Social Sustainability

Solastalgia

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Definition

Solastalgia is the lived experience of distress produced by unwelcome environmental change to one's home landscape — drought transforming farmland, fire consuming forest, development erasing a familiar coast. Coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in the 2000s as the environmental counterpart to nostalgia (the pain of being away from home), it describes the loss of solace and identity people suffer when home changes around them, and is studied as a dimension of climate change's mental health impacts.

References

journals.sagepub.comBulk import source

Source imported for editorial provenance.

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This reference provides supporting context for how “Solastalgia” is defined and used.

Overview

How it is used

The concept structures research on climate and mental health, impact assessment of landscape-changing projects, and Indigenous health scholarship on connections to country.

Why it matters

Solastalgia gives language to a widespread, invisible cost of environmental destruction — the grief of watching home become unrecognisable.