Sustainability, Solastalgia and Health in the Symbiocene
Version originale en anglais
To sustain something means to continue, uphold or maintain that thing so that it endures. The concept seems simple enough, yet there are hundreds, if not thousands of definitions of sustainability and sustainable development in the world of policy. These definitions range from the technical to the commonplace. Very quickly, problems are revealed, for everyone has a different opinion on what exactly should be sustained and over what time frame. Sustainability, like the condition of ‘freedom’ has no content unless you specify its context right from the start.
It is clear then, like many issues in human affairs, the definition of sustainability depends on who is doing the defining. If we go back to the start of modern environmentalism, Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962)1thought it wise to quote from the French scientist and philosopher, Jean Rostand, in her introduction to the book. Rostand famously stated that «The obligation to endure gives us the right to know» (Rostand 1960)2. He created this phrase in the context of the threat of nuclear technology to life on Earth, but as Carson knew, it also had huge relevance to her concerns about pesticide pollution, or what she called «the elixirs of death» on the planet.
Both issues are focussed on the future and the life-chances of our children. Both issues require knowing about the dangers of something complex, invisible and with implications for innocent, non-consenting future generations. Concern about the future entails a strong ethical stance, one that later definitions of sustainability included as ‘equity within and between generations’, including future generations of humans.
The focus mainly on humans in the early sustainability literature has also changed over the last few decades with ‘equity’ now including our relationships to non-human life forms (inter-species equity). The shift from the strictly anthropocentric has also seen a sustained critique of the Anthropocene or period of human dominance on this planet. In Australia, for example, the Anthropocene is exemplified by the black coal industry, its violent terraforming of the landscape, toxic regional pollution and global climate change impacts. Australia exports world-leading tonnages of black coal, but ‘imports’ hugely negative climate warming consequences manifest in extreme heat, drought, wildfires and storms.
In addition to these biophysical impacts, a negative result of large-scale coal mining has been the impact on human health and well-being. My own contribution to a better understanding of this relationship has been the concept of solastalgia (Albrecht 2005)3. While we already had a defined feeling of loss and mental anguish when absent from home in Hofer’s 1688 concept of nostalgia, there was no concept in the English language for a similar distressing feeling while emplaced in a home environment that was being desolated.
Solastalgia was defined as a feeling of profound distress connected to a much-loved home environment that has changed for the worse by forces that seem impossible to prevent. Solastalgia is a feeling of melancholia or homesickness while still at home. It is the loss of solace that can be derived from a loved ‘home’ that is typical of solastalgia. Further, the ‘algia’ in solastalgia comes from the ancient Greek and it can mean pain, grief or sorrow. We will feel such emotions as our beloved home, the Earth, experiences even more endangerment, extinction and ecosystem ill-health. When ecosystem health begins to fail, so too does our mental health in the form of solastalgia and other negative psychoterratic (psyche-Earth) conditions.
Despite massive negative impacts on ecosystem health worldwide, in 2024 it seems humans are still confused about what to sustain. Ironically, we seem good at sustaining the very things that compromise our ability to endure on the Earth. The «right to know» about nuclear risks, ecosystem pollution, and now, the pollution of our climate has also been seriously confounded by «fake news» and conspiracy theories.
Climate chaos is impacting large island nations such as Australia. In addition, all over the Pacific, small island states are being regularly inundated due to the rising sea level.
Ironically, the Marshall Islands and many other small island states in French Polynesia were also subject to the effects of over 300 atomic blasts4 during so-called «testing» from 1946 to 1996.
The legacy of nuclear waste, nuclear radiation and sea level rise delivers chronic solastalgia to those who live near ‘sacrifice zones’ such as the ‘Tomb’ on Runit Island5. Now, «the right to know» applies to both climate warming and the nuclear legacy as they have unfortunately intersected in the Pacific. Beyond the experience of solastalgia, people on low-lying islands are being forced to re-locate to other countries.
Finally, in mid-March 2024, one of the largest coral reefs on Earth, the Great Barrier Reef, built by ancient symbiosis between polyps and algae, is undergoing yet another mass bleaching event due to record hot sea temperatures, causing the loss or death of the algae (zooxanthellae). In the whole Southern Hemisphere (Oceania), climate warming is breaking apart the unions that constitute coral reefs and the great diversity of life they harbour. This is a cause of solastalgia on a massive scale.
The antidote for solastalgia is to address its major determinant, the ecocidal aspects of the Anthropocene. To create the conditions where good ecosystem health and good human mental health prevail, we need to urgently exit the Anthropocene and move into the Symbiocene (Albrecht 2019)6. The Symbiocene7 is a future state where our good Earth emotions can thrive and help rebuild a symbiotically connected world. The ‘obligation to endure’ is then understood as the right to ‘know and grow’ in symbiotic co-generation with all life forms on this wonderful home, the Earth.