Tag: Long Read

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase climate anxiety – maybe even climate dread or eco-anxiety. Either way, it means the same thing: a persistent feeling of anxiety around climate change, or the environment. Sounding familiar?

At Smiley Movement, we profile the very best individuals, groups, and organisations who are doing their best to take action for the sake of our planet, so it’s not all doom and gloom. 

In fact, a 2022 study by the University of Bath found climate anxiety is not always negative, and it can be a “motivating force for taking action” to reduce emissions, and adapting our high-carbon lifestyles to become more environmentally friendly. Because, despite everything, there are ways to combat climate anxiety – and help the planet while you’re at it.

PLANTING PRODUCE

There’s something to be said for going out into nature, touching grass and putting an end to the doom-scroll for a while. Take it one step further and start taking care of what is around you – prune a tree, water a flower, or even plant some produce and grow your own food. 

This is something you can do whether you live in a house with a garden or the 50m² box flat you’ve been in since uni. Studies have shown gardening helps relieve stress and improve mental health, so the fact that it helps the environment (and you’re shopping extremely locally) is a bonus.

Start small, with easy-to-grow herbs like mint – then branch out (pun totally intended), and add a chilli plant in there. Give yourself small successes, get back in touch with nature, while doing your bit for the planet, and give yourself the space to breathe.

VOLUNTEER

We all know exercise has positive effects on mental health, as does volunteering – so why not go ahead and mix the two together?

“People making changes themselves in their local area gives them ownership over those places,” said Autumn Barlow, Communications and Press Officer for The Wildlife Trust and their Nextdoor Nature project. “That makes a difference. We know from lots of studies that being in green areas […] has a measurable impact on people’s health and wellbeing.”

The Nextdoor Nature project works with communities to benefit people and nature, which makes it a great option for anyone struggling with climate anxiety. 

Green Gyms, run by The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) is another great option. They’re fun, free, sessions where volunteers get to help transform local green spaces. This gives you the opportunity to combine exercise with helping the environment – and puts you in touch with like-minded people who share your concerns about the climate crisis. 

“I think a lot of the climate crisis has been [because of] loss of our connection with nature, and forgetting that all this – what we do – has such an impact on the natural environment.“ said Rachel Hoyes, the Health Development Manager with TCV. 

You can find your local Green Gym. Or get involved in the Nextdoor Nature project.

RENT AND SHARE CLOTHING

The fashion industry has quickly become one of the most detrimental industries to the climate, which is a tough pill to swallow for most people. But fear not, there are things you can do to make your fashion habits more sustainable, without sacrificing your style.

We spoke to Jen Charon, co-founder of LOANHOOD, a peer-to-peer clothing rental app, which set up by Jen and two of her friends, Jade McSorely and Lucy Hall, as a way for people to rent out fashion items online. Not only is it much cheaper than buying clothes new – it’s much better for the environment.

“I think that’s what’s going to help make big changes – people power,” said Jen. “Lots of people making a small change, adding up to something bigger.”

The textile industry is notoriously bad for the environment – pumping between 1.22 and 2.93 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, according to the Ellen McArthur Foundation.

REACH OUT

One of the best ways to make yourself feel better is to help other people – it’s cliche, sure, but it’s a cliche for a reason. Connecting with others is good for your mental health, as is building relationships. Not only can they help you, but you can help them – and sometimes that’s even more important.

Evidence shows helping other people can have a positive effect on our mental health – not only can it lift your mood, but studies show it can relieve stress, too. So if you’re struggling with climate anxiety that’s all the more reason to reach out to others who might also be struggling.

Reach out to your friends and family, and talk with them about your climate anxiety and your fears for the future. Not only does venting to loved ones have a huge impact on your emotions, but it opens up important conversations. And, if you can’t find a community near you that shares your climate anxiety, why not make one?

“Find a tribe – find people to talk to,” said Rachel Knox, the Social impact development officer for the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Cardiff Metropolitan University. “Find your voice and speak the truth because you’re not on your own. [Climate anxiety] affects everybody – it affects people of all ages and we’re all looking for a solution.” 

“We need [young people] to be activists and changemakers – we need them to speak out and it’s easier to do that if you find your community and speak out with them.”

This article aligns with the UN SDG Climate Action.

