Ecological Grief and Climate Anxiety: Advancing Conservation Science at the Interface of Collective Human Trauma and Environmental Change

Trauma is an increasingly common feature of the collective human experience. Yet, science-based discourse on the relationship between collective human trauma, a shared psychological and emotional response to catastrophic events, and environmental change is in its nascency. What does it mean to experience ecological grief, climate anxiety, ecoanxiety, or solastalgia? The rapid, unprecedented changes in the environment (including climate change) caused or exacerbated by human activities are symptoms of historical collective human trauma and can facilitate a collective retraumatizing process that further degrades the Earth system. What is the viable exit strategy for this trauma-driven loop? How can recognizing and consciously addressing collective human trauma associated with environmental change forge socio-ecological resilience, fostering the generative potential of all life on Earth?

From a transdisciplinary perspective, this Research Topic is intended to explore the interrelatedness of collective human trauma and environmental change, in various forms, with a view toward building socio-ecological resilience. Manuscripts may address any aspects of collective human trauma associated with environmental change. Examples include ecological grief, climate anxiety, ecoanxiety, solastalgia, and the impact of displacement on collective identity. Submitted manuscripts need to meet journal standards for scholarly rigor, advance conservation science in some manner, and be rooted in the social sciences. Submissions elucidating the perspectives and socio-ecological knowledge of Indigenous and traditionally marginalized peoples are strongly encouraged. We welcome all Frontiers’ manuscript types.

Creative, transdisciplinary approaches to this topic are encouraged. Examples of manuscript themes welcomed by the Topic Editors include, but are not limited to, the following:

· How are ecological grief, climate anxiety, ecoanxiety, and solastalgia defined, experienced, measured, and inter-related? What is the pathological versus generative potential of these experiences?

· How does forced human displacement (e.g., due to fires, sea level rise, biological invasion) impact collective human trauma across generations?

· How can we standardize a transdisciplinary scientific approach to the inter-relationship of collective human trauma and environmental change to enable rigorous cross-sector research?

· What are the priority research needs to facilitate collective trauma healing and, thereby, socio-ecological resilience?

· How can we build generative partnerships between the mental health and ecological science communities to foster socio-ecological resilience in the face of environmentally driven collective human trauma?

· How do the various forms of collective human trauma significantly impact our ability to address environmental changes, as it shapes our perceptions and responses to environmental crises?

· How does collective human trauma drive dissociation from nature and dissociation from nature drive collective human trauma?

· How is contemporary anthropogenic environmental change connected to ancestral trauma, to humanity's unresolved trauma?

· Is the biosphere trying to heal itself through collective healing of the human animal?

· How can Indigenous Knowledge, cosmologies, and experiences inform and facilitate socio-ecological resilience following forced human displacement, or other forms of collective human trauma associated with environmental change?

· How can addressing collective human trauma foster social-ecological resilience and vice versa?

· How can mental health be better incorporated into One Health and Planetary Health models?

· What science-based information and tools do practicing psychotherapists need to support clients in coping with trauma associated with environmental change, and how can those tools best be delivered to foster socio-ecological resilience?

· What is the potential role of peacebuilding, especially within diverse groups, to facilitate regeneration of fragile earth systems?

· What are the gendered aspects of collective human trauma associated with environmental change?

· What are the inter-connections between peacebuilding, community cohesion, and resilience to trauma?

· What lessons do mythos, metaphor, and other forms of story have to offer for generating collective socio-ecological resilience in the face of environmental change?

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Specialty Grand Challenge
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: collective human trauma, climate anxiety, climate change, Earth systems change, ecoanxiety, ecological anxiety, ecological grief, hiraeth, resilience, solastalgia, social-ecological resilience, climate anxiety, human trauma, socio-ecological resilience, human dimensions, human dimensions of conservation, biodiversity conservation, environment, environmental change, biodiversity loss, coping, collective trauma healing, ancestral trauma, human ecology, environmental psychology, ecopsychology, green psychology, mental health, One Health, Planetary Health

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.