EcoGrief
Ecografias do Luto: Avaliando a Perda Intangível e Angústia Climática no Portugal Rural
ECOGrief integrates ecopsychology, political ecology and economy by building a new interdisciplinary index to measure Environmentally-induced Distress and Eco-grief based on evidence of culturally meaningful idioms of Intangible Loss & Damage in rural Central Portugal thus contributing to a better understanding of Public Mental Health & Restorative Socio-Environmental Justice in the context of climate change and the green transition.
Climate extreme events and chronic degradation of environments result in intangible losses: life, solace, belonging, bonds/relations, culture/knowledge, heritage, identity, familiarity/predictability, security, dignity/self-esteem. Communities experience Intangible Loss and Damage in terms of emotional embodied distress, or psychosomatic changes that range from ecoanxiety, stress syndromes or despair to sadness and eco-grief. Based on recent scientific knowledge emerging from eco-psychology, political geography and ecological economics, the ECOGrief project aims to create an interdisciplinary analytical framework and typology of Climate Loss and Distress following climate disasters such as fires and droughts in rural Portugal. ECOGrief hypotheses that examining locally and culturally meaningful expressions of loss, embodied distress and eco-grief will shed light on the extent and depth of climate-related changes.
ECOGrief unveils personal and collective responses to ecological loss and distress, identifies climate-related losses that matter to local communities and suggests coping mechanisms for the chronic deterioration of well-being and health related to climate and environmental changes. Building on existing climate studies and feminist/emotional Political Ecology, the project expands existing psychometrics to build an innovative analytical index that qualitatively measures ecosystem disturbance for a better understanding of environmentally-induced embodied distress during climate-related events in Portugal.
Based on interdisciplinary, qualitative and quantitative research, the project will propose a novel analytical framework to understand environmental/climate distress and eco-grief in Portugal. Institutionally, it seeks to enrich the toolkit of EJ and climate scholars and practitioners with guidelines for the potential use of interdisciplinary psychometrics in socio-environmental impact assessments in contexts of climate and environmental changes as well as civic education related to climate emotions and aimed at promoting a just green transition.
A new EcoGrief Scale will be proposed following qualitative interviews for better understanding and measuring eco-loss, distress and grief in Portugal, aiming to become a valid social monitoring tool for affected communities, local government, public health researchers and industry. Thus, from the perspective of public outreach, the project events will translate academic work for a broader audience through cultural/educational materials, building constructive dialogues between the academia and the public to support understanding of environmental/climate change as a public mental health threat, the possible mechanisms towards coping for wellbeing, improving historical empathy for non-commensurable, irreplaceable loss.
Irina Velicu (coord)
José Manuel Mendes
Marcus Guy Erridge
Tiago Pires Marques
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