At 19, Mya-Rose Craig has a unique name for herself: BirdGirl.

The British-Bangladeshi ornithologist, environmentalist, and diversity activist started her now-popular blog, BirdGirl, at age 11. By 17, she had become the youngest person to see half of the birds in the world.

“I was just an 11-year-old girl into bird watching,” she tells Smiley News. “It was a nerdy hobby!” She saw other kids her age starting blogs, so wanted to join, too. But she never realised it’d turn into what it did – including authoring her own book of the same name.

What was it about birds that fascinated her? “My mum struggled with her mental illness when I was growing up,” she says. “My family spent a lot of time travelling to do bird watching – it made us feel better, kept us together. That’s why I got involved at such a young age, I was already very into nature.”

The love of birds has always been there, she says. “They can fly, which is very cool. They’re beautiful, I love their feathers, and there are just so many species. There are just under 11,000. I love how abundant they are – birds are everywhere when you start looking.”

A pivotal moment for Mya-Rose’s activism came in 2014, when there was a terrible oil spill in Bangladesh in the Mangrove Forest, an important habitat for birds and animals who live there. “I remember as a kid thinking it’s awful and so major, they will surely talk about it on the news,” says Mya-Rose.

But they didn’t. There was nothing. After a few days, she decided to do her bit and raise awareness. It snowballed into a big article in the US, and raising a lot of money. “It was a weird, exciting experience,” she says, “after being constantly told your voice doesn’t matter, you can’t make a difference, I think learning as a kid that I could and I don’t have to feel helpless was a big moment.”

After this, Mya-Rose started talking about the issues she cared about more: conservation, birds, wildlife, our planet. And the blog grew. She now has nearly 30k followers on Twitter and more than 23k on Instagram.

From 13 onwards, Mya-Rose started to really begin her activism: attending real-life events, speaking at a climate change rally (“It was terrifying,” she says, “but so exhilarating!”) – being around passionate people who really cared made her feel better about the state of world, when it’s often all too easy to feel miserable.

Black2Nature

Mya-Rose’s love of birds turned into a force for good when she created her own nonprofit to give back, “kind of by accident”. When she was 13, she heard in the US they had summer camps that included bird watching and nature camps. “I wanted to do it!” she says, “there was nothing in the UK so I organised my own weekend.”

Loads of people signed up, but she realised every person was a white teenage boy – she already knew there were diversity issues with access to the countryside, but this made it even more evident.

So she changed tact and turned it into a camp getting kids from the middle of Bristol into the countryside who didn’t often have access. It was a huge success, and the feedback was largely that it needed to be a long-term initiative. Black2Nature was born: a campaign for equal access to nature, concentrated on Visible Minority Ethnic (VME) communities who are excluded from the countryside.

They run nature camps, arrange nature activities, organise race equality in nature conferences and campaign to make the nature conservation and environmental sectors ethnically diverse. It’s all free for those involved.

Mya-Rose, not just the BirdGirl, works across a range of issues: climate change, indigenous people’s rights, biodiversity loss and rewilding, as well as reintroducing beavers to their natural habitat. But this is all meanwhile being a full-time student, in her second year of uni, doing anthropology.

“No matter job I end up doing, I’ll be involved with campaigning in some way. I’ve always been someone who takes it upon myself to try and make things better.”

“One of the things people ask me is, how do you have hope?” she says. “I have hope for so many reasons, one of them is genuinely all the other amazing people I’ve met over the years who are involved in making the world a better place.

“I just love meeting people who are trying,” she says, “and succeeding. It’s so easy to have a negative miserable perspective about state of planet and future, actually such a potential for things to get better, so many projects going on.”

Follow Mya-Rose on Twitter to keep up-to-date with her journey. You can also find out more about Black2Nature and how to get involved.

This article aligns with the UN SDG Life on Land and Climate Action.

Anthropy is all about being optimistic, said John O’Brien, as he introduced the Future of Britain talk at the three-day event at the Eden Project.

“We’ve got to have hope,” he says, “because without that, we have no future.”

He was proposing a question to the panel and audience: what do we want Britain to look like in 30 years? Here’s a snapshot of what they said.

A transparent media

Kamal Ahmed, founder of The News Movement, focused on how we can reinvent journalism. “How do we reinvent it? People are not engaging with the present offers they are seeing – it’s not for them,” he said.

