Greenland's Ecological Grief

Greenland melting 

Solastalgia  is a neologism that describes a form of mental or existential distress caused by environmental change. In many cases this is in reference to global climate change, but more localized events such as volcanic eruptions, drought or destructive mining techniques can cause solastalgia as well.

Northern regions are warming at two to three times the rate of the rest of the planet. Permafrost and glaciers are melting because of record temperatures, some species are in dramatic decline, and there are wildfires in areas which have never experienced them before. Scientists say that earlier this month  Greenland's ice sheet experienced its biggest melt of the summer on Thursday, losing 11 billion tons of surface ice to the ocean -- equivalent to 4.4 million Olympic swimming pools.

This has a profound psychological and physical effect on the humans who live there as well, whether they are the residents of Canada, or Russia, or Greenland -- climate change doesn't respect borders. According to Courtney Howard, the board president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, who lives and works in the Arctic, the intersection between the climate emergency and mental and physical health will become one of the world’s major issues.



Eastern Greenland Children 

A recent national study in Greenland found that the climate crisis is causing unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety for people who are struggling to reconcile the traumatic impact of global heating with their traditional way of life.

The  survey examined the human impact of the climate emergency and shows that more than 90% of islanders interviewed fully accept that the climate crisis is happenimg, with a further 76% claiming to have personally experienced global heating in their daily lives, from coping with dangerous sea ice journeys to having sled dogs euthanized for economic reasons tied to shorter winters.

This has been described as "ecological grief" and "solastalgia" (defined above.) This is also a spiritual crisis, as many Indigenous cultures connect the rhythms and balances of the land with their awareness of the Creator. They are bearing the brunt of our disconnection with creation, the natural world, and as I've offered recently, we need to listen to them again with humility. 

“The weather, which we had learned and predicted for centuries, had become uggianaqtuq—a Nunavut term for behaving unexpectedly, or in an unfamiliar way. Our sea ice, which had allowed for safe travel for our hunters and provided a strong habitat for our marine mammals, was, and still is, deteriorating. I described what we had already so carefully documented in the petition: the human fatalities that had been caused by thinning ice, the animals that may face extinction, the crumbling coastlines, the communities that were having to relocate—in other words, the many ways that our rights to life, health, property and a means of subsistence were being violated by a dramatically changing climate.” 

The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet

― Sheila Watt-Cloutier