| Zusammenfassung |
The latest reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services show that humans have heated the climate at a rate unprecedented over the last 2000 years and that 1 million species face extinction globally. While the scientific evidence around climate change, biodiversity reduction and the devastation of whole ecosystems accumulates, commensurate political action is lagging, as the limited agreements reached at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties held in Glasgow show. In response to this reality, growing numbers of scientists, activists, public intellectuals, theologians, journalists, and members of communities who have borne the brunt of the crisis (historically exploited Indigenous people, racialised and impoverished populations,) are becoming increasingly vocal about their negative ecological emotions - emotions associated with feelings of displeasure, pain, and suffering. Environmental grief, anger, shame, disgust, disappointment, and despair at the sustained pace of destruction and the lack of appropriate political responses emerge from their public testimonies. A 2021 study surveying 10,000 young people (aged 16-25 years) highlighted the worrying rate of anxiety among this generation, who sense their life choices are severely diminished by current trends: 59% were very or extremely concerned about climate change, while over 50% stated they were sad, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. This network will develop a complex research agenda that examines these emotions and addresses their increased frequency by building an interdisciplinary team - one that brings together academics (political theorists, historians, sociologists, scholars from the environmental humanities, theologians, literary and communication studies specialists) and practitioners (scientists, activists, and artists). It will foster collaboration and mutual learning with international partners in North America, Europe, and Australia, which will lead to the production of several publications (1 article, 1 special issue, 1 creative writing work, 1 open-access bibliography) and knowledge exchange activities (4 film projections and Q&As, 1 artwork display). These will pave the way to a large joint grant application beyond the network's duration. Four research objectives animate the networks agenda. Theoretically, the network will assess whether negative environmental emotions might play a public knowledge-enhancing and action-guiding role in social processes of recognising and dealing with (still) widely disavowed environmental crises. Interpretively, the network will analyse a variety of autobiographical works by scientists, activists, journalists, theologians, writers, and members of communities most directly affected by the environmental crises. It will also involve some of these authors in its activities, aiming to map the ways in which these emotions are culturally expressed within various communities, but also to test the validity of its theoretical proposals. Methodologically, this interdisciplinary network will aim to valorise conceptual and empirical approaches to the study of emotion, destabilise epistemic hierarchies between academics and practitioners, and recuperate the value of historically marginalised perspectives. Critically, the network's members will inform public debates about the environmental crises and the failures to address them. Its dissemination and public outreach agenda will focus on recognising the complex variety of emotional responses to the crisis, acknowledge the legitimacy of often dismissed environmental negative emotions and foreground their potentially fruitful role in mobilising renewed environmental mobilisation. Film projections, public roundtables, the display of a visual artwork and the publication of a creative writing work constitute key opportunities for dialogue and learning beyond academia. |
