Grieving ecological losses

Abstract

The world is facing an escalating environmental crisis marked by major socio-ecological losses. Human-induced environmental threats, like biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution, underscore the onset of the Earth's sixth mass extinction, recently termed ‘ecocide’. Despite the urgent warnings from the scientific community and growing public awareness, inadequate and insufficient action has been taken to address the environmental crisis. In addition, recent research has shown that people are increasingly experiencing anxiety and feelings of hopelessness concerning these environmental issues, which prevents meaningful engagement with these topics. Yet, the role of emotions is often neglected in the Western discourse, impeding public acknowledgement of ecological grief (eco-grief).
This study recognises eco-grief as a legitimate response and the process of eco-grief as a catalyst for true engagement and pro-environmental attitudes, demonstrating how this alternative approach can inform the governance and planning of eco-centric cities. A conceptual framework based on Latour’s cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic virtues, the process of eco-grief and the X-curve for societal transitions is used to understand how people perceive the ongoing crisis.
Rotterdam Noord is taken as a case study, and a survey is used to gather citizens’ perceptions of nature, their experiences of ecological loss and grief, and their attachments to their local environment. In combination with a spatial and a governance analysis, a governance strategy is designed to create both physical and mental space for eco-grief to exist and be acknowledged in the urban context in order to contribute to a societal change towards eco-centric values. The strategy involves three elements focussed on building the relationship with our environment, revealing environmental losses and coping with the corresponding feelings.
This research contributes to debates around eco-grief by providing empirical insights from an urban setting while addressing urban-specific challenges like the “anti-urban bias” and the “shifting baseline syndrome”.