Fostering Climate Resilience is an Opportunity for Flourishing across Generations

By Jyoti Mishra & Ayan Ramanathan 

Ayan with compost for the garden.

This is a co-written piece between me, Jyoti Mishra, and my teenage son Ayan. I, Jyoti, grew up in a home in India where waste was always frowned upon – my father espoused that every purchase can be repurposed and reused, every tool or home appliance can be maintained and cared for to prolong its life. My parents’ home still has some of the same functioning home appliances that they bought when they first married in the 1970s, of course with some engineering upgrades made to enhance energy efficiency. So sustainability has really been part of my core being growing up in the pre-internet era. I often wonder, why are our systems so well-designed to create waste? No other species on this planet ever generates waste like us! 

In my personal experience, a low-waste, clean and green environment also feeds into a clear mind; it facilitates a mind state that has clarity for new ideas, a mind state that is at peace and that rejoices in the beauty of the ecology around us, especially when man-made clutter isn't overloading our senses. We are part of this ecology, not above it. As the Buddha said, we are all interconnected and interdependent, including humans, plants and animals. The Buddhist sutras fundamentally teach karuna (compassion) and ahimsa (non-violence) as core values for interacting with the ecology around us.

When one is born into Hindu culture, as in my case, Buddhist philosophy and sustainability practices become part of one’s DNA. And DNA is what you pass on to your future generation as well. My son, Ayan, now a teen, has been part of my repair-reuse-regenerate cycles for many years now. We have buried our food waste to compost in the soil and enjoyed watching new seedlings grow from it.

Ayan with the strawberries

Ayan was in first grade when he first brought home a desire to fundraise for those impacted by a climate disaster. It was 2018 and the Camp Fire, still the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, had just devastated the town of Paradise. Of course I contributed to Ayan’s fundraiser. But I also picked up the phone and called the Basic Needs program manager who was organizing that wildfire fund-drive. With Ayan by my side and his little baby sister nursing in my lap, I listened to the program manager not just describe the horror of the environmental devastation and the critical need for basic amenities for those impacted, but also the heavy toll on people’s minds and mental well-being. Climate Trauma was setting in for so many who had been exposed to the wildfire. At that moment, I realized I must use my neuroscience and mental health training to better understand this climate-related mental health trauma, so we can generate more awareness around it, and better prepare our communities for future disasters. 

That one phone call to the Camp Fire relief organizers turned me into a climate neuroscientist. It led to a series of studies where I collaborated with local scientists in the Camp Fire region and showed how exposure to the climate change-accelerated wildfire disaster was culminating in climate trauma, including complex mental health symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression. We further discovered that persistent cognitive impacts can arise post-disaster, including hyperdistractibiliy and poor decision-making, which can really make daily life tasks a struggle. Through these studies, our team was the first to discover the Fire Brain phenomenon, wherein even a year after the fires, brains of those exposed to the disaster can be persistently hyperaroused and hypervigilant to impending stressors. 

As this research began to take shape, we wondered alongside the impacted community members how will we bounce back from the impacts? How will we dissolve this climate anxiety and distress and transform it into climate resilience? The answers were not simple, especially for communities such as those impacted by the Camp Fire that are steeped in poverty and already have low access to healthcare resources. There was really no top-down savior coming to help, the solutions had to come from within the community itself. And this is where our community partners rose to the challenge. Within six-months of the climate disaster, when the Earth is starting to get covered with green grass again, and the trees have regenerated new leaves, our communities were starting to organize a new movement around eco-therapy. These were nature mindfulness sessions or forest bathing walks where community members gathered in a safe natural space to appreciate the non-threatening beauty of the ecosystem. They were learning to feel the earth beneath them with all their senses, and come to the awareness and realization that just as nature regenerates, so can our mental well-being.

Nature meditation gathering

Our leaders within climate vulnerable communities, especially Indigenous leaders are truly leading the way in helping us restore our positive bonds with nature that are severed after a climate disaster. Furthermore, eco-therapy programs are not only practicing eco-mindfulness but instilling the fundamentals of eco-stewardship and sustainability amongst community members. Relatedly, in our research we are finding that these practices are improving mental well-being measured one-week post-eco-therapy relative to pre-eco-therapy, as well as enhancing nature connectedness, mindfulness and place attachment. From my own mindful interactions with nature, I am positive that instilling long-term skills in eco-mindfulness will surely benefit long-term human well-being and planetary well-being, so I applaud the work of The Mind Body Ecology Institute that is fostering many such community experiences. We are even integrating these nature mindfulness practices within our University of California wide Climate Resilience education for youth.

Ayan and his first book Listen Up Kids! Our Climate Is Changing

Circling back to how I started my work as a climate neuroscientist, I asked my son, Ayan to reflect on his relationship with nature. As I mentioned above, Ayan is not a novice to love for ecology. He has also written a wonderful climate education books for kids Listen Up Kids! Our Climate is Changing that discusses climate solutions in comic book format with sprinklings of humor – he knows exactly how to relate to kids! 

Ayan says, “I think of my relationship with nature as the trust within families and generations. We care for each other instinctively. Recently, when I went to the Galapagos islands, I visited a sanctuary for Giant Tortoises. Many humans were caring for them, and I learned that their average lifespan in the wild is 80-120 years and in captivity they can live up to 177 years. The lovely humans working at the sanctuary would not live long enough to see the baby tortoises get older. Future humans will take on their work. The sanctuary has trusted humans for generations to protect the Giant Tortoises. Just like that, this Earth is our sanctuary.”

Sea turtle in the Galapagos Islands

I smiled and knew what Ayan meant. I had passed on my DNA for caring for the ecology around us. And in that passing came the sense of responsibility and trust. This is exactly what building climate resilience entails, that we connect with others and have those important dialogues with our families and communities to build this love for nature, and a responsibility to protect it across generations. Indeed, building such climate resilience together is an opportunity for us all to mutually flourish together, and that is the work I wish to pursue for a lifetime! 🙏🏽

About Jyoti Mishra and Ayan Ramanathan

Dr. Jyoti Mishra is an Associate Professor in the department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. She is the founder and director of the NEATLabs and the Co-director of the University of California’s Climate Mental Health Initiative (UC CMHI). She also serves as a member of The Mind Body Ecology Institute Circle of Advisors!

Jyoti has expertise in the study of climate trauma and climate resilience as well as scalable digital mental health interventions and precision psychiatry. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Hope for Depression Foundation, Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion, and the Mind & Life Institute among other sources. Her research is widely acknowledged in the media including recent features in CNN, TIME magazine, NPR, Washington Post, World Economic forum, and the Scientific American.

She has authored a children’s book on the secrets of joyous, lifelong learning called The Little Brain. As you can see above, her son Ayan is also a budding author and a climate activist, and has released a comic book for kids about climate change awareness and solutions, called Listen Up Kids! Our Climate is Changing.

Jyoti believes that tough challenges for humanity such as climate change provide the opportunity for inter-generational activism and belief in a common positive vision for the future in harmony with nature, which can in turn stimulate inter-generational resilience.