Embodied experiences of environmental and climatic changes in landscapes of everyday life in Ghana

Abstract

Science and policy attention to global environmental and climatic change has been growing substantially. Yet, the psychological and emotional distress and pain triggered by these transformations have been largely ignored, particularly among poor and marginalized populations whose livelihoods depend on the living land. Building upon key geographical concepts of landscapes and place and embodied engagements within, we focus on environmentally-induced distress and loss of belonging (‘solastalgia’) in the coupled context of environmental and climatic changes and internal migration in Ghana. We assess the differential emotional experiences and memory among those who migrate from deteriorating environments in the North to urban slums in the capital Accra and those who stay behind in these altered homes. We use participatory mapping and 'walking journeys' in northern regions to examine understandings of landscapes of everyday life and identify places that induce solastalgia. Results illustrate that the combination of withered crops, drying up of wells, loss of beauty, and deteriorating social networks trigger strong emotional responses, in particular feelings of sadness. We conclude that these emotional responses are expressions of solastalgia in what we call “hollow homes” where place and self of agrarian livelihoods undergo both figurative and literal desiccation.