... Significant changes to ecosystems and landscapes as a result of climate change can take years to manifest whereas the temperature and extreme weather are felt more immediately (Berry et al., 2010). Both acute climate events such as bombs of water as well as slowly accumulating changes have been associated with negative effects on people's sense of well-being (Berry et al., 2010;Clayton, 2020;Cunsolo Willox et al., 2012, 2013Sartore et al., 2008;Tschakert et al., 2013). Slow-moving and sub-acute changes, though, can increase worry and stress because, while people know the unusual climate is affecting landscapes and ecosystems, there is uncertainty about what is coming next. ...
Over the course of the last several decades, climate and social changes have fundamentally altered Alpine environments, landscapes, and weather patterns. While environmental changes are well-documented by natural science studies, the human dimensions of change remain understudied. Existing in-depth studies of the impact of climate and environmental changes on emotional well-being have revealed cross-cultural similarities in responses to change, but studies of the impact of such changes on the well-being of residents of the European Alps are needed. Through interviews, participant observation, and a questionnaire, the study identified two pathways through which changes to Alpine environments are affecting the well-being of mountain residents in the Lombardy region of the Italian Alps. The landscape and ecosystem changes caused by social changes are affecting well-being through disrupting connections to place and affecting people's sense of identity as tied to an agricultural past. The weather changes caused by climate change are increasing anxiety and worry linked to feelings of unpredictability, uncertainty, and loss of control. There is also overlap. Both the changes caused by climate change and by social changes are affecting well-being by disrupting the reliability of place-based knowledge.
... (Interview). The few systematically collected meteorological data available (e.g., [109,110]; Ghana Meteorological Agency) and qualitative research studies [77,111,112], confirm that the rainy season has intensified and shortened with more and longer dry spells and an increase in extreme weather events. ...
Central to food security interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa stands the value chain approach. The underlying idea is that connecting farmers to input and output markets and sources of knowledge and technology will enhance their food security status. In spite of positive impacts measured in especially food supply, there is scant evidence of the long-term effects on food security. For a better grasp of the impacts of a maize value chain intervention in North Ghana, we have experimented with an approach that focuses on interactions and feedback loops between the value chain and its local context. Such approach allowed us to identify dynamics that affect food security in the long run. In the case of Northern Ghana farming systems, household income and diets are increasingly dependent on maize, which increases risk of food insecurity in case of climate setbacks or market shocks. The exercise reveals how a linear value chain approach obscures the dynamic effects cascading from the intervention that may actually hamper food security in the long run. A systems approach may help to better grasp the consequences of external interventions at the local level.
... A second pathway involves indirect effects conveyed by climate change-induced social and economic disruptions. For example, many citizens of rural agrarian communities in West Africa have been forced by changes in precipitation to migrate to urban slums, while those who remain behind in these altered rural landscapes experience environmentally-induced distress and solastalgia (Tschakert et al., 2013). ...
Emotions are keys to understanding the response to environmental problems. We discuss three important roles. First, emotions like worry, anxiety, pride and hope can motivate pro-environmental behaviour. Second, emotions are also consequences; the emotional impacts of environmental degradation, such as climate anxiety, can affect mental health, and recognising these impacts is necessary to encourage individual and societal resilience. Finally, emotion also has a communicative function and is part of shared experience. The ability to describe and elicit shared emotions in response to environmental problems allows those problems to become part of social discourse, which is necessary for addressing them. Research in all these areas can help guide an adaptive response to environmental challenges.
... This is a welcome change in the "epistemological hierarchies" of climate change discourse [1]. However, there is still relatively little attention on how these changes shape the everyday, deeply "embodied experiences" of "marginalized, poor, and vulnerable populations", especially in the Global South whose "lives and livelihoods" primarily rely on the land, agriculture, and other natural resources [2]. ...
Digital innovations and interventions can potentially revolutionize agri-food systems, especially in coping with climate challenges. On a similar note, digital research tools and methods are increasingly popular for the efficient collection and analysis of real-time, large-scale data. It is claimed that these methods can also minimize subjective biases that are prevalent in traditional qualitative research. However, given the digital divide, especially affecting women and marginalized communities, these innovations could potentially introduce further disparities. To assess these contradictions, we piloted SenseMaker, a digital ethnography tool designed to capture individual, embodied experiences, biases, and perceptions to map vulnerabilities and resilience to climate impacts in the Gaya District in Bihar. Our research shows that this digital tool allows for a systematic co-design of the research framework, allows for the collection of large volumes of data in a relatively short time, and a co-analysis of the research data by the researchers and the researched. This process allowed us to map and capture the complexities of intersectional inequalities in relation to climate change vulnerability. However, we also noted that the application of the tool is influenced by the prior exposure to technology (digital devices) of both the enumerators and researched groups and requires significant resources when implemented in contexts where there is a need to translate the data from local dialects and languages to more dominant languages (English). Most importantly, perceptions, positionalities, and biases of researchers can significantly impact the design of the tool’s signification framework, reiterating the fact that researcher bias persists regardless of technological innovations in research methodology.
... This is consistent with experiences described in the literature, for example the consideration of environmental distress in Higginbotham et al. (2006). Indeed Tschakert et al. (2013) described, for northern Ghana, a suite of environmental transformations that shape embodied experiences in 'landscapes of everyday life', triggering acute negative emotions, and a disproportionate out-migration, exacerbating "the figurative and literal desiccation of self and place in these landscapes" (p24). ...
Environmental change is often accompanied by non-tangible, non-economic losses, including loss of valued attributes, connection to place, and social cohesion through migration in the face of such changes. Over two studies we sought to test whether imagining the loss of valued environmental characteristics influences intentions to migrate elsewhere and/or engage in place-protective actions, and whether this can be accounted for by changes to place attachment, using the city of Perth, Western Australia as a case study. In Study 1 (N = 148) we found imagined environmental loss significantly increased intentions to move away, and significantly decreased place attachment. There was no influence of imagining loss on place-protective action intentions. We replicated these findings in a representative community sample (Study 2: N = 333). In addition, we found that changes to moving intentions and place attachment related to the type of valued characteristic imagined loss, with characteristics that went beyond the explicitly environmental to encompass social relationships and lifestyle dimensions related to a tendency to stay, and lower reductions to place attachment. The implications of these findings include the inseparability of responses to environmental changes and perceptions of socio-cultural loss.
... Being separated from cultural lands and traditional ways of life by climate-related migration can create strong feelings of dispossession and grief (165,366,371,394,395) . Ecological grief and solastalgia have been reported particularly for rural or Indigenous communities (169,347), including: youth in Indonesia (396); Inuit communities in northern Canada (73,336,347,367); farmers in the Australian wheatbelt (165); residents and tourists of communities around the Great Barrier Reef (397); elders in the Torres Strait (371) between Australia and New Guinea; communities in Ghana (369,398); coastal communities in Ireland (169) and the USA (168); and rural communities in India (60) and South Africa (360) (Figure 7). It may also be particularly common in scientists working in climate and ecological related fields (399). ...
Converging global evidence highlights the dire consequences of climate change for human mental health and wellbeing. This paper summarises literature across relevant disciplines to provide a comprehensive narrative review of the multiple pathways through which climate change interacts with mental health and wellbeing. Climate change acts as a risk amplifier by disrupting the conditions known to support good mental health, including socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions, and living and working conditions. The disruptive influence of rising global temperatures and extreme weather events, such as experiencing a heatwave or water insecurity, compounds existing stressors experienced by individuals and communities. This has deleterious effects on people’s mental health and is particularly acute for those groups already disadvantaged within and across countries. Awareness and experiences of escalating climate threats and climate inaction can generate understandable psychological distress; though strong emotional responses can also motivate climate action. We highlight opportunities to support individuals and communities to cope with and act on climate change. Consideration of the multiple and interconnected pathways of climate impacts and their influence on mental health determinants must inform evidence-based interventions. Appropriate action that centres climate justice can reduce the current and future mental health burden, while simultaneously improving the conditions that nurture wellbeing and equality. The presented evidence adds further weight to the need for decisive climate action by decision makers across all scales.
