Climate Anxiety, Ecological Loss, and Community Resilience

As communities across the globe confront intensifying environmental crises, the social and emotional consequences of ecological instability are becoming increasingly visible. Climate change is not only a scientific or policy issue, but also a deeply relational and psychosocial one, shaping experiences of uncertainty, displacement, grief, fear, loss, and collective vulnerability. From a clinical sociological perspective, climate anxiety and ecological distress must be understood within broader structural inequalities that unevenly distribute risk, resources, and opportunities for recovery. This session invites papers that explore the intersections between environmental crisis, lived experience, and community response within contexts of global turbulence. Contributions may examine how individuals, families, institutions, and communities negotiate ecological loss, environmental trauma, forced migration, food insecurity, disaster vulnerability, and the emotional burden of climate uncertainty. The session also seeks to foreground intervention-oriented approaches that strengthen resilience, solidarity, relational repair, and community-based adaptation Particular attention is encouraged toward Global South perspectives, indigenous and local knowledge systems, youth activism, environmental justice, and the role of clinical sociology in developing socially responsive interventions during periods of ecological disruption. The session welcomes theoretical, empirical, methodological, and practice-based contributions that engage questions of care, sustainability, social repair, and collective futures in an era of accelerating environmental change.