What is eco-anxiety?

Note: This story was published in February and refers to an event that has already occurred.

Some things are inevitable: death; taxes; the Vancouver Canucks disappointing fans.

But our world descending into a super-heated hellscape thanks to climate change is not.

Reading about the state of the environment can provoke anxiety and a sense of futility. But it doesn’t have to be that way. On Tuesday, the Fraser Valley Conservancy is hosting a discussion group to bring together people feeling anxious about their planet, and to foster better vibes, and positive action.

We talked to the conservancy’s Andrea Sadowski about “eco-anxiety,” the search for positivity, and what individuals can do about a global problem.

What is eco-anxiety?

Fraser Valley Current: To start, what is eco-anxiety?

Andrea Sadowski: Eco-anxiety is the strong feelings people have when they’re scrolling through their newsfeed. I’m just thinking of young people who have Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. They’re going through their feed and see doom and gloom news posts about how the world is ending [and] there’s nothing you can do about it.

“Let’s just resign ourselves to our fate”: I think a lot of young people especially are feeling that because they’re taking on the burden of having to deal with all these problems that they didn’t create in the first place. So it is sort of the common feeling of hopelessness or anger or rage or sadness or despair over the state of our world and kind of not knowing what to do about it, or feeling powerless that you can’t really do anything about it.

FV Current: Is this feeling something that’s fairly common among your peers (people in their 20s)?

Sadowski: I’d say that it is.

You’ve got a small percentage of people who don’t still don’t believe in climate change. But the people who do, there’s a lot of sense of: ‘It’s not my own responsibility. This is the responsibility of the governments and big corporations and billionaires to solve this problem.’

And in a way, yes, it definitely is. But as individuals, we still have things that we can do, and needles that we can push a little bit and cultures to change.

I’ve hosted a few focus groups to prepare for this project and a lot of responses I got—especially from young people—to the question of ‘How do you feel about climate change?’ was ‘scared, anxious, hopeless, I don’t know what to do.’

I feel like that is a common thing: that people don’t know what to do, or they feel overwhelmed. That there’s so much to do, and they can’t possibly do it all on their own.

FV Current: So it’s a sense that the task is so huge, and one person is so relatively small that you end up feeling subjected to this force that you can’t really control?

Sadowski: Exactly, yeah.

FV Current: For someone who might care deeply about these issues, but also might have many other things going on in their lives and find it easier to not think about it, how should those people think about this? Because obviously, you don’t want to inflict additional anxieties on people who might have a ton of other anxieties, and yet, you also want their participation in helping to address these issues.

Sadowski: So the [Fraser Valley Conservancy’s new] Step To It program is all about getting individuals involved in whatever capacity that they feel like they are able to. So emphasizing that your individual actions do matter: whether that be just planting one native tree in your backyard that’s giving habitat to just one more bird, or showing up to a public meeting for something like McKee Peak and voicing your concerns, or just doing small actions like recycling.

There’s been a lot of myths that recycling doesn’t help, it doesn’t do anything, all the recycling goes to the dump anyways. Emphasizing that it does matter, these small changes do matter. And they do create ripple effects.

We’re not asking people to change their entire lifestyle: go vegan, and zero waste, only shop local, don’t ever shop on Amazon again. That’s unattainable for a lot of people, and I think that those types of lifestyles make them feel like, ‘I can’t do this so I might as well do nothing at all.’

We’re encouraging people to do the small things that they are capable of doing and able to do and just making small lifestyle changes and building upon them, one by one, however they can.

FV Current: Going back to like those people who do feel a level of anxiety. What was the idea behind this discussion group?

Sadowski: We are hoping to connect people with each other and basically show them your feelings are valid [and] look at all these other people who have the same feelings as you, [while] connecting them with nature. It’s not a therapy session—we’re not registered therapists—we want to create a community discussion group: other people do share your feelings, but here are some practical ways that you can ease the anxiety.

I think one of the huge ways we can ease this anxiety is just taking small actions to help connect with our environment and support our environment in some way. So we’ll be teaching people how they can draw strength from and ease their anxiety through just being connected with nature, and have that connection with nature inspire them to do more to help nature.

FV Current: You hear more and more about how being outside and kind of going for walks and that type of thing can improve your mental health. Is it in that same vein of things?

Sadowski: Yeah, there’s studies that show that just a half an hour in the forest once a week decreases cortisol levels and increases dopamine levels. Nature does good things for you whether or not you have anxiety. A solution that we’re leaning on is just encouraging people to get out more in nature; just having a view out the window into nature is more healing than just a view of a concrete wall.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Step To It

The first eco-anxiety discussion group meeting takes place Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 2pm at the western end of Mill Lake Park. Anyone can drop in (and can call Andrea at 604-832-3615 if they need help finding the group). Sadowski said depending on turnout, the conservancy may create other groups in other communities around the valley this year.

The eco-anxiety discussion is part of the conservancy’s new Step To It program that is focused on connecting individuals to the local environment. Part of that includes stewardship programs that seek to show locals how to improve the habitat for animals in their own backyards. You can find out more about those programs here. Mission residents can take part in a habitat healers program next month.