... The term was introduced by the environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht after having undertaken fieldwork in an open-pit coal mining area in western Australia [8,9]. It has since found growing empirical application in the contexts of resource extraction [10][11][12][13], natural disasters [5,14] and climate change [15][16][17], showing that both acute and chronic factors can cause solastalgic distress. ...
Unwelcome environmental changes can lead to psychological distress, known as “solastalgia”. In Germany, the open-pit mining of brown coal results in environmental changes as well as in the resettlement of adjacent villages. In this study, we investigated the risk of open-pit mining for solastalgia and psychological disorders (e.g., depression, generalized anxiety and somatization) in local communities. The current residents and resettlers from two German open-pit mines were surveyed concerning environmental stressors, place attachment, impacts and mental health status. In total, 620 people responded, including 181 resettlers, 114 people from villages threatened by resettlement and 325 people from non-threatened villages near an open-pit mine. All groups self-reported high levels of psychological distress, approximately ranging between 2–7.5 times above the population average. Respondents from resettlement-threatened villages showed the worst mental health status, with 52.7% indicating at least moderate somatization levels (score sum > 9), compared to 28% among resettlers. We observed a mean PHQ depression score of 7.9 (SD 5.9) for people from resettlement-threatened villages, 7.4 (SD 6.0) for people from not-threatened villages, compared to 5.0 (SD 6.5) for already resettled people (p < 0.001). In conclusion, the degradation and loss of the home environment caused by open-pit mining was associated with an increased prevalence of depressive, anxious and somatoform symptoms in local communities. This reveals a need for further in-depth research, targeted psychosocial support and improved policy frameworks, in favor of residents’ and resettlers’ mental health.
... The grief was just so deep" (Vaughn, 2014, p. 7). Exposure to environmental changes and extreme weather carries negative mental health implications, including anxiety, distress, and profound sadness (Connor et al., 2004;Obradovich et al., 2018;Tschakert et al., 2013;Walker-Springett et al., 2017). In one qualitative study, Tapsell and Turnstall (2008) observed long-term psychological health impacts experienced by flood victims. ...
... There is no better indication of the limits of disciplinarity than the general absence of consideration for the social positions of the individuals who become the subjects of studies on emotion. Tschakert et al. (2019) describe how people around the world experience intangible harm related to climate change, finding that people responded heterogeneously to the same stressors, indicating that similar climate change threats can produce very different emotional responses (see also Tschakert et al., 2013). Structural position strongly influences the intensity of emotion, and as such, women, low-income peoples, black, brown and indigenous, and nongender-conforming peoples are highly likely to experience different emotional responses to climate change, and individuals who fall into more than one of these categories are likely to experience the interactional effects of the injustices associated with each. ...
The first trigger to any form of personal and collective change begins with emotions. They influence whether and how our attention is drawn to stimuli, how we reflect upon those stimuli, and how we choose courses of action. Emotions are thus at the center of social responses to climate change. We offer a selective, interdisciplinary review of emotions research to inform the development of a hypothetical emotion–cognition model of climate change response, followed by exploration of the emotional precedents supporting three prevailing behavioral responses which support inaction: apathy, denial, and withdrawal. We then review research that can inform emotion triggers to pro‐climate adaptive and mitigative action. We conclude with a discussion of two key research needs: intersectionality and interdisciplinarity. Addressing these needs will enhance our ability to respond to the climate emergency.
This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Behavior Change and Responses
... Relocation intrinsically involves a change in place, and '[p]laces have material, interpersonal and symbolic dimensions' [67, p. 593]. The implications of governments planning, funding, or coordinating relocation are perhaps most apparent for indigenous communities and island nations whose cultural practices and histories are tied to the land or who face loss of sovereignty along with loss of place [68][69][70]; for farmers, herders, and others with nature-based livelihoods [64,71]; and for other communities with strong ties to heritage sites [72]. Indeed, many people have personal identities connected to the place where they live, as illustrated by growing attention to solastalgia -the pain felt by people observing the degradation of their environments [73 ]. ...
Managed retreat in response to climate change does not inherently lead to societal transformation. Assessing whether retreat has been transformative requires consideration of what or who is transformed, at what scale, and in what ways. It also requires nuanced consideration of relative spatial and temporal scale, domain of change, and implications for procedural and distributive justice while recognizing historical injustices and opportunities for restorative action. Current practices show managed retreat has not always been transformative in ways that promote justice. Nevertheless, retreat — as both a concept and practice — has potential to change societal perceptions of climate risk, challenge techno-optimistic in situ adaptations, and foreground issues of equity as a primary concern in adaptation.
... A disruption in the links between sense of place and identity can cause negative psychological and health effects (Lewicka, 2013). As residents witness their burial grounds, playgrounds, and homes erode into the Gulf, feelings of solastalgia are triggered, eroding place-based identities (Tschakert et al., 2013). As that connection corrodes, and more becomes uncertain, the pressure to migrate can intensify. ...
Globally, rapid and slow-onset socio-environmental coastal disasters are prompting people to consider migrating inland. Climate change is exacerbating these disasters and the multi-faceted causal contributing factors, including land loss, livelihood shifts, and disintegration of social networks. Familiar with ongoing disruptive displacements, coastal Louisiana residents are now increasingly compelled to consider permanent relocation as a form of climate adaptation. This paper elicits and analyzes coastal Louisiana residents’ perceptions of socio-environmental changes as they pertain to relocation as adaptation and the precariousness of place, both biophysically and culturally. It investigates how these external mechanisms affect relocation decisions, and empirically expand on how these decision-making processes are affecting residents internally as well. Research methods include semi-structured interviews with coastal Louisiana residents, participant observation, and document analysis. The paper integrates literature on environmental migration, including climate-driven; regional studies on Louisiana, and disasters, with empirical, interview-based research. It is guided by theoretical insights from the construct “solastalgia,” the feeling of distress associated with environmental change close to one’s home. The findings suggest that residents’ migration decisions are always context-dependent and location-specific, contributing to a broader understanding of coastal residents’ experiences of staying or going.
... Organizing to envision and bring about transformational adaptation in the form of retreat has the potential to prove empowering; it presents an opportunity to remove houses from harm's way, buffer adjacent areas, and restore habitat, mitigating risk locally and leaving a lasting legacy, even if unable to undo a disaster's damage or alone address drivers of vulnerability and climate change. Any associated sense of agency and capacity to act can lessen negative emotions such as solastalgia, which emerges not simply from experiencing environmental change but from a perceived lack of control over that change (Albrecht et al. 2007;Tschakert et al. 2013). Joining this may be feelings of injustice or betrayal, "a loss of trust in the social institutions that are supposed to protect and secure people and their place in society" (Askland and Bunn 2018, p. 21). ...
After a disaster, it is common to equate repopulation and rebuilding with recovery. Numerous studies link post-disaster relocation to adverse social, economic, and health outcomes. However, there is a need to reconsider these relationships in light of accelerating climate change and associated social and policy shifts in the USA, including the rising cost of flood insurance, the challenge of obtaining aid to rebuild, and growing interest in “managed retreat” from places at greatest risk. This article presents data from a survey of individuals who opted either to rebuild in place or relocate with the help of a voluntary home buyout after Hurricane Sandy. Findings show those who lived in buyout-eligible areas and relocated were significantly less likely to report worsened stress than those who rebuilt in place. This suggests access to a government-supported voluntary relocation option may, under certain circumstances, lessen the negative mental health consequences associated with disaster-related housing damage.
... A number of studies have emerged, linking climate change impacts and feelings of solastalgia; many of which have been discussed in the above sections (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018;McNamara and Westoby, 2011). Additionally, a study by Tschakert et al. (2013) in the north of Ghana illustrated how '. . . the drying up of water sources, failing agriculture, loss of scenic beauty. . .' and resultant out-migration to urban centres such as Accra have caused the '. . ...