“I do feel optimistic. I want to see journalism resurrected for those audiences. If we don’t have trusted, non-partisan journalism which allows us to develop conversations about solutions as well as holding power to account, we lose a fundamental part of democracy.

“We need new offers alongside brilliant journalism that is about engagement, solutions, onward journeys – and that’s true for younger audiences.”

A sense of hope

Kelly Beaver MBE, from Ipsos Mori, said: “We understand how the British public think and feel.”

When they asked the question what makes you proud to be British, it’s the NHS, the history, and our British institutions that came out on top. They’re proud of our contribution to scientific discovery, she says, including Covid and the climate crisis.

But, says Kelly, two in five people believe children will have worst lives than their parents have, and seven out of 10 of us believe our country is going in the wrong direction. “We need a sense of hopefulness about our place in the world,” she says.

“Leaders have a role in creating a sense of hope. There is a responsibility as a leader to create a sense of pathway to change.”

An investment in sport

Annamarie Phelps, from IWG on Women and Sport, says Team GB is the second most loved brand in the UK, to the NHS.

“Sport brings people together,” says Annamarie. “It raises a nation’s feelings and brings them together, but it also transforms lives and communities – as well as having the opportunity to change society if we use it in the right way.”

In the next 30 years, she says, we should invest and encourage more women and children to participate in sport. “Sport and physical activity will save the NHS,” she says.

“If, in 30 years, we have a community and a society that does stay active, it will reduce mental health issues, help reduce those suffering from heart disease, and more. If sport were a drug, it would be a miracle cure.”

But, she says, sport needs to transform and step up in the right direction – as well as achieving more gender quality – to become the fantastic tool it can be used for.

“There’s a lot of work sports needs to do but I believe we can get there. Sport is the future of this country and we will all benefit.”

A more equitable society

Bina Mehta has been at KPMG for over 30 years – in that time, she says, so much has changed.

“Looking forward, what I want for my kids, is a Britain that is thriving, not just surviving,” she says. “We need a Britain where people, business and communities can do well.

“We want to be part of a connected world, but living in a country where there is access to opportunity that is better balanced around the country and within communities.

“If we think about what divides us, I would like to see more commonality around us, rather than division.”

Smiley News is a media partner of Anthropy.

It’s been dubbed a ‘Glastonbury for Good’ – but scrap the tents, and instead picture yourself at the Eden Project in Cornwall. 

The epic global garden – dubbed the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ by some – is, this November, home to Anthropy: what its founder, John O’Brien calls a “launchpad for change”.

Anthropy, which takes place from 2 – 4 November, is a gathering of people who have influence, who have a desire to change how our world operates, and a thirst for good. 

“We’re looking at the longer-term vision of our world,” John O’Brien MBE tells me. “We’re thinking, actually, we need to be able to hand this bit of the world on in a better state than we inherited ourselves. It’s really about trying to help shape what younger people, and their children, are likely to inherit.”

Anthropy was a lockdown lightbulb moment for John. In January 2021, after spending 30 years in business, he looked back on the first year of Covid – the loss of life, the damaged economy – and thought we could do better. “I thought, we need a national forum where we can build back better,” he says.

“I thought, we need a national forum where we can build back better.”

John thought about Davos, and the fact global leaders go there and have important, powerful conversations. He wanted to create that space here in the UK. He made two what he calls “risky” decisions, after sharing his ideas with people he trusted: one was to host the event in Cornwall, not London, and the other was to crowdsource the agenda. 

“Over 12 months, I had 200 organisations looking at what we wanted to talk about to move forward our thinking,” he says. “It was the largest ever crowdsourced agenda in the UK, that has led to 160 sessions with 300 speakers over 14 stages at the Eden Project.”

So what are John’s hopes for Anthropy and beyond?

“It’s not just the event, it’s the impact that comes out of it,” he says.

“I want people to come away thinking they’ve seen something and listening to something inspiring, or spoken to people they wouldn’t have otherwise had the chance to interact with.”

John hopes people will go away and change the way in which they do things – whether that’s in their community, or leading an organisation. “I want people to go back and try and influence and make an impact,” he adds. 

“The thing that most interested me is reflecting upon what will be the outcome – and to see that change happen.”

This article aligns with the UN SDG Partnership for the Goals.