Eco-anxiety surfaces in the classroom

The current polycrisis of biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution has significant impacts on the emotional wellbeing of many of us. Especially young people, including students, experience negative emotions, such as fear, anger and despair, often qualified as eco-anxiety or eco-grief. In combination with other challenges and emotions faced by students, this may cause stress or even burnout, as well as paralysis to act.

Forest and Nature Conservation Policy students, being often motivated by love for and the ambitions to contribute to nature, may experience these emotions even stronger, especially those related to the biodiversity crisis. However, such emotions are usually neither recognised nor discussed in the classroom, nor among teachers and scientists.

As teachers, we argue that we have a responsibility to relate to these emotions, not only because they are relevant to our students (and to us as teachers), but also because they may affect our teaching as well as the visions and ambitions our students have for their career opportunities and choices. In addition, we argue that young people could be considered agents of change, rather than ‘adults in the waiting’ (Trott, 2021). In addition, education — especially university education — tends to frame the climate and biodiversity crises as a matter of scientific interest with primarily technical solutions, rather than as a deeply social, political and emotional issue.

Recognising and discussing

In ‘People in forest and nature conservation’, a first year course in the Bachelor’s programme Forest and Nature Conservation (BBN) at Wageningen University, we explicitly focused on the empowerment of students in this respect, explicitly recognising and discussing the emotional responses of students (and teachers) to the biodiversity crisis. This discussion was positioned in a wider focus on transformative change, and the agency of all sectors in society, including students, scientists and grassroots, to seek pathways towards a more sustainable future.

During this four-week course, we designed a series of short essay assignments to trigger students’ thinking of and reflections on i) perceptions of the biodiversity crisis, ii) their emotional responses to the crisis, iii) potential solutions, and iv) whether and what role societal actors, including themselves, could and would be willing to play in dealing with the crisis. Related to the essays, three group discussions were organised in a formal tutorial setting to discuss these reflections. One of these sessions was explicitly dedicated to the emotional responses of students.

Discussions on emotions are not easy; neither for students nor for teachers. Not only because emotions are often delegitimised in science and education, but also because openly discussing these emotions requires a safe and open environment for students and teachers alike. We were pleasantly surprised by the openness of many —but certainly not all —students who shared their different feelings and engaged in dialogues about these

Emotions

Fear, anger and powerlessness about the biodiversity crisis were the most expressed emotions. With permission from the students, we did a formal analysis on the essays, classifying emotional responses in line with existing literature on eco-anxiety. We found different clusters of emotions, each with potentially different impacts on students. Most students experienced what has been called ‘activating emotions’, such as hope and anger. In literature, these are considered as ‘adaptive’ emotions, and they help people to adapt to the threat that causes the emotion, for example by trying to lower the threat. Meanwhile, several students have also expressed emotions such as fear, hopelessness and frustration, which can be classified as ‘maladaptive’ emotions. These cause emotional distress, but are unlikely to lead to action that reduces the distress.

Psychological literature suggests that for developing coping mechanisms, it is helpful to explicitly recognise and express emotional responses to environmental crises. Formal teaching approaches may be helpful here, as they can provide a structured and safe context to navigate these emotions. In our experience, it is important that all types of emotions should be recognised, shared and reflected upon. Studies show that for eco-anxiety, adaptive coping mechanism may trigger pro-environmental actions, such as environmental activism or stewardship actions. Discussing maladaptive emotions and recognising that students were not alone in experiencing these emotions may help them to open up, and develop coping mechanisms. Indeed, psychological literature suggests that recognising these emotions and sharing them with like-minded people may prevent developing significant mental problems from eco-anxiety and the like.

Hope

In many essays, students explicitly mentioned the need for hope, especially when they experience overwhelming feelings of despair. In line with this search for hope from students, we end this blogpost with a -cautious- vision of hope. Overwhelming scientific evidence suggests that activating emotions such as hope —but also anger — are important drivers for people to act, to become active and contribute to bend the curve of biodiversity loss. Indeed, many students mentioned that emotions such as hope and anger, as well as emotional attachment to non-human nature, have inspired them to find a solution. Meanwhile, many first year students find it difficult to actively contribute, and most argue that they are individually not sufficiently powerful or knowledgeable to contribute in any significant way. As teachers, we hope that providing a platform for discussing these emotions and exploring potential pathways for change may help students to develop agency, and explore their roles and positions within and beyond education. In our view, such discussions should feature across the full course of Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in the environmental domain to help students navigate eco-emotions and contribute to inner transformative change. Or, as one student wrote in the formal evaluation of the course: “Because we explored our personal values ​​and emotions (...), I now genuinely look at things differently every day.”

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With contributions from Remco Wingelaar, Jade Kandelaar, and Rianne Kat

Photo credit: Pixabay