Solastalgia: When the Place We Call Home Begins to Disappear
T here is a particular kind of environmental loss that is difficult to explain because, from the outside, it may not look like a loss at all. A tree is removed from a familiar road. A pond is filled to make space for a building. A paddy field becomes a housing development. A stream that once ran clear becomes polluted. A forest becomes thinner, quieter and more fragmented. A coastline changes shape. The monsoon arrives differently. Birds that were once ordinary become occasional visitors. None of these events necessarily makes the evening news. Yet, for someone who has lived alongside that landscape for years, they can create a persistent sense that something deeply familiar is slipping away. I have often thought about environmental change in two different ways. One is through eco-anxiety : the uneasiness of thinking about climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and the kind of planet future generations may inherit. The other is more intimate. It is the feeling that comes when I ...