Anthropogenic climate change is leading to widespread losses around the world. While the focus of research over the last decade has largely been on economic or tangible losses, researchers have begun to shift their focus to understanding the non-economic or intangible dimensions of loss more deeply. Loss of life, biodiversity and social cohesion are some of the losses that are beginning to be explored, along with Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) and cultural heritage. These latter two form the basis of this systematic review of 100 studies to take stock of what we know about climate-driven losses to ILK and cultural heritage, how such losses manifest and how they are overcome, revealing gaps in our knowledge and carving a path for future research.
... Changes in the attributes of place caused deterioration in the attachment of the individual with the place (Warsini et al., 2014), attacked one's "sense of place" and eroded the feeling of belongingness to the place (McNamara & Westoby, 2011), resulting in adverse emotional effects. Also, the deterioration of rural identity due to the loss of rural composure and scenic beauty translated into emotional pain and exacerbated sorrowfulness (Tschakert et al., 2013). The distress over these environmental changes manifests the loss of value attached to the environment's characteristics. ...
Rural communities are dependent on their native environment for supporting their customs, traditions, and other rural activities. This study attempts to understand the effects of the changing climate on rural individuals by investigating their feelings and experiences of perceived changes in the home environment and village life. Thirty‐four in‐depth interviews were conducted during the months of May–June 2019 in two districts—Gaya and Jehanabad of South Bihar, India. The findings reveal that the rural population have experienced changes in climate such as a rise in the incidence of heatwaves, erratic rainfall patterns, delay in monsoon onset, early drying of water resources, and loss of particular tree and bird species. Worries and uncertainties of the rural population have emerged from the experiences of involuntary separation from traditional farm activities, forced adaptation strategies, loss of cultural and religious practices, and reduced self‐worth in coping with the deteriorating environment. The changing climate instigates feelings of emotional distress, resulting in adverse mental health and psychological well‐being outcomes. It is concluded that the changing climate is responsible for the loss of traditional village customs and nature‐related cultural practices, subsequently inducing solastalgia among the rural population.
... However, women in industrialized countries also have a proactive engagement with the environment as sustainable consumers with less carbon footprint compared to men (Tschakert 2012). This is evidenced by their making of the bulk of environmentally friendly decisions at the household level and for traveling (Tschakert et al. 2013). ...
... These impacts may be immediate or manifested through more distal pathways, such as changes in food security, nutrition, and the distribution of disease vectors (Berrang-Ford et al., 2012;Parry et al., 2019;Hussey and Arku, 2019). Others are climate-induced illness, distress, and loss of belonging (Tschakert et al., 2013). ...
Although there is a large and growing literature on anticipated climate change impacts on health, we know very little about the linkages between differentiated vulnerabilities to climate extremes and adverse physical and mental health outcomes. In this paper, we examine how recurrent flooding interacts with gendered vulnerability, social differentiation, and place-related historical and structural processes to produce unequal physical and mental health outcomes. We situated the study in Old Fadama, Ghana, using a Photovoice approach (n = 20) and theoretical concepts from political ecologies of health and feminist political ecology. Overall, the study revealed several adverse physical and mental health impacts of flooding, with vulnerability differentiated based particularly on gender and age, but also housing, class, and income. Our findings suggest the need for greater attentiveness to social differentiation in scholarship involving political ecologies of health. The paper builds on the health and place literature by linking the social and contextual to the medical.
Studies of transformative change have been making headway in understanding the complexity of societal transformation processes. Yet, we lack understanding of how people’s lived experiences of transformations both shape and are shaped by meaning-making processes. In addressing this gap, we make two assumptions: Firstly, change processes comprise interactions between social actors that shape the way they are made sense of and experienced by the people involved in such interactions. Secondly, such change processes involve transformative experiences, which can bring to light previously taken-for-granted dimensions of lived experience. To address this research gap, we describe two complementary tools for analysing transformations: dialogical sense-making and critical phenomenology. These approaches share a focus on the experiential and sense-making dimensions, yet ask distinctly different kinds of questions and use different methods. Dialogical sense-making explores how people create meanings around transformations through various social interactions. Critical phenomenology analyses subjectivity, lived experience and structures that make possible and help shape experience. When brought into dialogue with each other, they allow for richer analyses of how the sense or meaning of transformations is constituted in experience.
Background
Climate change is one of the greatest threats to health that societies face and can adversely affect mental health. Given the current lack of a European consensus paper on the interplay between climate change and mental health, we signal a need for a pan-European position paper about this topic, written by stakeholders working in mental health care.
Methods
On behalf of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), we give recommendations to make mental health care, research, and education more sustainable based on a narrative review of the literature.
Results
Examples of sustainable mental healthcare comprise preventive strategies, interdisciplinary collaborations, evidence-based patient care, addressing social determinants of mental health, maintaining health services during extreme weather events, optimising use of resources, and sustainable facility management. In mental health research, sustainable strategies include investigating the impact of climate change on mental health, promoting research on climate change interventions, strengthening the evidence base for mental health-care recommendations, evaluating the allocation of research funding, and establishing evidence-based definitions and clinical approaches for emerging issues such as ‘eco-distress’. Regarding mental health education, planetary health, which refers to human health and how it is intertwined with ecosystems, may be integrated into educational courses.
Conclusions
The EPA is committed to combat climate change as the latter poses a threat to the future of mental health care. The current EPA position paper on climate change and mental health may be of interest to a diverse readership of stakeholders, including clinicians, researchers, educators, patients, and policymakers.
The postapocalypse as a mobilising discourse for climate action operates largely out of anger over experienced and anticipated injustices as well as paradoxical hope that fuses loss and grief with freed-up solidarities in support of liveable futures. However, negotiating this emotional tension can be both draining and isolating. Here, we examine how white settler populations in Western Australia balance grief and hope in places they hold dear and the role emotions such as sadness, worry, disappointment, joy, and pride play in relational place making. Through an innovative in situ and mobile methodology we call Walking Journeys, we trace how participants navigate their climatic-affective atmospheres and make sense of their agency in changing ‘Places of the Heart’. We find evidence for emotional complexities of solastalgia where pessimistic outlooks for the future are wrapped up in prefigurative visions of a better world. By holding the tension between paralysis and restoration, urban and rural residents explore affective co-existence and differential belonging in their homes and the landscapes around them. We highlight the challenge of enfranchising emotions beyond individuals and conclude by endorsing entangled, reflexive, and (re-)generative responsibilities for hopeful postapocalyptic journeying.
Environmental change is increasingly challenging the habitability of places around the world, particularly with regard to resource-dependent rural areas in the Global South. Apart from objectively measurable, bio-physical indices, it is likewise important to look at individual and group-specific perceptions of habitability, which are embedded in their respective socio-cultural context(s). Migration as a well-established household risk diversification strategy has the potential to increase people’s adaptive capacity, their well-being, and can shape the way people perceive the habitability of places. This study utilizes a human-centered approach in order to unravel the impacts of migration on culturally-embedded and subjective perceptions of habitability in a rural community in Northern Ghana which faces increasing pressure of environmental changes. Based on qualitative empirical research, we utilize place attachment, social status, and community cohesion as exemplary socio-cultural dimensions with particular relevance in this specific local context to showcase 1) the subjectivity and cultural embeddedness of habitability perceptions and 2) the respective potential of migration to influence such perceptions to both positive and negative ends. Positive migration impacts on the underlying socio-cultural context(s) can serve to undergird (collective) responsibility and adaptive action towards improving local habitability in parallel to encouraging efforts that strive to maintain cultural integrity. Integrating this knowledge in future habitability assessments can pave the way for context-sensitive and locally-adjusted resilience-building strategies that take the potential benefits and disadvantages of migration into account.
