Helping Children Cope With Eco-Anxiety

A multiplying number of children are experiencing and displaying anxiety about damage to the environment, flora and fauna, and adverse effects of climate change

- Ranjini Rao

When seven-year-old Kyra Kumar exclaimed to her mother, "Mama, I'm a nature-an!" she not only meant she loved nature, but that she also wanted to care for it and protect everything in it plants and trees, lady bugs and butterflies, rain clouds and water lilies.

Kyra is one among a small but fast-multiplying number of children who are exhibiting eco-anxiety defined as persistent worry about present and future harm to the environment, due to climate change and unrestrained exploitation of nature. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines it as "chronic fear of environmental doom."

Eco-anxiety in its mild form manifests as worry about damage to ecology, stemming from a deep love of nature. In extreme cases, ecological anxiety tends to cause emotional distress, panic attacks, and feelings of hopelessness. Greta Thunberg (20), the world-famous Swedish environmental activist, traces the roots of her international activism to extreme eco-anxiety as a child.

"It's common in our home to see Kyra reprimanding her grandmother for swatting a mosquito or her grandfather, for smacking an ant dead. In school too she hates being tied down to her classroom and wants to spend time chasing butterflies and centipedes on the campus,” says Rajathi Subramaniam, a Bengaluru-based homemaker and Kyra’s mother.