Congratulations! You have begun to make personal behaviour changes in order to ensure a bright future for the planet! You have faced the psychological barriers that came up and implemented new regimes into your lifestyle. But the idea of so much change seems scary, and there are also big changes happening beyond your control. So, you might have begun to ask yourself:
Is it possible to maintain identity, despite big changes?
Why do some people seem to go through change with more ease than others?
What impacts our ability to learn and grow as a result of experiencing change?
Am I strong enough to bounce back from difficult situations?
The answer is resilience
If you maintain your identity and ability to function when you experience change…
If you have systems and supports in place to prevent the experience of change from harming you…
If adversity stimulates your creativity…
If you can acknowledge change and adapt to your new reality…
…then you are resilient!
We see examples of resilience everywhere, in human beings and other living things, but also within entire ecosystems. So, as humans begin to consider changes on a global scale, how do we respond to these changes with resilience?
Social-ecological resilience
Research by the Stockholm Resilience Centre with Stockholm University provides us with 7 principles for building resilience in social-ecological systems based on the aim to build capacity to deal with unexpected change.
Principle 1: Maintain diversity.
Whether it’s types of species, people or knowledge, one of most important components of resilience is diversity. Diversity builds resilience by bringing together different ways to problem solve. If you feel like you are in a bubble or echo chamber where everyone has the same frustrations, maybe it’s time to hear a new perspective – what could we learn from a different knowledge source or from nature itself?
Principle 2: Manage connectivity.
The Stockholm Center explains that resilient connections come from identifying, restoring and optimizing important interactions. This principle is not necessarily about making more connections (because overly connected systems also have susceptibilities), it’s about fostering a true sense of belonging. It’s about asking yourself, how well does my community work together and how effective is our communication?
Principle 3: Manage feedbacks:
Feedback loops have the ability to reinforce the systems and behaviours we want. So, can we identify loops that are reinforcing unsustainable practices and replace them with systems that encourage the behaviour we do want to see? Clear and intentional protocols with appropriate rewards and consequences can help us ease into change.
Principle 4: Foster complexsystems thinking.
Can we suspend our blame, shame and guilt long enough to see that both social and ecological systems are complex, and their interconnections even more so?! Once we start to think about connections and interdependencies, we then start to expect and account for change and uncertainty, recognize barriers and build resilience. It’s about objective thinking here people!
Principle 5: Encourage learning.
Experimentation, risk taking and learning outside your comfort zone can build confidence and connections. How well do we understand the depth of the ecological systems on which we depend? Can we do a better job of sharing knowledge? Once we deeply understand our ecological and social systems, we can better address their sustainability.
Principle 6: Broaden participation
Have the right people involved! Dealing with unexpected change involves trust, understanding and unique perspectives. Who are the natural leaders? How can you build capacity among participants? How can you ensure all voices are heard?
Finally, principle 7 brings it all together through collaboration and having the right people in the right place at the right time. What kind of rules and governance do we have in our society? Social-ecological resilience involves all levels of society, not just the individual. Effective governance, guidelines and communication between institutions enables swift responses and collective action.
The only constant
As we move forward as individuals and communities living amongst natural ecosystems, we may wish to start to expect the unexpected. But change doesn’t have to be so scary. With effective communication, diversity and an openness to learning, change can evoke wonderful opportunities for creative alternatives!
Are you a resilient person?! What strategies have you developed for dealing with unexpected change, and how can the global community apply that resilience thinking as we face a rapidly changing planet?
Do you ever experience deep sadness when you reflect on the natural world around you? Perhaps during a moment on the lake when you notice more algae blooms, fewer fish, or a shorter ice-season. Maybe it’s when you realize you just don’t see the birds, turtles, or caribou you used to see as a child. Or on a hot summer day, when you have to reconsider your plans due to the smog advisory. Or maybe it’s more blatant – the way your home will never be the same after a flood or a wildfire.
Solastalagia & Ecological Grief
The losses we, as a community, are experiencing and the sorrow they cause have been described as solastalgia. This is a relatively new term and is used to express the melancholy of feeling homesick when you are still at home, because the environment has irreversibly transformed. Beyond melancholia, many are describing this feeling of sorrow for loss of the natural world as ecological grief:
“The grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems, and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change.”
Why do we grieve? When we give meaning to the losses we experience, we are grieving. We grieve to process the loss and integrate it into our life. We grieve as an extension of the love we have felt.
Can grief really be experienced for plants, animals, and even places? As the world changes, we are processing more loss of species and landscapes. If those were creatures or places you had a connection with – it can absolutely be an experience of grief. What does grief look like? Feelings of grief could manifest into anger, disgust, disappointment or even leave you feeling overwhelmed or alone, like no one else understands what you are experiencing. Grief can also lead to feeling lost or hopeless, like you feel like you have no idea how to help your planet or yourself within it. It could also be a craving for connection with another person who feels the same way that you do- a profound longing for the health of our planet or how things used to be.
What now? While grief is a normal reaction, it is important to go through a healthy grieving process. Without processing grief there are concerns that we can get trapped in feelings of anger, pain, numbness, and fear. One way we can honor a loss and say goodbye is by taking our grief public through a process of mourning. Mourning can happen through ceremony, creative expression, celebration, or conversation. Practicing whichever process of mourning feels authentic to you will help you build confidence, resilience, and community connections.
So am I supposed to have a funeral for a tree? If you feel a bit silly about your sorrow for the dying oak tree in the backyard, or the ceremony you held for the bird your cat caught, just know you are not alone in your pain. From an obituary for a lost coral reef in Australia, to a vigil for orcas in British Columbia, around the world there are people expressing their ecological grief and mourning various losses. Some folks wrote and published a heartfelt goodbye to the last member of a species of Panamanian frogs and one American artist even created a virtual memorial platform to pay tribute to extinctions occurring globally.
How can I get help? All of these courageous people are acknowledging their grief and creating safe spaces to mourn lost elements of our natural world. At Family TLC we also want to create a space for your ecological grief, so tell us, what are the ecological losses that have impacted you and how do you mourn those losses?
Cunsolo, A., & Ellis, N. R. (2018). Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss. Nature Climate Change, 8(4), 275.
Kyera CookMA in Environmental Education and Communication
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