This paper will discuss the notion of solastalgia or climatic anxiety (Albrecht et al., 2007; Galea et al., 2005) as a form of anxiety connected to traumatic environmental changes that generate an emotional blockage between individuals, their environment (Cloke et al., 2004) and their place (Nancy, 1993). I will use a phenomenological approach to explain the way in which emotions shape our constitution of reality (Husserl, 1970; Sartre, 1983, 1993, 1996; Seamon and Sowers, 2009; Shaw and Ward, 2009). The article's overall goal is to describe the relationship between environment and "climatic" emotions to understand what we can do to improve our well-being. I believe that scientistic and reductionistic ways of looking at climatic anxiety do not consider this complex dynamic and fail to propose actual solutions for the well-being of both the environment and the individuals.
This paper offers a narrative review of global experiences of solastalgia (or feelings of grief around local environmental change), while exploring the concept’s social and psychological dynamics. The paper ends with a discussion on solastalgia’s implications for clinical psychology.
Eco-anxiety - Climate anxiety
Climate change, its causes, and impact on human societies and public health are increasingly well documented and mediatized for the general public. The social or media driven exposure to images and data of present and future damage to the environment and the ensuing human suffering has had observable effects on mental health. While terms such as eco-anxiety and solastalgia are currently used to describe these effects, their clinical characterisation is incomplete and medical professionals in France have yet to grasp the full psychological implications of environmental issues. This study analyses how the perception of global environmental changes affects the life choices and mental health of environmentally conscious individuals. Method: Within a framework of qualitative research, interviews with members of ecologist movements in Nantes (France) were conducted between January and October 2020. Data were obtained through a single, semi-directed interview per participant. These interviews were then entirely transcribed and thematically analysed. Results: Nine people were ultimately included in the study; the awareness of environmental changes and their implications triggered a clear mental process with strong, emotional repercussions for each of the participants. Anxiety, anger, guilt, sadness, along with feelings of rejection and powerlessness were experienced when confronted with the perception of a set of issues that are simultaneously complex, global, intertwined, seemingly uncontrollable, and without any clear or applicable solutions at the individual level. Making sense of this new perception of a world that appears to be crumbling necessitates calling into question personal values, life paths and choices. Multiple strategies were used by the participants to deal with these upheavals, which are unprecedented at the scale of humanity. Conclusion: Our study reveals that our participants, as they became more aware of climate change and its various, global impacts, all developed a range of symptoms, commonly grouped under the term "eco-anxiety". This term is problematic as it limits our understanding of a mental state that is not in and of itself a pathology. All participants in this study demonstrated adaptative strategies in the management of their emotional states and in response to the environmental threat. Furthermore, "eco-anxiety" erases the diverse, rich tangle of constantly evolving emotions of each, individual journey. Our results clearly demonstrate a need for a clinical picture of eco-anxiety, characterizations of eventual forms of pathology, and the identification of possible care and solutions that general health practitioners - or others - could provide.
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are intangible and non-material benefits provided by ecosystems that have been ignored by stakeholders and policymakers in comparison to provisioning, supporting, and regulating services. The ecosystem services concept was designed to define and evaluate the benefits humans derived from ecosystems. The present study conducts a systematic literature review of CES evaluation methods. Our aims are: to provide an overview of the current state of CES research, to describe the geographic distribution of research, to classify and evaluate CES categories and evaluation methods, to highlight and discuss the overall review of the literature and some important challenges in CES research. In this review, we reviewed 127 case studies and extracted 22 evaluation methods. Based upon findings from literature synthesis, we conclude that (1) a consistent classification and description of CES categories are highly required; (2) we have taken into account all the CES categories during evaluation; (3) the majority of studies tend to focus on recreation and ecotourism services followed by aesthetic values and educational values; (4) we employed various methods extracted from literature and find non-monetary methods mainly were used to evaluate CES; (5) we recommend that an in-depth analysis of CES evaluation methods is a need to improve the importance of CES for local people, stakeholders and policymakers. The present information can potentially act as a fruitful conceptual multidisciplinary research into a human-dominated environment.
Background: Unwelcome changes to familiar home environments can provoke emotional and psychological distress, known as ‘solastalgia’. In Germany, the world's largest producer of brown coal, environments are being degradaded and villages resettled until today, to make way for mine developments. These environmental alterations may lead to solastalgia, though research is scarce. We therefore investigated, to which extend open-pit mining pose risks for solastalgia and psychological disorders, such as depression, generalized anxiety and somatization, on local communities.
Methods: A survey was carried out in June and July 2021 in the Rhenish mining region in Western Germany. Current and recently resettled residents of two open-pit mines (Garzweiler II and Hambach) were queried about perceived environmental stressors as well as personal, socioeconomic and health impacts of open-pit mining and resettlement, including feelings of change, place attachment and activities carried out in response. The questionnaire contained modules on depression, generalized anxiety and somatization of the Patient Health Questionnaire and items from the Environmental Distress Scale, including solastalgia.
Results: A total of 620 participants responded to the survey, including n = 181 resettlers, n = 114 persons from resettlement threathened villages and n = 325 persons from villages not threatened by relocation near an open-pit mine. All groups self-reported high levels of psychological distress, around twice to 7.5 times above population average. Moderate to severe somatization levels were stated by 52.7% of respondents from resettlement threathened villages, which applied for only 28% of resettlers (p < .001). Highest symptom levels of generalized anxiety (45.4%) and depression (34.3%) were also found in participants threatened by relocation. Dust was the most frequent observed environmental hazard (up to 73%), followed by noise and increased traffic.
Conclusion: The degradation and loss of home environments caused by open-pit mining are associated with an increased incidence of depressive, anxious and somatoform symptoms in local communities.
Adaptation to climate change, in terms of both academic and policy debates, has been treated predominantly as a local issue. This scalar focus points towards local agency as well as the contested responsibilisation of local actors and potential disconnects with higher-level dynamics. While there are growing calls for individuals to take charge of their own lives against mounting climatic forces, little is known about the day-to-day actions people take, the many hurdles, barriers, and limits they encounter in their adaptation choices, and the trade-offs they consider envisaging the future. To address this gap, this article draws on 80+ interviews with urban and rural residents in Western Australia to offer a nuanced analysis of everyday climate adaptation and its limits. Our findings demonstrate that participants are facing significant adaptation barriers and that, for many, these barriers already constitute limits to what they can do to protect what they value most. They also make visible how gender, age, and socioeconomic status shape individual preferences, choices, and impediments, revealing compounding layers of disadvantage and differential vulnerability. We argue that slow and reflexive research is needed to understand what adaptation limits matter and to whom and identify opportunities to harness and support local action. Only then will we be able to surmount preconceived neoliberal ideals of the self-sufficient, resilient subject, engage meaningfully with ontological pluralism, and contribute to the re-politicisation of adaptation decision making.
Changes in climate are important for agriculture and the livelihoods it sustains. To improve the understanding of how climate vulnerability is expressed in agricultural environments, it is necessary to address how people perceive and interact with their surroundings. This study analyzes farmers’ perceptions of a set of climate change indicators and their influence on agricultural practices in two Indigenous communities located at different altitudes in Mexico. Farmers’ observations were explored using semi-structured interviews and contextualized within the local instrumental climate
record. The influence of these farmers’ perceptions on their agricultural practices was further analyzed using a logistic regression model. Changes in rain intensity and seasonality, as well as in wind
intensity, were mentioned most frequently. Farmers’ experiences suggest a reduction in rain and wind intensity and shorter rainy seasons. Memories of past anomalous years coincide with precipitation anomalies found in the instrumental records. However, temperature changes and biotic indicators were seldom perceived. Our results show that the perception of these indicators is mediated by agricultural practices, and we found evidence indicating that these perceptions during the first stage of the seasonal calendar induce readjustments in sowing dates. Moreover, farmers resort to out-
migration, integration of cash crops, and use of commercial fertilizers to cope with or reduce crop loss due to climate impacts.
