As people increasingly experience climate-induced drought, rising sea levels, hurricanes, and wildfires, they’re not only losing their environment - they’re also losing cultural landmarks, identity, and practices. The term solastalgia has emerged to describe the feelings of anxiety and sorrow that follow immediate impacts to our environments.
When environments are altered, it affects the person not only physically (food insecurity, forced migration) but psychologically, often manifesting as stress, grief, and depression. Solastalgia, coined by Glenn Albrecht in 2003, looked into the psychological impacts of continuously seeing our environments change around us in ways we find distressing.
Communities throughout the world that rely on farm-to-table food systems or subsistence farming are more prone to experience solastalgia as their source of life is through the land. Solastalgia helps highlight that human emotions are a reflection of the status of the environment, and human wellbeing is directly tied to the planet’s prosperity.
In the aftermath of a cyclone in Banyalbufar, Spain, the sight of a felled tree serves as a stark reminder of the devastating impact of extreme weather events intensified by the effects of harsher weather patterns. Balearic Islands, Spain, 2021.
Photography By Pamela EA
