Ecological Sorrow: Types of Grief and Loss in Ecological Grief

Abstract

Ecological changes evoke many felt losses and types of grief. These affect sustainability efforts in profound ways. Scholarship on the topic is growing, but the relationship between general grief research and ecological grief has received surprisingly little attention. This interdisciplinary article applies theories of grief, loss, and bereavement to ecological grief. Special attention is given to research on “non-death loss” and other broad frameworks of grief. The dynamics related to both local and global ecological grief are discussed. The kinds of potential losses arising from ecological issues are clarified using the frameworks of tangible/intangible loss, ambiguous loss, nonfinite loss and shattered assumptions. Various possible types of ecological grief are illuminated by discussing the frameworks of chronic sorrow and anticipatory grief/mourning. Earlier scholarship on disenfranchised ecological grief is augmented by further distinctions of the various forms it may take. The difficulties in defining complicated or prolonged grief in an ecological context are discussed, and four types of “complicated ecological grief” are explored. On the basis of the findings, three special forms of ecological loss and grief are identified and discussed: transitional loss and grief, lifeworld loss and shattered dreams. The implications of the results for ecological grief scholarship, counselling and coping are briefly discussed. The results can be used by psychological and healthcare professionals and researchers but also by members of the public who wish to reflect on their eco-emotions. They also have implications for policy makers.

Ecological Grief Observed from a Distance

“…A lot depends on whether one lives at the forefront of the climate crisis as well as on other factors; the "natural response", as Cunsolo and Ellis characterise ecological grief, does not inevitably mean "necessary". To say that one is well aware that one's spouse or close friend has died yet one is not notably moved emotionally by it sounds strange at least (including, of course, emotional responses such as numbness or emptiness; as has been said, the particular phenomenology of grief experiences is varied and includes also this kind of "inhibited grief" [9]).…”

“…However, unlike fear, which, even if unjustified, remains fear (stronger versions of cognitivism might not concede even that, though; cf. Solomon on anger [33]), ecological emotions are vulnerable to depreciating reclassifications: if a critic succeeds in convincing the distressed person that their ecological grief is "confused" in view of the supposed facts that should justify it, it is far too easily relabelled as panic, hysteria, or some kind of neurosis, and thereby disenfranchised [1,9]. The always contestable issue of legitimacy seems embedded in the very heart of ecological emotions or at least some of them.…”

“…And, conversely, if there is one distinct sense in which the person can be identified as unable to "move on", it may indicate that she is still somewhat "stuck with" her grief. 4 Ecological grief may be exactly in this sense "complicated" or "prolonged" [9], resembling "continuing bonds" in bereavement [40], though compared to the variety and richness of this phenomenon in interpersonal contexts, the experience of ecological loss may more strongly tend towards resisting a positive perception of the continuing bond (the unequal applicability of thehardly ever neutral-label "living in the past").…”

“…In his ground-breaking research into "bereavement visits", which dates back to the 1960s, the Welsh physician Dewi Rees has been exploring the phenomenon of bereaved people seeing, meeting, or talking to their lost ones [48]-which he, just as others, strives to describe as a natural and healthy phenomenon helping the bereaved people [48][49][50]; cf. again the discussion of continuous bonds both in [9] and independent of ecological contexts [12] (chap. 5 and 6), [40].…”

“…In the Western context, precursors of this affective experience as something more universal can be found in the classics of environmentalist writing by Aldo Leopold [7] and Rachel Carson [8] but also as far as Romantic poetry (cf. Pihkala's [9] (Section 1.1) historical overview). For Indigenous people, though, ecological grief, if unnamed, has long been a part of the lived reality, as they faced colonialist oppression and expulsion from their traditional lands (exploited for the purpose of the colonisers' agriculture or mining) [10].…”