While many aspects of human life are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, values related to selfhood and community are among the most challenging to preserve. In what follows, I focus on the importance of values and valuing in climate change adaptation. To do so, I will first discuss two alternate approaches to valuing, both of which fail to recognise the loss of valued objects and practices that both of which help to generate a sense of self and deserve to be respected and mourned. Ultimately, I argue that an approach to valuing that is responsive to change and open to loss will enable humans to be more resilient in the face of anthropogenic climate change, in order that we may move forward and construct selves that fit the context in which we live.
Changing mobility patterns combined with changes in the climate present challenges and opportunities for global health, requiring effective, relevant, and humane policy responses. This study used data from a systematic literature review that examined the intersection between climate change, migration, and health. The study aimed to synthesize policy recommendations in the peer-reviewed literature, regarding this type of environmental migration with respect to health, to strengthen the evidence-base. Systematic searches were conducted in four academic databases (PubMed, Ovid Medline, Global Health and Scopus) and Google Scholar for empirical studies published between 1990–2020 that used any study design to investigate migration and health in the context of climate change. Studies underwent a two-stage protocol-based screening process and eligible studies were appraised for quality using a standardized mixed-methods tool. From the initial 2425 hits, 68 articles were appraised for quality and included in the synthesis. Among the policy recommendations, six themes were discernible: (1) avoid the universal promotion of migration as an adaptive response to climate risk; (2) preserve cultural and social ties of mobile populations; (3) enable the participation of migrants in decision-making in sites of relocation and resettlement; (4) strengthen health systems and reduce barriers for migrant access to health care; (5) support and promote optimization of social determinants of migrant health; (6) integrate health into loss and damage assessments related to climate change, and consider immobile and trapped populations. The results call for transformative policies that support the health and wellbeing of people engaging in or affected by mobility responses, including those whose migration decisions and experiences are influenced by climate change, and to establish and develop inclusive migrant healthcare.
Using storytelling from his experiences with the Western Apache, Keith Basso elaborates the notion that "wisdom sits in places," that is, the way in which social and cultural knowledge and guidance—wisdom—is based on experience. Because experience occurs in places, landscapes (and their stories and place names) can come to encode social and cultural knowl-edge. 1 This notion of geography as philosophy would not have been foreign to the ancient Greeks to whom the discipline is often traced, but geography today, with some notable exceptions, is only slowly returning to the quest for wisdom. As an academic discipline, geography must struggle against the limitations of the larger (post) modern episteme within which it is situated. A genuine engagement with Indigenous geography may open a pathway out of this fix. What I call "modern geography"—meaning the Anglophone geography that has emerged during the past two centuries with influence from France and Germany—grew as both a tool and a product of the colonial era. The discipline helped map out the civilized and the uncivilized and the place of each in a world of empires. Its scholars at times justified territorial expansion with hints at world domination, laid out "scientific" justifications for racial inequality, or provided the technical tools and know-how for conquest and colonial rule. In the process, Western notions of geography—of space, time, and human-environment relations—were imposed on the rest of the world. The hegemonic power of the resulting modernist worldview continues to perpetuate in part through its intimate relationship with global capitalism. It is important to bear in mind that what is now held forth as a "rational" worldview has its roots in a European culture war—the Reformation. Although this worldview is accepted as common sense today, it embodies a distinct ideology that enabled the colo-nization of the world and the commodification of nature. RDK (Doug) Herman is the senior geographer at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. He earned his degree in geography at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and created the Pacific Worlds Indigenous geography project.
The areas that were focused in the Climate Change Congress, held in March 2009, are discussed. One of the findings emphasizes on the geography of knowledge. Annex 1 countries those that have responsibilities under the Kyoto Protocol for mitigating their greenhouse gas emissions are considerably overrepresented, while non-Annex 1 representatives presented just 12% of all contributions. The IPCC Third Assessment Report included more social science research, Bjurström and Polk's analysis found that such representation remained minimal. The three working groups (WG) contributing to the IPCC Assessment Reports includes WG I, which focuses on physical science, WG II on the vulnerability of socioeconomic and natural systems, and WG III on mitigation options. The structural linearity of knowledge exhibits that better climate change science leads to better knowledge of potential impacts and would necessarily lead to actions required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt political, social, and economic systems.
Slums are universally assumed to be the worst places for people to live in, and it is often taken for granted that the livelihood situations of slum communities are also uniform and homogenous. So pervasive is the latter idea that most studies examining the livelihood situations of slum communities do not compare the socio-economic and cultural differences within such communities. A distinctive feature of slum communities is the pursuance of multiple livelihood strategies that are tied to migration. However, the links between migration and livelihood situations in many slum communities have not been extensively examined. The article seeks to examine the many faces of Nima, a slum community in Accra (Ghana), and link these to livelihoods and migration. The data for the study are drawn from varied sources, including in-depth, key informant interviews, personal observations, and census reports. The complexity and varied migration patterns both internationally and internally tied to livelihoods in Nima are revealed. The changing character of slums is discussed and it is concluded that slums are not only a matter of the negative aspects of urban places but there are positive sides as well. The significance of migration and migrants is crucial for understanding Nima's role in urban development, and for making the appropriate recommendations for livelihoods development in Nima.
Relations between external researchers and indigenous communities have been increasingly strained by differences in understanding and in expectation about the relevance of research. In the field of resource management, the potential for conflict over research is increased by the politics surrounding control over the resource management decision making processes. In this article, we propose the creation of dialogic networks that engage researchers and indigenous people as collaborators in a process of knowledge production. Such an applied research process can produce context-specific knowledge networks that support management and planning decisions by indigenous people; these networks we refer to as place-based learning communities. We present a researcher's perspective on this approach through our experience with the Shoal Lake Resource Institute of Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation located in northwestern Ontario.
Impacts of climate change vary from region to region. The 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) mentions that drier areas will be affected by more droughts while the rainfall regime, in general, will become 'rougher'. In West Africa, specifically the area below the Sahel, the climate change signal may be more subtle. Anecdotal evidence from farmers suggests that the onset of rainy season has been shifting forward in time over the past two generations. Recently, detailed atmospheric mod-elling over the region shows that in the near future too, the onset of rainy season will shift to later periods in the year, roughly from April towards May. The end of rainy season as well as the total amount of rainfall will remain more or less fixed. This implies that adapta-tion strategies should be twofold. The first part of a comprehensive adaptation strategy would be a con-tinuation of the efforts to produce faster growing rain-fed crop cultivars, mainly corn and sorghum. The second part would consist of increased water storage during the wet season for use during dry season.
Social work as a profession has a unique commitment in honoring the dignity and worth of human beings, and believing in the power of human relationships (NASW, 2008). In its approach to helping people, social work has distinguished itself through its dual focus on the person and the environment, a construct which has been widely identified as person-in-environment (Rogge & Cox, 2001). This construct has guided social work to engage in the empowerment of the individual and of society; however, it is a construct that has been criticized for its exclusion of the natural world. This paper examines the person-in-environment construct in social work and introduces deep empathy and ecological empowerment as important strategies of connection with the natural world. The paper also examines strategies of disconnection that negatively impact individual and planetary well-being. The implications of redefining person-in-environment to include the natural world are examined for both fields of social science.
▪ Abstract Recent perspectives in anthropological research define a disaster as a process/event involving the combination of a potentially destructive agent(s) from the natural and/or technological environment and a population in a socially and technologically produced condition of vulnerability. From this basic understanding three general topical areas have developed: (a) a behavioral and organizational response approach, (b) a social change approach, and (c) a political economic/environmental approach, focusing on the historical-structural dimensions of vulnerability to hazards, particularly in the developing world. Applied anthropological contributions to disaster management are discussed as well as research on perception and assessment of hazard risk. The article closes with a discussion of potentials in hazard and disaster research for theory building in anthropology, particularly in issues of human-environment relations and sociocultural change.
