Climate Emotions in Higher Education

Climate distress is an emerging issue driven by concerns about climate change. This impacts mental health and influences taking climate action. Especially in young adults, such as students, emotions like worry, anxiety and even depression are found to be related to climate change. However, in education, the focus is often just on facts and not on emotions. Together with the Climate Majority Project, a UK-based climate organization, we aim to address the existence of climate emotions in higher education.   

• Collaborator: Climate Majority Project

• Date: 2024

• Students: Carmen Heemsbergen, Ilke Asal, Vonne Smit

• Supervisors: Jelger Kroese, Colin Hickey

Challenge 

The emotions that come naturally with learning more about climate change is not given enough attention in climate sciences yet. Neglecting these emotions can have a negative impact on the well-being of students as well as a potential decreased motivation for participating in climate action. Therefore, addressing these difficult emotions is important for empowering students. However, teachers struggle with discussing climate emotions and there is resistance about implementing this in the curriculum.   

Approach 

By creating a safe environment, students can express their feelings and learn about turning climate emotions into meaningful climate action. During this project current interventions on addressing climate emotions in education have been investigated. Additionally, we conducted interviews with experts in the field of climate sciences, climate psychology and education. Based on this data we created a one-hour workshop that climate science teachers can implement in their course. Additionally, we hosted an online workshop about emotions in general. With hosting different types of workshops (online vs in person) we learned more about the ways of addressing climate emotions in different settings. We then transformed the knowledge we gained during these workshops into an informative guide, in the form of a website, for teachers and filled with practical tips on how to address climate emotions.   

Outcomes 

As a result of this project we: 

• Discovered what topics about climate emotions university teachers could discuss with their students 

• Created practical recommendations university teachers can use to start a discussion about climate emotions and taking meaningful climate actions 

• Designed and executed a workshop to bachelor students about climate emotions 

• Facilitated an online workshop on the desire behind emotions 

• Gained information about the institutional barriers that prevent emotions from being implemented in higher education 

Our team is currently working on a website to present our findings in a publicly accessible format.

Student team