Presentation at a Finnish-Mexican seminar 25.3.2021 by Dr. Panu Pihkala, an eco-anxiety researcher

2. Edvard Munch: Scream, 1893

3.  1.What is ”eco-anxiety” and climate anxiety?
 2. How to encounter these difficult emotions
in education?

4.  ”Eco-anxiety and Environmental Education”,
2020 (December), https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310149
 ”Anxiety and the Ecological Crisis”, 2020
(September), https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/7836/htm
 Some practical activities:
 www.ecoanxietyandhope.blogspot.com
 www.toivoajatoimintaa.fi (in Finnish)
 About ClimateAnxiety:
 https://mieli.fi/en/raportit/climate-anxiety

5.  My definition: ”Anxiety-related feelings which
are significantly connected with the
ecological crisis”
 There are all kinds of anxiety in people’s
experiences of eco-anxiety
 ”Practical eco-anxiety” (see Charlie Kurth’s work)
 Existential anxiety
 Strong, even clinical anxiety

6.  Research is ongoing, but it seems that a vast
number of children and youth experience
some kind of eco-anxiety
 Naturally, if persons encounter many
intersectional injustices (poverty, oppression
etc.), there is less time and resources for
thinking about the ecological crisis
 However, there is eco-anxiety worldwide

7.  “All I see is lovely trees and that reminds me
that we are killing all the trees and then I feel
angry and sad, so I won’t or can’t go there any
more. If people stupidly tell me that time in
nature is healing all I can say to them is that
all I see is dying animals and plants’.”
- Hickman, Caroline (2020). We need to (find a way to) talk
about … Eco-anxiety, Journal of SocialWork Practice, 34:4,
411-424

9.  Coping theory:
 Problem-focused coping: doing something
constructive
 Emotion-focused coping: encountering the
emotions constructively
 Together these form Meaning-focused coping:
being able to maintain a sense of meaningfulness
in life
 See the many research articles by Maria Ojala

11.  In the website www.toivoajatoimintaa.fi ,
you’ll find resources for both action and
emotional work (GoogleTranslate)
 Workshops and self-reflection materials for
teachers
 The teachers need to encounter their own feelings

12.  Validating the existence of eco-emotions
 A further step would be to confess that the
educator, too, has complex feelings
 Providing opportunities to discuss eco-
emotions
 A further step: ”easy-to-use” arts, such as painting
emotions or moods
 Providing opportunities for embodied
encounters of eco-emotions

13. Ecological
emotions
Confusion
Desire to
do
something
Anxiety
Fear
Sadness
Despair
Guilt
Anger
Sense of
community
Pihkala, Panu (2020)

14. ”Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not
the same as joy that things are going well, . . .
but, rather, an ability to work for something
because it is good.”
–Vaclav Havel

15. Edvard Munch: Sunrise in the harbor, 1832

16.  Dr. Panu Pihkala,
Adjunct Professor (Title of docent)
University of Helsinki, Faculty ofTheology,
HELSUS Sustainability ScienceCenter
panu.pihkala@helsinki.fi
 Twitter: @panupihkala
 www.ecoanxietyandhope.blogspot.com
 Munch paintings:Wikipedia