250 words Climate change discourses present two parallel narratives, one about the problems of climate change, the other about the solutions. In narratives about the problem of climate change, loss features dramatically and terrifyingly but is located in the future or in places remote from Western audiences. In narratives about solutions, loss is completely excised. This paper suggests that this division into parallel narratives is the result of a defensive process of splitting and projection that protects the public from the need to truly face and mourn the losses associated with climate change. Its effect is to produce monstrous and terrifying images of the future accompanied by bland and ineffective proposals for change now. A more sophisticated understanding of the processes of loss and mourning, which allowed them to be restored to public narratives, would help to release energy for realistic and lasting programmes of change. Psychoanalytic models of grief and loss may be particularly helpful in achieving this understanding. Drawing on practical work with small groups in Cambridge, UK, the paper proposes that William Worden's typology of the tasks of mourning and their negatives provides an appropriate model both for developing a culture of truthfulness, leadership and appropriate support and for developing practical programmes that would help members of the public to work through acceptance of changes that may threaten aspiration, culture, security and identity.
The study aimed to validate the Environmental Distress Scale (EDS), a new index of the bio–psycho–social cost of ecosystem
disturbance. Informed by qualitative fieldwork in the open-cut mining area of Australia’s Upper Hunter Valley, the EDS combines
dimensions of hazard perception, threat appraisal, felt impact of changes, “solastalgia” (loss of solace), and environmental
action. EDS discriminant validity was tested by randomly mailing the instrument to Upper Hunter residents living in a high
disturbance open-cut mining area and to a comparable sample in a nearby farming area; 203 respondents returned the survey
(41% response rate). As predicted, the high disturbance group had significantly higher environmental distress scores across
all six EDS subscales, including solastalgia. Psychometric analyses found the EDS subscales were highly intercorrelated (r=0.36–0.83), and they demonstrated both strong internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha=0.79–0.96) and test–retest
reliability (ICC=0.67–0.73). Descriptively, the high disturbance group experienced greater exposure to dust, landscape changes,
vibrations, loss of flora and fauna, and building damage, as well as greater fear of asthma and other physical illnesses due
to local pollution. The EDS successfully measured and validated Albrecht’s innovative concept of “solastalgia”—the sense of
distress people experience when valued environments are negatively transformed. While the EDS addresses the power and mining
industries, it can be adapted as a general tool to appraise the distress arising from people’s lived experience of the desolation
of their home and environment. Ideally, it can be used as an aid for those working to ameliorate that distress and restore
ecosystem health.
This study explores the implications of recent extreme rainfall and flood events in the Sahel and the wider West African region
for climate change adaptation. Are these events merely a temporal nuisance as suggested by the lingering desertification discourse
or will more climatic extremes characterize the region over the next century? After reviewing incidences of severe rainfall
and projected future climate variability, the paper examines local flood knowledge and decision-making, drawing upon a case
study in Ghana. The data demonstrate that a variety of response strategies to flooding exist; yet, knowledge of and access
to climate forecasts and other learning tools are essentially absent. So far, floods have not triggered mass displacement
although cumulative environmental deterioration is likely to cause environmental refugees. The paper recommends to lay to
rest the desertification narrative, consider the possibility of both floods and droughts, and mobilize local memory for anticipatory
learning and practical adaptation.
While there is a recognised need to adapt to changing climatic conditions, there is an emerging discourse of limits to such
adaptation. Limits are traditionally analysed as a set of immutable thresholds in biological, economic or technological parameters.
This paper contends that limits to adaptation are endogenous to society and hence contingent on ethics, knowledge, attitudes
to risk and culture. We review insights from history, sociology and psychology of risk, economics and political science to
develop four propositions concerning limits to adaptation. First, any limits to adaptation depend on the ultimate goals of
adaptation underpinned by diverse values. Second, adaptation need not be limited by uncertainty around future foresight of
risk. Third, social and individual factors limit adaptation action. Fourth, systematic undervaluation of loss of places and
culture disguises real, experienced but subjective limits to adaptation. We conclude that these issues of values and ethics,
risk, knowledge and culture construct societal limits to adaptation, but that these limits are mutable.
"This paper is a methodological contribution to emerging debates on the role of learning,particularly forward-looking (anticipatory) learning, as a key element for adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change. First, we describe two major challenges: understanding adaptation as a process and recognizing the inadequacy of existing learning tools, with a specific focus on high poverty contexts and complex livelihood-vulnerability risks. Then, the article examines learning processes from a dynamic systems perspective, comparing theoretical aspects and conceptual advances in resilience thinking and action research/learning (AR/AL). Particular attention is paid to learning loops (cycles), critical reflection, spaces for learning, and power. Finally, we outline a methodological framework to facilitate iterative learning processes and adaptive decision making in practice. We stress memory, monitoring of key drivers of change, scenario planning, and measuring anticipatory capacity as crucial ingredients. Our aim is to identify opportunities and obstacles for forward-looking learning processes at the intersection of climatic uncertainty and development challenges in Africa, with the overarching objective to enhance adaptation and resilient livelihood pathways, rather than learning by shock."
This paper examines the role of environmental change as a driver of migration, a central concern of areas of inquiry ranging from the Human Dimensions of Global Change research to population geography and development studies. Although much of the literature on the role of the environment in migration reflects a general awareness that environmental factors are but one of a suite of influences shaping migration decisionmaking, a framework within which to place social, economic, and environmental issues with regard to particular migration decisions is absent from this literature. Drawing upon recent contributions to the literature on migration, and political ecological concerns for access to and control over resources, in this paper I present a framework for placing such issues founded on a Foucauldian conceptualization of power. This framework treats environment, economy, and society as both products of and productive of social differentiation, instrumental modes of power, and resistance. These forms shape actors' understanding and negotiation of their social, economic, and environmental contexts, and therefore their migration decisionmaking. I illustrate the application of this framework through the example of three villages in Ghana's Central Region, where rural environmental and economic changes appear to have driven a complex pattern of outmigration over the past thirty-five years. This migration shows the ways in which environmental change becomes inseparable from local perceptions of economy and local politics through local manifestations of power.
Many rural Australian communities continue to endure a prolonged drought. The mental health effects of short-term natural disaster are well known; those of a long-term and chronic natural disaster such as drought are less well understood. However, in addition to immediate distress there are likely to be feelings of loss, grief and hopelessness, all of which are implicated in an increased risk of subsequent psychiatric morbidity. Furthermore, rural Australia is at a relative disadvantage for early and effective mental health intervention due to a lack of resources, compared with urban Australia. This qualitative research investigates the experience of drought in two farming communities in the state of New South Wales. Farmers, farm and non-farm businesspeople, and health workers took part in focus group discussions of the effects of drought on themselves, their families and their community. In addition to current distress related to financial and workload problems, people reported experiencing significant distress from the emotional impact of environmental degradation, from loss of hope for the future of their community, and from feelings of being misunderstood by the wider Australian community. The stressors affecting farming communities during times of drought are likely to be associated with increased risk of mental health problems.
This article reports the results of phase 1 of a study into community and individual resilience in rural Australians. The aim of the study was to develop, implement and evaluate a model that enhances psychological wellness in rural people and communities. The study used a critical participatory action research methodology to work in partnership with key individuals and groups in a rural community in Queensland which, anecdotally, was identified by its community representatives as having confronted and responded positively to and dealt with adversities such as drought, hailstorms and bushfire. A focus in the project was to identify vulnerable as well as resilient elements in individuals and the community, with an emphasis on identifying and then using existing individual, group and community resilience as exemplars for those who are less resilient. The study recognised that not all members of the community were resilient; clearly there are more and less resilient groups within this community. Additionally, it was acknowledged that resilience was not a steady state within an individual. Rather, an individual's level of resilience could vary over their lifetime.
A participatory action research design was chosen for this study which aimed to identify individual and community resilience factors in a community. The study is being undertaken in three phases. In phase 1 of the study (the focus of this article), 10 in-depth interviews and one focus group (with four participants) were conducted. Individuals identified by a network of community service providers as being particularly resilient were selected to participate in this phase, with the aim of identifying these individuals' perceptions of individual and community resilience. This article reports on the factors identified that impact on the individual resilience of rural people.
