Sonia Freeman

Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change

Objective: Solastalgia is a new concept developed to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced distress. As opposed to nostalgia – the melancholia or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home – solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. The paper will focus on two contexts where collaborative research teams have found solastalgia to be evident: the experiences of persistent drought in rural NSW and the impact of large-scale open-cut coal mining on individuals in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. In both cases, people exposed to environmental change experienced negative affect that is exacerbated by a sense of powerlessness or lack of control over the unfolding change process. Methods: Qualitative (interviews and focus groups) and quantitative (community-based surveys) research has been conducted on the lived experience of drought and mining, and the findings relevant to solastalgia are presented. Results: The authors are exploring the potential uses and applications of the concept of solastalgia for understanding the psychological impact of the increasing incidence of environmental change worldwide. Conclusions: Worldwide, there is an increase in ecosystem distress syndromes matched by a corresponding increase in human distress syndromes. The specific role played by global-scale environmental challenges to ‘sense of place’ and identity will be explored in the future development of the concept of solastalgia.

Complexity and Human Health: The Case for a Transdisciplinary Paradigm

Transdisciplinary thinking is an emerging philosophy underpinning health social science. We advance a definition of transdisciplinary thinking and link it with complexity theory. Complexity theorys concern with non-linear relationships, interactive causality and emergent properties of systems compels researchers to adopt a transdisciplinary perspective. We construct a generic framework for analyzing health processes from diverse disciplines and apply it to coronary heart disease in the Australian Coalfields. Insights from this analysis support our argument that transdisciplinary thinking maximizes understanding of the complexity of human health.

Environmental change and human health in Upper Hunter communities of New South Wales, Australia

This article presents the theory and method informing an ongoing study of environmental change and human distress in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The nature of environmental change in the Upper Hunter landscape over the past two centuries is first described, followed by the preliminary results of a long-term study that aims to investigate the nature of residents’ understanding of, and responses to, environmental change. Data from in-depth interviews found that the transformation of the environment from mining and power station activities was associated with significant expressions of distress linked to negative changes to interviewees’ sense of place, well-being, and control. A new concept, “solastalgia,” is introduced to help explain the relationship between ecosystem health, human health, and powerlessness. We claim that solastalgia, as opposed to nostalgia, is a type of homesickness (distress) that one gets when one is still “at home.” Future research will aim to validate a questionnaire to test the hypothesis that environmental distress is associated with levels of depression, quality of life, and rates of stress-related disease, as well as activism and environmental rehabilitation.

Not Just a Coalmine: Shifting Grounds of Community Opposition to Coal Mining in Southeastern Australia

For almost three decades, open cut coal mines have been expanding deeper into the densely settled agricultural landscape of the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. The mines have become increasingly profitable for Australian and multinational companies, and Newcastle, the capital of the Hunter region, is now the worlds largest black coal exporting port. Despite the significant new wealth that mining has brought, those residing in proximity to mines and coal-fired power stations in the Hunter Valley have long struggled against the deleterious effects on health, rural livelihoods and environment. In recent years, opposition has widened to a more activist environmentalism that links the coal economy to climate change, global warming and other cumulative health and environmental effects. The organisational scale of the opposition has correspondingly widened to interconnect local residents, Green political parties and transnational organisations such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. Using the Anvil Hill open cut mine proposal as an example, this paper examines the shifting grounds of environmental knowledge and oppositional practices by coal-affected residents of the Hunter Valley.