Research and resources, shaped by those doing the work

Sally Gillespie's talk on building climate resilient communities, drawing on her background in climate psychology and ecopsychology. Gillespie explores the psychological and community dimensions of building resilience in the face of climate crisis, connecting inner emotional work with collective and community-based action.

As ice melts, bushfires, heatwaves and cyclones intensify, many grapple with the question of "what kind of hope, if any, can I hold as climate catastrophe deepens?" To answer this question, we need to not only accept the realities of worsening climate destructions, but also re-examine the nature and agency of hope in the face of existential crisis.

Good climate reporting informs us about the complex consequences of a heating planet. In order to also act as a catalyst for change, climate campaigners need to acknowledge the complex emotional responses their stories stir while highlighting avenues for personal and collective action.

This study explores how reindeer-herding Sami communities in Sweden perceive and experience the limits of resilience in the face of climate change. Drawing on qualitative interviews, the authors examine how shifting weather patterns, unpredictable snow and ice conditions, and changing vegetation are affecting traditional reindeer husbandry practices that are central to Sami livelihood, culture and identity. Participants describe a sense of encroaching limits to their capacity to adapt, as traditional ecological knowledge built up over generations becomes less reliable in the face of rapidly shifting conditions. The study situates these experiences within a broader discussion of resilience as a concept, questioning whether it can be usefully applied to communities facing climate impacts that may exceed adaptive capacity altogether, and calls for greater attention to Indigenous perspectives on climate resilience and its limits within climate policy and research.

Background: Both extreme weather and climate change have been linked to distress and at times mental health problems. Pro-environmental actions have often been related to higher distress. The uncertainty distress model proposes that in real-world situations, perceptions of threat and uncertainty contribute to distress.

Climate and ecological breakdown are structured by dynamics of power and discrimination. Like other forms of structural discrimination, these dynamics operate on every scale, from the global and collective, to the interpersonal and relational. This chapter explores how the therapeutic process may include explicit exploration of these different levels and their relationship with each other, in the wholeness of the client, the therapist and our world. It introduces the concept of 'deep democracy', whereby all parts of a given 'field' or process have something that is needed for the whole, including the very part of the system we are most in conflict with.

The aim of this position paper is to argue that after COVID-19, we have a terrific opportunity to develop a planetary sense of community to confront systemic problems such as climate change, racism, sexism, socioeconomic and power disparities. This tangle of different crises is making both the earth and us human sick and spreading huge amounts of physical, psychological and political pain. Only if we all become more aware of the interconnections between the crisis each of us prioritizes, and all the others, then we have a better chance to begin to develop a planetary sense of community.

Youth-driven organisation set up in 2020 offering peer-support Resilience Circles, an annual Resilience Fellowship, and workshops grounded in climate psychology, helping young climate activists build emotional resilience and avoid burnout.

Nigerian youth-led sustainability organisation using art, pop culture and grassroots advocacy to make climate action relatable across Africa. Its Eco-Anxiety in Africa Project (TEAP) validates and researches African experiences of eco-anxiety and environmental-related emotions.