Navigating Loss and Damage: Making space for ecological grief in the climate adaptation planning process

Abstract

Climate change is causing significant loss and damage throughout Canada. These losses, by their nature, have both physical and emotional impacts for the communities in which they occur. The negotiation of these losses will happen most tangibly through the adaption planning and design processes, placing landscape professionals directly in the face of this work and its entangled emotions. This research responds directly to this emerging paradigm by integrating concepts from the ecological grief literature into the climate adaptation planning process. Using document analysis and a focused literature review, two bodies of literature - adaptation planning and ecological grief - are analyzed. Then, using a soft systems methodology and VUE conceptual modeling software a rich picture of literature intersections is diagrammed. The outcome of this research will provide landscape professionals with a starting toolkit for attending to the emotional nature of adaptation planning in the context of climate loss and damage.