Introduction by Croakey: When news about the state of planetary health is unrelentingly negative, is it useful or even possible to cultivate hope?
These and other questions about the nature of hope are explored below by researchers who recently participated in the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse’s 2024 Future Leaders Program at the ANU, which seeks to “create new opportunities for knowledge mobilisation that aims to improve planetary health equity”.
Their article is part of a wide-ranging series by the Program’s Fellows for Croakey readers.
Rebecca Blackburn, Takwa Tissaoui and Matthew Ryan write:
It’s been the hottest year on record. We’ve seen devastating floods in France and Italy, Brazil, forest fires are burning across South America, America and Canada, while heatwaves are killing hundreds in South East Asia.
Here in Australia as summer approaches and we dream about family holidays, long evenings and maybe the beach, at the back of our mind is the recurrent nightmare of smoke and fires, storms and floods.
It doesn’t matter which part of the world you are from, the climate disasters are affecting us all.
As Australian climate scientist Dr Joelle Gergis puts it: “The Federal Government’s actions still don’t reflect the urgency of the planetary-scale crisis we are in. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising and enormous fossil fuel projects continue to be approved to meet domestic and international demand.”
We are, in her words, on a ‘highway to hell.’
Anyone who works in the health and environment space is acutely aware of this.
So, how do we keep going as professionals and as people, in the face of this future?
What hope is there for the equitable enjoyment of good health in a stable earth system, if that system is burning down around us?
Over a two-week residency at the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse at ANU, fellows in the Future Leaders Program returned often to this question, critically considering hope as an emotion, a tactic, a practice, and a politics.
Focus on progress
Arush Lal, a PhD Candidate from the London School of Economics and Political Science, stays hopeful by focusing on the progress that has been made in addressing pandemics.
He notes how the International Health Regulations – a global framework to address in infectious disease outbreaks – have substantially improved over the years, with crucial new amendments to account for equitable access to vaccines and the impacts on vulnerable communities.
“When I look at recent reforms made to these international health agreements, it’s important to celebrate the advancements we have made,” he says.
“Though they might appear incremental or innocuous to some, they represent important policies and structures that didn’t exist even five years ago, now hardwiring equity and resilience into our health systems. That gives me a lot of hope.”
Another approach is to focus on things you have control over versus things you don’t.
This strategy is used by Cynthia Couette, a PhD Candidate at the School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU: “I try to focus on things I can do to make it right because that is what I have control over. I use my energy where I think it’s useful.”
She found that trying to do everything results in feeling “inefficient, exhausted and eco-anxious”.
“I don’t pressure myself to participate in every event related to my work, engage with every channel that might share my work, connect with every potential ally, or wage every battle,” she says. “Often this results in spreading yourself too thin, exhausting yourself, and feeling like you’re not doing everything to your full potential.”
Couette maintains her hope by being more purposeful and strategic in her work.
Imagining and embodying
Meelan Thondoo, Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, pushed us to think deeply about what “hope” means.
She queried if “hope is instrumental – which I don’t think it is supposed to be”.
Can we really deploy our emotions rationally and strategically to drive our work for our planetary health equity goals?
For Thondoo, hope is “closer to a sensation… sometimes you can feel hope without thinking it, right?”
Claudia Fernandez de Cordoba Farini, a PhD candidate at UCL, also sees hope as something that is embodied, rather than rationalised – especially when people can experience what sociologist Erik Olin Wright might have called “real utopias”.
(This term refers to emancipatory alternatives to the status quo of capitalism that already exist, such as workers’ cooperatives and even Wikipedia.)
For her it is important that “scholars, but also communities’ members, try to imagine our communities in ways that are more healthy, more sustainable more equal and that means thinking about what would it look like…”.
Claudia Fernandez de Cordoba Farini asked us to imagine ourselves, ten years in the future: if our own planetary health goals were met, what would that feel like?
“You wake up, ten years in the future. Tell me, what do you see, wherever you are? I mean, what are you feeling? What are you smelling? What are you tasting? Engaging with all your senses – I think that is really powerful.”
