About this workshop:
The world is experiencing unprecedented levels of global heating and adverse weather events, with negative public (mental) health impacts, loss of life, biodiversity loss, migration, and destruction, to name a few. In addition, climate change intersects with longstanding historical social, economic, gendered, and environmental inequalities in the global South and unequal contexts in the global North. The scholarship and practice of ‘climate psychology’ has quickly developed into a vast and complex body of work with many sub-fields. This workshop provides the co-ordinates for psychologists in climate change efforts, including identifying and addressing the direct and indirect impacts of global heating on mental health (climate-specific psychological responses to a changing planet), disaster responses, behaviour change in mitigation and adaption, education, conservation and biodiversity, organisation and community interventions, ethics, and technological and digital innovation. The second part of the workshop demonstrates how justice-related values can be central to how psychologists approach climate change efforts. The workshop provides practical examples of how theoretical, methodological, legal, environmental and human rights frameworks can encourage us to think about interconnectedness, planetary health, the inclusion of marginalised voices, accompaniment, and solidarity with existing climate justice struggles.
PsySSA Workshop Series 2023: Workshop 2: Climate change and psychology: Mapping the field and foregrounding justice
Meet our Presenters
Professor Brendon Barnes is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Johannesburg. He writes in psychology, climate change, environmental health, and justice. He has won teaching, academic citizenship, and research awards. Professor Barnes is known to champion the integration of justice into environmental and climate psychology, has edited several collections focusing on climate psychology and justice, and, in 2022, addressed the 15th United Nations Annual Psychology Day on the topic.
Dr Garret Barnwell is a clinical psychologist in Johannesburg, South Africa. In addition to a fulltime psychotherapeutic practice, he provides psychological expertise on a range of issues. Including, in the past, health justice issues in detention and extractive settings for Doctors Without Border, the youth-led #CancelCoal case for the Centre for Environmental Rights and the psychological impacts of opencast coal mining for All Rise Attorneys for Climate and Environmental Justice. He is also a research associate at the University of Johannesburg’s Psychology Department.