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As climate change continues unabated, research is increasingly focused on capturing and quantifying the lesser-known psychological responses and mental health implications of this humanitarian and environmental crisis. There has been a... more
As climate change continues unabated, research is increasingly focused on capturing and quantifying the lesser-known psychological responses and mental health implications of this humanitarian and environmental crisis. There has been a particular interest in the experiences of young people, who are more vulnerable for a range of reasons, including their developmental stage, the high rates of mental health conditions among this population, and their relative lack of agency to address climate threats. The different geographic and sociocultural settings in which people are coming of age afford certain opportunities and present distinct challenges and exposures to climate hazards. Understanding the diversity of lived experiences is vitally important for informing evidence-based, locally led psychosocial support and social and climate policies. In this Project Report we describe the design and implementation of the “Changing Worlds” study, focusing on our experiences and personal reflect...
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Awareness of the threats of climate change is engendering distress in increasingly documented ways, with young people particularly affected. Experiences such as climate distress and eco-anxiety have implications for the health and... more
Awareness of the threats of climate change is engendering distress in increasingly documented ways, with young people particularly affected. Experiences such as climate distress and eco-anxiety have implications for the health and wellbeing of societies, economies, and for climate action, including mental health, agency to address the crisis, and future planning. While multi-country studies suggest that eco-anxiety and related experiences of distress may vary with context, the hypothesis that exposure to climate-related impacts increases eco-anxiety and associated psychological impacts is underexplored in youth at the individual level. Here we show that in a large sample of US youth (aged 16–24, n = 2834), self-reported direct experience of climate-related events significantly increased eco-anxiety, climate distress and the impact of climate change on future planning, but also psychological adaptation, meaning-focused coping and climate agency. As the climate crisis accelerates and ...
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This chapter is an attempt to inspire experimentation with approaches to public engagement about emerging technologies, and takes synthetic biology as a primary site of interest. It does this at a time when the roles of critical scholars... more
This chapter is an attempt to inspire experimentation with approaches to public engagement about emerging technologies, and takes synthetic biology as a primary site of interest. It does this at a time when the roles of critical scholars in the social sciences and humanities are becoming increasingly well documented for the contributions they make to how synthetic biology is discussed and understood through interdisciplinary collaborations. At the same time, practitioners of diverse forms of public engagement such as artists, designers, and DIYbiologists are not often (though are sometimes) explicitly involved in these collaborative assemblages, despite their abilities to contribute to a diversity of communications within and outside of the field. I connect the communication lessons being learned from interdisciplinary collaborations to public engagement practices on the basis of a “need for experimentation” that is sometimes more visibly exercised by artists, designers and DIYbiologists. I then use writings from philosopher Isabelle Stengers about the abilities of “expert”, “diplomat”, and “idiot” figures to enable the slowing down of thinking in relation to scientific and technological advances in order to explore such “experimentation” in communication. Stengers’ ideas are connected to public engagement in synthetic biology through creative and “experimental” communication practices that open up rather than close down questions about the field. I argue that public engagement practitioners and science communicators who want to slow down the—at times, misguided—public narratives of synthetic biology can look to controversies in interdisciplinary collaborations, and artistic activities in the field, for examples of communications that strive to create space for emergent, rather than decided, narratives about the field.
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ABSTRACT. Climate action is not advancing quickly enough to prevent catastrophic harm. Understanding why might require looking at existing leadership structures and the inequitable gender representation therein. Critically examining... more
ABSTRACT. Climate action is not advancing quickly enough to prevent catastrophic harm. Understanding why might require looking at existing leadership structures and the inequitable gender representation therein. Critically examining dominant power structures could pave the way toward more comprehensive, innovative, and expedient environmental solutions—and we argue that elevating women’s climate leadership is key to safeguarding planetary health. Women have historically been left out of climate science and governance leadership. Women are disproportionately impacted by the health effects of climate change, particularly in Indigenous and low- and middle-income settings. Therefore, our call for women’s climate leadership is both an issue of justice and a matter of effectiveness, given evidence that inclusive leadership rooted in gender justice leads to more equitable outcomes. Here, we present evidence for why gender equity in climate leadership matters along with considerations for h...
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Recently published research (Hickman et al., 2021) described concern and anxiety about climate change among young people aged 16-25 in ten countries around the world. Using the same dataset, this paper examines differences associated with... more
Recently published research (Hickman et al., 2021) described concern and anxiety about climate change among young people aged 16-25 in ten countries around the world. Using the same dataset, this paper examines differences associated with gender and age. There were small but consistent gender differences, with female respondents expressing greater levels of concern and negative emotions, while male respondents were more optimistic and expressed greater faith in government. Within this narrow age group, there was some evidence that concern and negative emotions about climate change were higher among older respondents compared to those who were younger. There were complex differences among countries; in general, respondents in the Philippines, India, and Nigeria report a stronger psychological impact of climate change than respondents in the United States and Finland. These results help to describe the extent and patterns of climate anxiety worldwide in an age range that is relatively...