Thematic analysis of the qualitative data surrounding individual resilience revealed three themes: images of resilience; characteristics of resilient people and shapers of resilience (environmental influences that increase personal resilience).
The findings of this study support existing theoretical concepts of resilience, with an added dimension not previously reported. The major finding of this study is that connection to the land, which is strongly embedded in the literature on Indigenous peoples (eg human ecology) and acknowledged as part of Indigenous culture and cosmology, may also be a factor that enhances the resilience of non-Indigenous people who have built up a relationship with the land over time. The extent of this connection and its impact on individual and community resilience was, however, not established in this study, but should also be a major focus of future research.
Solastalgia is a new concept developed to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced distress. As opposed to nostalgia--the melancholia or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home--solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. The paper will focus on two contexts where collaborative research teams have found solastalgia to be evident: the experiences of persistent drought in rural NSW and the impact of large-scale open-cut coal mining on individuals in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. In both cases, people exposed to environmental change experienced negative affect that is exacerbated by a sense of powerlessness or lack of control over the unfolding change process.
Qualitative (interviews and focus groups) and quantitative (community-based surveys) research has been conducted on the lived experience of drought and mining, and the findings relevant to solastalgia are presented.
The authors are exploring the potential uses and applications of the concept of solastalgia for understanding the psychological impact of the increasing incidence of environmental change worldwide.
Worldwide, there is an increase in ecosystem distress syndromes matched by a corresponding increase in human distress syndromes. The specific role played by global-scale environmental challenges to 'sense of place' and identity will be explored in the future development of the concept of solastalgia.
Arising from the legacies of the twentieth century-unprecedented worldwide migration, unrelenting global conflict and warring, unchecked materialist consumption, and unconscionable environmental degradation-are important questions about the toll of loss such changes exact, individually and collectively. As large-scale and ubiquitous as these changes are, their deep specificity re-inscribes the importance of place as a critical construct. Attending to such specificity emphasizes the interconnections between contexts and broader movements and remains a prudent route to articulating critical interconnections among places and peoples in complex times. This book of essays turns to such specificity as a means to examine the inflections of migration on identity-displacement, disorientation, loss, and difference-as sites of both regression and possibility. Fusing autobiography and cultural analysis, it provides a framework for a critical education attuned to such concerns.
Primarily due to a high dependence on agro-ecosystems and their vulnerability to environmental changes, Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and variability (IPCC, 2007). Poor rural societies that are dependent on climate-sensitive resources will be the most affected, with potential negative impacts including loss of income, displacement, and internal migration.
In this paper we bring together work on landscape, temporality and lay knowledges to propose new ways of understanding climate change. A focus on the familiar landscapes of everyday life offers an opportunity to examine how climate change could be researched as a relational phenomenon, understood on a local level, with distinctive spatialities and temporalities. Climate change can be observed in relation to landscape but also felt, sensed, apprehended emotionally as part of the fabric of everyday life in which acceptance, denial, resignation and action co-exist as personal and social responses to the local manifestations of a global problem.
Poverty and health are often closely linked. However, types of settlement, sites and migration between areas may amplify or modify these relationships. The article aims at examining some poverty issues where health and geography seems to be relevant, with reference to Ghana. Some geographical structures of poverty may be related to poverty strands, such as the livelihoods approach and partly the participatory approach. A distinction between people poverty and place poverty may be relevant in a consideration of poverty outlines. An attempt is made to provide an overview and unravel the complex faces of poverty by groups and geography, and to indicate a differentiated empirical pattern of places and groups with various health conditions. The differences go beyond a 'stereotypic' urban-rural dichotomy and point to different adjustments in the studied areas. Possibly, women's situation seems to be more vulnerable in terms of their subordinated social position and roles in society. Some types of poverty reduction strategies that may cover various geographical scales are discussed, with a focus on the meso-level, with regional poverty reduction plans, towards more specific group and individual improvements taking place at micro-level.
The Volta region is a climate-sensitive semiarid to subhumid region in West Africa. To investigate the impact of expected global climate change on regional water availability, regional climate modeling was performed. Two time slices (1991-2000 and 2030-2039) of the ECHAM4 scenario IS92a were dynamically downscaled with MM5 to a spatial resolution of 9 km. The quality of MM5 simulations in reproducing regional climate was assessed using reanalysis data for initial and boundary conditions. Although an underestimation of coastal rainfall was detected, sufficient accuracy in the Volta Basin could be achieved. The regional climate simulations show an annual mean temperature increase of 1.2-1.3°C in the Volta region. This temperature change significantly exceeds interannual variability. A mean annual change in precipitation from -20% to +50% (~ -150 to +200 mm) is simulated, with a spatial mean increase of 5% (~45 mm). In the rainy season, rainfall predominantly increases, whereas a strong decrease is found for April, which is connected to a delay in the onset of the rainy season. In addition, interannual variability in the Volta region increases in the early stage of the rainy season. The climate change signals in infiltration excess and evapotranspiration show a nonlinear response to precipitation change. Aridity, expressed by the de Martonne aridity index, does not change significantly. The change signal in precipitation predominantly lies within the range of interannual variability. In contrast, the decrease in April exceeds interannual variability in the Sahel region.
Purpose
This article sets out to address the response of traditional societies in facing natural hazards through the lens of the concept of resilience.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper considers that resilient societies are those able to overcome the damage caused by the occurrence of natural hazards, either through maintaining their pre‐disaster social fabric, or through accepting marginal or larger change in order to survive. The discussion is based on a review of the corpus of case studies available in the literature.
Findings
The present article suggests that the capacity of resilience of traditional societies and the concurrent degree of cultural change rely on four factors, namely: the nature of the hazard, the pre‐disaster socio‐cultural context and capacity of resilience of the community, the geographical setting, and the rehabilitation policy set up by the authorities. These factors significantly vary in time and space, from one disaster to another.
Practical implications
It is important to perceive local variations of the foregoing factors to better anticipate the capability of traditional societies to overcome the damage caused by the occurrence of natural hazards and therefore predict eventual cultural change.
Originality/value
This article takes off from the previous vulnerability‐driven literature by emphasizing the resilience of traditional societies.
Contemporary storytelling among the IÑupiat of Point Hope, Alaska, is a means of coping with the unpredictable future that climate change poses. Arctic climate change impacts IÑupiat lifeways on a cultural level by threatening their homeland, their sense of place, and their respect for the bowhead whale that is the basis of their cultural identity. What I found during my fieldwork was that traditional storytelling processed environmental changes as a way of maintaining a connection to a disappearing place. In this article I describe how environmental change is culturally manifest through tales of the supernatural, particularly spirit beings or ghosts. The types of IÑupiat stories and modes of telling them reveal people's uncertainty about the future. Examining how people perceive the loss of their homeland, I argue that IÑupiat storytelling both reveals and is a response to a changing physical and spiritual landscape.
ABSTRACT Recent attempts by geographers to explore the human experience of space have focused on overt behavior and its cognitive foundations. The language and style of our descriptions, however, often fail to speak in categories appropriate for the elucidation of lived experience, and we need to evaluate our modes of knowing in the light of modes of being in the everyday world. Phenomenologists provide some guidelines for this task. They point to the preconsciously given aspects of behavior and perception residing in the “lifeworld”—the culturally defined spatiotemporal setting or horizon of everyday life. Scientific procedures which separate “subjects'’and “objects,'’thought and action, people and environments are inadequate to investigate this lifeworld. The phenomenological approach ideally should allow lifeworld to reveal itself in its own terms. In practice, however, phenomenological descriptions remain opaque to the functional dynamism of spatial systems, just as geographical descriptions of space have neglected many facets of human experience. There are certain avenues for dialogue between these two disciplines in three major research areas: the sense of place, social space, and time-space rhythms. Such a dialogue could contribute to a more humanistic foundation for human geography.
