ABSTRACT
Practices and processes of grief work can help people acknowledge and work through endings, but how do these connect with the never-endings of responding to climate change and associated social injustices?
This chapter draws on research conducted in England and Scotland with participants in socio-ecological group practices (The Work that Reconnects/Active Hope and the Carbon Literacy Project) which explore psychological and practical responses to climate change.
The research showed that climate change materialised the actual or anticipated sense of loss, change and injustice relating to what participants valued and cared about in the present, past and future: ecosystems and cultures, expectations and possibilities and connections to the more-than-human world. The research reveals how practices to acknowledge and work with griefs associated with climate change increased the capacity and resources of individuals to initiate and sustain engagement with climate change, and how unacknowledged griefs contributed to forms of ambivalence which impeded engagement.
