Emotional healing as part of environmental and climate justice processes: Frameworks and community-based experiences in times of environmental suffering

Abstract

This paper seeks to discuss the political role of healing practices in the context of climate and environmental justice struggles. We rely on literature and practices that have identified healing as a means for liberation from structural oppression and physical and symbolic violence, to humans, non-humans and nature - namely emotional political ecologies, transformative and healing justice and communitarian feminism. We also briefly discuss the experience of three collectives in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain who develop healing strategies as a way to emotionally support local communities exposed to territorial, environmental, and climate impacts and injustice. We argue that by further addressing the political dimensions of healing in environmental and climate justice, researchers, activists, and practitioners could expand the conceptualisation of (a) the spatial and temporal scales of climate justice by further engaging with the inter- and intra-generational emotional implications of environmental injustice, and (b) environmental and climate justice as a multidimensional and nonlinear collective emotional process.

Keywords

Healing; Climate justice; Environmental justice; Emotions; Political ecology

Published in

Political Geography
2022, volume: 98, article number: 102721
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU Authors

• González Hidalgo, Marien

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG13 Climate action
SDG16 Peace, justice and strong institutions

UKÄ Subject classification

Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102721

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/119301