Older Australians living in rural areas have long faced significant challenges in maintaining health. Their circumstances are shaped by the occupations, lifestyles, environments and remoteness which characterise the diversity of rural communities. Many rural regions face threats to future sustainability and greater proportions of the aged reside in these areas.
The emerging changes in Australia's climate over the past decade may be considered indicative of future trends, and herald amplification of these familiar challenges for rural communities. Such climate changes are likely to exacerbate existing health risks and compromise community infrastructure in some instances.
This paper discusses climate change-related health risks facing older people in rural areas, with an emphasis on the impact of heat, drought and drying on rural and remote regions. Adaptive health sector responses are identified to promote mitigation of this substantial emerging need as individuals and their communities experience the projected impact of climate change.
Objective: This paper considers the short, intermediate and longer term effects of climate change in relation to the mental health of Indigenous residents of northern Australia, and what these effects mean in terms of supporting adaptation and resilience.
Conclusions: Indigenous Australians have contended with change for millennia, with the drivers shifting from ecological to social pressures since European colonization. Climate change resulting from human activities introduces a new set of change forces which will in the short term be mediated by economic and social effects internationally.
This paper explores the linkages between social-ecological resilience and adaptive learning. We refer to adaptive learning as a method to capture the two-way relationship between people and their social-ecological environment. In this paper, we focus on traditional ecological knowledge. Research was undertaken with the Anishinaabe people of Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation, in northwestern Ontario, Canada. The research was carried out over two field seasons, with verification workshops following each field season. The methodology was based on site visits and transects determined by the elders as appropriate to answer a specific question, find specific plants, or locate plant communities. During site visits and transect walks, research themes such as plant nomenclature, plant use, habitat descriptions, biogeophysical landscape vocabulary, and place names were discussed. Working with elders allowed us to record a rich set of vocabulary to describe the spatial characteristics of the biogeophysical landscape. However, elders also directed our attention to places they knew through personal experiences and journeys and remembered from stories and collective history. We documented elders’ perceptions of the temporal dynamics of the landscape through discussion of disturbance events and cycles. Again, elders drew our attention to the ways in which time was marked by cultural references to seasons and moons. The social memory of landscape dynamics was documented as a combination of biogeophysical structures and processes, along with the stories by which Iskatewizaagegan people wrote their histories upon the land. Adaptive learning for social-ecological resilience, as suggested by this research, requires maintaining the web of relationships of people and places. Such relationships allow social memory to frame creativity, while allowing knowledge to evolve in the face of change. Social memory does not actually evolve directly out of ecosystem dynamics. Rather, social memory both frames creativity within, and emerges from, a dynamic social-ecological environment.
The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment(ACIA) was published in 2005 and was the firstcomprehensive scientific assessment of climatechange in the Arctic (1). Potential direct andindirect health impacts of climate change aredescribed in chapter 15 of this assessment. International Journal of Circumpolar Health 68:1 2009
neva, Switzerland, has since its beginnings escaped anthropological attention to a large degree.' Yet it is a site where notions of indigenous culture have been articulated systematically and with striking consistency for nearly two decades. It is the only global institution at which indigenous identity has for years been discussed. It is also a place to which indigenous delegates have traveled in numbers that have increased dramatically over the last eighteen years. The WGIP has offered them the possibility to comment on local, regional, national, and international developments pertaining to the situations of indigenous peoples, and to participate actively in the development of international legal standards for the protection of their rights. No other global forum has ever enabled such a large and diverse group of activists and their organizations to fully articulate their problems on a regular, that is, yearly, basis, and to voice their opinion on how these problems should be solved. Indeed, the WGIP is a "unique exercise in international affairs" (Burger 1994:90) and "an exceptional U.N. forum in this regard" (Lam 1992:617). The arguments brought forth by indigenous representatives are breathtaking in their breadth and complexity, while the host of actors and institutions involved directly or indirectly is virtually innumerable. As a site of particular discursive density where indigenous identities and cultures are generated and articulated during intense encounters between indigenous and nonindigenous individuals, groups, institutions, organizations, and state-representatives, the WGIP is a vital nodal point in the global "indigeno-scape" (Beckett 1996). If the transnational indigenous social movement is to be understood "from above and below" (Brysk
The dramatic impact of climate change is physically and economically affecting the world, a consequence of neglecting scientific information known since the 1960s and 1970s. International discussion has focused on the needs of the physical environment and general health concerns (such addressing greenhouse gas production and population health issues); however, little acknowledgement has yet been made of local human issues, such as the effect of climate change on the mental health of those in rural communities. This commentary takes an occupational science perspective to describe new ways of classifying potential mental health problems associated with climate change and its impact on the rural environment. It challenges policy makers to take a proactive approach to addressing the current impacts of climate change on the future mental health of individuals in rural communities.
Relational-cultural theory offers an alternative to traditional theories of psychological development. Whereas traditional theories view mature functioning as characterized by movement from dependence to independence, relational-cultural theory suggests that maturity involves growth toward connection and relationship throughout the life span. After contrasting these two theoretical perspectives, the author describes a therapeutic approach based on the relational-cultural model, which involves mutual empathy and working with shame. A case example illustrates this approach. The author suggests that the relational-cultural model has applications at both the personal and societal levels.
Significant demographic, social and economic change has come to characterise much of rural Australia, with some authors arguing there are now two sharply differentiated zones, one of growth and one of decline. This restructuring process, which has been similar to other western nations, has had a profound impact upon rural places-socially, economically and physically. Findings from research investigating the relationship between health, place and income inequality suggest that rural 'desertification', which is characterised by decline of the agricultural sector, net population loss and the deterioration of demographic structures, may negatively influence mental health outcomes in these areas. By contrast, the growth in rural areas, which is associated with expanding employment opportunities and the movement of capital and people, may confer positive benefits to mental health. The aim of this study was to investigate differences in mental health and well-being between rural communities experiencing growth and decline as measured by net population change. Utilising a survey methodology, questionnaires were distributed to 20,000 people randomly sampled from the electoral role in rural Australia. We selected four sub-regions from the sample area that were characteristic of areas experiencing population growth and decline in Australia and analysed the results of respondents from these four regions (n = 1334). The analysis provided support for our hypothesis that living in a declining area is associated with poorer mental health status; however, the factors that underpin growth and decline may also be important in influencing mental health. Discussed are the mechanisms by which demographic and social change influence mental health. The findings of this study highlight the diversity of health outcomes in rural areas and suggest that aspects of place in declining rural areas may present risk factors for mental health.
The study investigated the associations between mental health and measures of community support, social support networks, sense of place, adversity, and perceived problems in a rural Australian population. There was a specific focus on farming communities due to previous qualitative research by the authors indicating distress by farmers in response to drought (Sartore et al. Aust Fam Phys 36(12), 990-993, 2007).
A survey was mailed to adults randomly selected from the Australian Electoral Roll and residing within four local government areas (LGAs) of varying remoteness in rural New South Wales (NSW). Survey measures included: support networks and community attachment; recent stressors (including drought-related stress); and measures of health and related functioning. The Kessler-10 provided an index of current psychological distress.
The sample (n = 449; response rate 24%) was predominantly female (58.4%) and 18.9% were farmers or farm workers. Moderate to very high psychological distress was reported for 20.7% of the sample. Half (56.1%) of all respondents, and specifically 71.8% of farmers or farm workers, reported high levels of perceived stress due to drought. Psychological distress was associated with recent adverse life events, increased alcohol use and functional impairment. Hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated an independent effect of the number of stressful life events including drought related stress, perceived social support (community and individual), alcohol use and physical functioning ability on levels of psychological distress. This model accounted for 43% of the variance in current levels of distress. Lower community support had a more marked impact on distress levels for non-farming than farming participants.
This study has highlighted the association between unique rural community characteristics and rural stressors (such as drought) and measures of mental health, suggesting the important mediating role of social factors and community characteristics. The results illustrate the importance of addressing subgroup differences in the role of social capital in mental health.
Dangerous donations: Discarded electronics in Accra, Ghana