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Manage eco-anxiety

Many residents across Surrey, particularly young people, are concerned about the changing climate and decline of nature. Depending on what’s important to us as individuals our concerns can be quite different. The most common concerns we share are harm to nature and wildlife, extreme weather, flooding, food shortages, and concern for the future generations. Such worry can lead to eco-anxiety (or climate anxiety).

Understanding that climate change is a collective global concern can be a starting point for managing negative emotions. Two-thirds of Surrey residents rate action on climate change and the environment as ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important. Only 5%, a tiny minority, think that action to tackle the climate crisis is ‘not important’ (In-house study for Surrey County Council by Temple Group, 2022).

Moreover, nearly 50% of British residents and 69% of the global population say they’d be prepared to give 1% of their income to tackle the climate crisis (Nature: Globally representative evidence on the actual and perceived support for climate action). The overall support for climate action is higher than we expect and knowing that others are keen to contribute could be reassuring for people who feel anxious and overwhelmed by climate change and nature degradation.

While it is a rational response to feel overwhelmed and upset by the state of the natural world, you can tackle this by taking action around the things that concern you. This not only helps you to manage anxiety and stress, it is also beneficial for meeting like-minded people and fostering collective action towards climate change. Taking action on climate change also has a range of other benefits including:

  • Using eco-anxiety as the driver for climate action, whether it is individual or group effort.
  • Protecting your mental health by staying positive and active rather than helpless and overwhelmed.
  • Encouraging collective action and strengthening social ties by talking to people who feel the same way about climate change.
  • Supporting others who are experiencing similar distress, by understanding the barriers that other people face towards climate action and showing ways to cope with climate concerns.