What role do social-ecological factors play in ecological grief?: Insights from a global scoping review

Abstract

As climate change and biodiversity loss affect more places across the globe, reports of ecological grief – an emotional response to the loss of valued places, species, or ecosystems – are becoming increasingly common. Research suggests that social-ecological context plays a key role in influencing how ecological grief is experienced. However, while recent scoping reviews have focused on understanding the relationships between environmental loss and mental health from a psychological or clinical perspective, to-date no review has applied a social-ecological lens to understanding how ecological grief arises within specific places. Here, we use a social-ecological lens to better understand the conditions that shape ecological grief, drawing on a global scoping review. Focusing on the period since 2018, when the term ecological grief was popularised, we identify and discuss four broad types of social-ecological factors that influence the lived experience of grief for the environment – the biophysical losses that underpin ecological grief, the geographical settings that shape and contextualise environmental losses for people including place meanings, values and attachments; and the facets of social identity and socio-political (structural) processes that shape how individuals and communities experience environmental loss. Our review highlights the importance of geographical and structural factors in shaping individual experiences of ecological grief and suggests that examining ecological grief through an intersectional lens can help to better understand it as a layered experience resulting from the mediation of biophysical changes by place-based and social identity-related factors.