Solastalgia: how climate change impacts mental health and the value of re-connecting people to place

Session: Linking Human Well-being, Quality of Life, and Ecosystem Services to Conservation Efforts (2)

Brenda Hoppe, MDH, [email protected]

Abstract

Solastalgia refers to the experience of distress, powerlessness, identity loss and disconnection associated with the negative transformation of one’s home environment. This term is arising more frequently in the academic literature, yet it is an experience tribal communities have long endured as a result of forced displacement and degradation of ancestral homelands. Now, due to rapid and dramatic changes in the climate, a growing number of people are feeling impacted by solastalgia, as ecosystems shift away from what communities have depended on for generations—culturally, socially, and economically—toward an unknown future. What good can come from trying to understand this place-based distress? What value is there in efforts to understand how various communities, particularly indigenous, agricultural, and coastal communities, are negatively impacted by solastalgia? And conversely, how might efforts to address solastalgia positively impact these communities and perhaps re-establish connections to changing ecosystems and bolster local level resiliency strategies? Dr. Brenda Hoppe will tackle these issues and others drawing on her participation in an international workgroup of tribal, academic, agency and non-profit partners convened to explore solastalgia in the Lake Superior region, particularly as it relates to climate change and associated impacts on area ecosystems, visitors, and residents.