Stirling study shows link between ecological grief and climate justice
Photo Credit: Wes Warren
Scientific Frontline: Extended "At a Glance" Summary: Ecological Grief and Climate Justice
The Core Concept: Ecological grief represents the profound emotional response to environmental loss, characterized by the breakdown of "life possibilities" fundamentally tied to a specific geographic location. This concept connects the psychological experience of losing a significant place directly to political demands regarding land, resources, and climate justice.
Key Distinction/Mechanism: While traditional frameworks for climate justice focus primarily on quantifiable economic and material damages, this approach recognizes emotional and psychological loss as a normative force. It frames ecological grief not solely as a mental health impact, but as a tangible justification for territorial rights, protection, and compensation.
Origin/History: The framework was established in a 2026 interdisciplinary study published in WIREs Climate Change, authored by Dr. Virginia De Biasio and Dr. Pablo Fernandez Velasco. The research merged previously separated fields of political theory, philosophy, and psychology to bridge the gap between localized place attachment and global climate justice.
Major Frameworks/Components:
- Place Attachment: The morally valuable, irreplaceable connections individuals and communities form with their environment, which structurally sustain their life plans and self-understanding.
- Phenomenology of Loss: The philosophical study detailing how environmental destruction dismantles the foundational structures of human well-being, transitioning a physical loss into a loss of future possibilities.
- Interdisciplinary Climate Justice: A theoretical paradigm integrating emotional and psychological trauma into political claims for recognition, territorial rights, and redress.
Branch of Science: Environmental Psychology, Political Science, Philosophy (Phenomenology), and Environmental Science.
Future Application: Establishing new policy frameworks for international climate agreements that calculate and compensate for psychological and emotional damages. This will guide how governments and international organizations design responses and allocate resources for displaced communities in highly vulnerable regions.
Why It Matters: Recognizing ecological grief as a legitimate dimension of climate justice enables policymakers to comprehensively assess the true cost of environmental destruction. It provides vulnerable populations with a robust, scientifically backed framework to demand justice and compensation for the intangible, deeply personal impacts of global climate change.
The grief experienced in response to environmental destruction is closely tied to questions of justice, rights, and what it means to lose a place that has shaped lives, a new study led by the University of Stirling has shown.
The research brings together insights from political theory, philosophy, and psychology to explore how “ecological grief” – the emotional response to environmental loss – relates to people’s attachment to place, and emerging debates around climate justice.
Climate change is increasingly transforming landscapes and communities across the world, particularly in vulnerable regions. While researchers have examined the political importance of place attachment and the psychological impact of environmental loss, these areas have largely developed separately.
The new study bridges this gap by showing that the emotional experience of ecological grief is deeply connected to the political claims people make over land, resources, and compensation.
Deep connection
Dr Pablo Fernandez Velasco, British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Stirling’s Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory, who is the senior author of the study, said: “Climate change leads to environmental destruction, which profoundly affects people living in vulnerable areas.
“We found that there is a deep connection between the experience of ecological grief and the rights grounded on people’s attachment to place. The loss of place in ecological grief comes down to a sense of losing one’s life possibilities.
“The resulting picture is one in which the places through which our lives develop can sustain the very structure of our lives, our life possibilities.
“Thus, when these places are lost due to climate change, there is a breakdown in what seems possible and significant to us, and ecological grief emerges as a response to that loss of life possibilities.
“Recognizing ecological grief as part of climate justice could help policymakers better assess which losses can be compensated, which cannot, and how responses should be designed – both in the UK and globally.”
Important questions
By linking this emotional response to political theory, the research suggests that such losses are not only personal but also raise important questions about rights and justice.
The findings indicate that ecological grief can be understood as both evidence of a meaningful connection to place and an expression of a demand for justice.
When people lose places that are central to their lives, the study argues; they may be entitled to recognition, protection, or compensation. This expands existing approaches to climate justice, which have often focused primarily on economic or material damage.
Instead, the research highlights the importance of acknowledging emotional and psychological loss – and the role it plays in shaping claims for redress.
New framework
By integrating perspectives from political theory and the study of emotion, the research offers a new framework for understanding what is at stake when climate change transforms environments.
Dr Virginia De Biasio, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow for Systemic Risk and the Transformation of Democracy (DERISK) at King’s College London, who is the first author of the study, said: “In our study, we recognize that when people form morally valuable connections to specific places, fundamental dimensions of their wellbeing are structured upon such connections in a way that is not easily replaceable.
“We then argue that studies in phenomenology can help us clarify the ways in which place can mold the shapes of our lives and the mental health impact resulting from the loss of place. Many individuals and communities do not just live in a place. They live with the place where a specific place is indissolubly linked to how they understand themselves and their presence in the world.
“Overall, one of our main findings is that attachment to place and ecological grief are two sides of the same coin. The former expresses the presence of meaningful place-based ties; the latter mourns about their loss.
“Understanding attachment to place through the lens of ecological grief entails recognizing the inevitable emotional dimension that underpins people's relations to places and its normative force as a justification for territorial and resource rights.”
Additional information: The work was carried out as an interdisciplinary review, combining existing research on territorial rights and resource claims with philosophical and psychological studies of ecological grief.
Funding: Arts and Humanities Research Council PhD Studentship, and Dr Pablo Fernandez Velasco's work was funded by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Leverhulme Trust.
Published in journal: WIREs Climate Change
Title: Place, Climate Change and the Experience of Loss
Authors: Virginia De Biasio, and Pablo Fernandez Velasco
Source/Credit: University of Stirling
Reference Number: psy042926_01
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