Ecografias do Luto: Avaliando a Perda Intangivel e Angústia Climática no Portugal Rural

Emotional health and reparation mechanisms have been demanded since the origins of environmental justice in the context of conflicts and movements (14); however, these have rarely addressed the challenges of measuring intangible losses. Within political ecology literature and transition proposals, the focus has been on the structural analysis of environmental inequities and conflicts, while less is known about the embodied distress in contexts of degradation or loss of valued landscapes and its impact on the sustainability/well-being of affected communities. This research gap motivates the project ECOGrief, which aims to assess climate-related intangible loss, distress and eco-grief as well as to explore responses towards Restorative Environmental Justice building on ́emotional political ecology ́(11). ECOGrief proposes an empirical analysis of people-centred and place-specific experiences with climate-related loss of valuable human possessions that are largely intangible and non-commensurable (e.g. loss of sense of place or belonging, of socio-cultural bonds, ways of knowing, etc.). This empirical analysis will be conducted in Portugal with a focus on fires and droughts: the 2017 forest fires in the Central region are a paradigmatic example of lived experience of intangible loss, such as meaningful landscapes, biodiversity or patrimony. In June 2022, according to data from the Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera (IPMA), 66% of Portuguese territory was experiencing extreme drought. Such changes make people feel dispossessed of irreplaceable dimensions of life, leading to deep feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, grief, anxiety and depression, which often also correlate with increased abandonment of rural areas, addictions, domestic violence, suicidal ideation and extremist behaviour. ECOGrief’s central research questions ask: How does Intangible Loss impact Well-being and Mental Health of communities affected by climate disasters? What definition of Environmental Justice accounts for Climate-related Loss and Distress? Other empirical questions are: How do climate extreme events and disasters affect well-being and mental health? How does Intangible Eco-Loss impact Well-being and Mental Health? How are loss and eco-grief experienced-sensed bodily and mentally? What are the coping mechanisms and visions of healing? How do governmental institutions respond to such events? Our hypothesis is that climate extreme events result in intangible losses, that are ontological foundations of human existence: life, solace, belonging, bonds/relations, culture/knowledge, heritage, identity, familiarity/predictability, security, dignity/self-esteem. Communities experience Intangible Loss and Damage in terms of emotional embodied distress, or psychosomatic changes that range from ecoanxiety, stress syndromes or despair to sadness and eco-grief. Working at the frontiers between political ecology and eco-psychology, this project pursues 3 research objectives: 1) Developing a new theory of socio-environmental restorative justice based on better understanding of Intangible Loss 2) Developing interdisciplinary analytical tools to measure climate/environmentally-induced loss and distress at the intersection of eco-psychology and political ecology/geography/economy 3) Evidencing locally/culturally meaningful languages of intangible loss, harm and recovery.