Does it make sense to have hope? Should you have hope, whether it makes sense or not?
What about the evidence?
While these are ultimately personal questions to decide, research into the role of hope and hopelessness in an era of increasing eco-anxiety varies in its conclusions regarding whether it inspires or dissuades individual or collective action.
On one hand, there is the perspective that hope is not the same as optimism.
It allows us to believe something better is possible, although not inevitable and therefore it can inspire action.
As David Orr wrote: “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. Hopeful people are actively engaged in defying the odds or changing the odds. Optimism leans back, puts its feet up, and wears a confident look.”
However, there is also the perspective that depending on our sources of hope, hope can be used to deny reality and therefore cannot be the only motivator for action. One recent study suggests “eco-anger” is more robust in supporting mental health, while also driving greater engagement and activism.
The question then is, if hope does not equate to optimism, can we be both hopeful and angry?
One of the authors, Takwa Tissaoui, reflects on her experience studying a Masters of Sustainability and deciding to continue working in this space despite her personal hopes, negative outlook and despair.
“My experience doing a Masters of Sustainability was a reality check: these are the challenges we are facing, are you up for it? And so, I feel hope, anger and despair everyday,” she says.
“I allow myself the mental flexibility to dip into them as fluctuating emotions and motivation tools, acknowledging that I must continue to work on solutions in my corner of the world, for the greater good.
“I have personally come to terms with the belief that given our human history, we will not be able to shift the economic or societal structures significantly or fast enough in the face of climate change. But it doesn’t mean I am going completely give up on what I do.”
Co-author Matthew Ryan agrees: “For me, realising that every fraction of a degree, every tonne of fossil fuels kept in the ground, matters. Everything we can do to make our communities more resilient matters. There is no point where we should pack up and go home.”
Collective action
So, we might find hope in radical incrementalism, or in our own individual contribution to a collective whole. It might be a sensation, or a dream, or something else entirely.
Hope, whether political strategy or personal philosophy, is a diverse category; the question is not as simple as “should we have it, or not?”.
Author Tim Winton has drawn a parallel between our climate-induced malaise and the “the tense immobility of the dominated society” observed by post-colonial psychiatrist, Franz Fanon, in the 20th century.
For Fanon, and for Winton, the only solution to this way of feeling – and to overcoming the structures that produce it – is collective action.
In Winton’s words, “the first order of business is to cease ‘shopping in despair’s boutiques’, as Les Murray once put it. Only then can we rise and fight together”.
Hope might be an emotion, a tactic, a practice, or a politics – what matters is that we feel it together.
Author details
Rebecca Blackburn is a PhD candidate at the School of Medicine and Psychology, at the Australian National University and is interested in the behavioural drivers of climate change. She is researching minimalists who voluntarily practice a low consumption lifestyle and how they are able to do so despite the consumptogenic system. She has twenty years experience working as an writer, environment manager and consultant for government and not for profits in the Pacific and Australia, and holds a Masters of Environmental Science.
Takwa Tissaoui is a PhD candidate and research officer at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Sydney. Takwa is an interdisciplinary researcher who is interested in the intersect between trade and investment policy, the environment and public health. She uses multidisciplinary scholarship and methods to research innovative policy and governance solutions in trade and investment policy to address, alleviate and mitigate critical planetary health issues.
Dr Matthew Ryan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Climate & Energy Program, and a Visiting Fellow at the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse, within the Australian National University. Matthew is a political economist and environmental historian, and has written on Australian political economy, neoliberalism, environmental justice, and energy transitions. Matthew holds a PhD in Political Economy from The University of Sydney, as well as degrees in politics, and economic history, from the universities of New England and Cambridge.
See other articles in the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse Series 2024. This is the fourth and final article in the series.
Declaration from Croakey: The Planetary Health Equity Hothouse’s 2024 Future Leaders Program contracted Croakey Professional Services, for Croakey’s Editor in Chief Dr Melissa Sweet to present to participants.
